In order to lead a full life, a person must sufficiently sleep. During sleep, the body rests, restores strength and energy reserves, then there is the development of essential hormones to ensure the normal functioning of the body. Sleep is a natural human need, along with eating and breathing. For most people, falling asleep is not a big deal. But there are people who avoid sleep only because they are afraid of it - these are hypnophobes.
Pathology features
Morbid sleep anxiety is a disease called hypnophobia. This phobia has other terms, such as clinophobia and somniphobia. This mental disorder is manifested by the fear of sleep itself.because a person is helpless in a dream, unable to ward off a sudden danger. Hypnophobe panicky afraid to lose touch with reality, control over what is happening and their own lives. Some people suffering from this phobia fear nightmares that can disturb their peace of mind. There are some hypnophobes who do not sleep just because they feel sorry for the time to sleep. And many are afraid to die in a dream, and therefore try to avoid sleep itself.
Fear of the natural need of the human body is considered unnatural from the beginning. The person is in a state of alarm, he is very worried as the evening approaches, when you need to go to bed.
At any time of the day, as soon as the body begins to send signals to the owner about fatigue and fatigue, the hypnophobe begins to be disturbed, because it is possible that he will have to fall asleep.
True hypnophobes can wear down insomnia for years, falling asleep only for short periods of time when the body already refuses to function in wakefulness mode. In fact, a person simply “turns off” (the protective mechanism of the brain works). In order not to sleep as long as possible, a person can invent a lot of “necessary”, in his opinion, lessons and rituals.
Of all the phobic mental disorders, hypnophobia is considered to be one of the most painful - people with such a disorder quickly bring themselves to exhaustion, exhaustion, and sometimes even outright insanity. No wonder in the Middle Ages, and then in the Nazi concentration camps, there was torture by insomnia, when a person was simply not allowed to fall asleep for several days.
In the mild form of hypnophobia leads to the fear of falling asleep, but sooner or later (rather late) the person still falls asleep. A sleep of 2-3 hours in this case from the moment of falling asleep to lifting does not bring relief, the person wakes up tired, exhausted, irritated. Gradually, he loses interest in life, people, events and events. Anger and aggression begin to predominate in his behavior. Gradually, complete apathy sets in.
Lack of sleep is fraught with hallucinations (visual, auditory, tactile), panic attacks, vision and hearing are reduced, and depression of the organs of the respiratory, cardiovascular, and nervous systems gradually occurs. In extremely severe cases, hypnophobia can be fatal.
According to data from historical archives, Joseph Stalin suffered from hypnophobia. Then the doctors could not formulate the diagnosis exactly (for obvious reasons, because the doctor also does not want to be shot). Stalin loved and preferred to work it at night. He was afraid to die in his sleep, and therefore he did everything possible to prevent him from falling asleep.He became ill from immense fatigue and finally fell asleep only after a dose of sleeping pills given by doctors.
Therefore, on many shots of the documentary chronicle, Stalin looks somewhat inhibited.
The reasons
The reasons why the natural need becomes inadequately unimportant lie in the fact that we all fear death. In varying degrees, with different frequencies, but the fear of physical and biological death is inherent in everyone. In hypnophobe, it is irrational, hypertrophied. Outside, man does not control the situation, he is vulnerable. And the fear of going to bed is most often associated with the fear of suffering or dying in a dream - to be killed, strangled, shot, die due to cardiac arrest, respiration, and so on.
Adult causes of mental disorder are often convincing. For example, hypnophobes often become over the years people who suffer from heart disease. They are so afraid that the heart will stop in a dream that they prefer to avoid sleep, it seems to them that in the waking state they are more likely to survive if the heart begins to "act up". Some hypnophobes suffer from apnea, snoring, and bronchial asthma - their fear is closely related to the possible prospect of dying from a sudden cessation of breathing, asphyxiation.
The cause of hypnophobia can be childhood experiences, for example, nightmares that a child often saw in a dream. In this case, the first signs of phobic disorder appear in childhood or during puberty. Often it is children's nightmares become the main horror for an adult. He understands and realizes that these nightmares are unreal, illusory, but he can’t do anything with fear - fear in this situation is stronger than man.
According to the observations of psychiatrists, children and adults with a vulnerable, sensitive and unstable mentality are more at risk of developing hypnophobia.
Very suspicious, impressionable, experiencing people with a high degree of empathy, prone to depression on any, even insignificant occasion, with low self-esteem. Often hypnophobia is not the only symptom. Fear of falling asleep is often accompanied by persecution mania (a person is delusional convinced that they want to kill him, he is watched, something threatens him), schizophrenia.
People with predisposing features of a mental portrait can be impressed at any age (but more often in childhood) from watching a horror movie, thriller, reading a book, horror stories that children love to tell each other so much at night.
Experts describe the cases of refusal to fall asleep due to the fear of falling into a lethargic sleep and be buried alive.
The causes of hypnophobia also include personal negative experiences experienced in a dream, for example, a sharp awakening in childhood during a fire or flood, after which a series of events began that affected the mental and emotional state of a person.
Hypnophobia often develops in a person who is predisposed to this because of the nervous system and nature, after interacting with other hypnophobes. The attacks of panic attack, horror, as well as the rationale for the reasons that cause a person to refuse to sleep, they can make a strong impression, and gradually fall asleep difficult, because the intrusive thought about the possible danger will be a constant companion.
Symptoms
The symptoms of hypnophobia are numerous and directly depend on what kind of disturbances the lack of sleep causes in the human body. At the same time, both the psyche and the physical condition are affected. In difficult cases, panic attacks and anxiety are observed even when trying to talk about sleep, so manifested anxious neurosis, which is very difficult to treat.
With the fear of falling asleep, a person experiences rapid and shallow breathing., shortness of breath, consciousness moderately confused, sweating dramatically increases, a feeling of anxiety, dry mouth appears.Palpitations become more frequent, there may be signs of nausea.
Considering that the prerequisites that lead to the development of phobias are not fully understood, it is rather difficult to accurately diagnose hypnophobia. Psychiatrists are guided by objective signs (lack of desire to go to bed at night, day), as well as the results of special tests on the level of anxiety.
How to treat?
The initial stages of hypnophobia may be available for self-medication. Sometimes it is enough to change your lifestyle, to saturate it with movement, physical education, and sports, so that the strength of fatigue after a passing day is greater than the forces of fear. An interesting hobby that captures a person in the early stages of phobic disorder helps to reduce anxiety before falling asleep. Useful evening walks before bedtime (which is not a reason to have a dog!), Swimming.
If hypnophobia is already running and long-term, then one cannot do without the help of a psychotherapist or psychiatrist.
At the same time, independent attempts to get rid of a phobia, to defeat it, do not end in success. Psychotherapy sessions help to identify the causes and form new attitudes that will help a person to perceive the process of falling asleep and sleep as auspicious, necessary and positive. Simultaneous exercises of yoga, meditation, and patient training in techniques of arbitrary muscle relaxation will help. Hypnotherapy often has a place in treatment - the results of new installations in hypnotic sleep may exceed all expectations. The doctor finds all the connections that generate fear, and replaces them with new, positive ones.
Due to this, the fear factor is either leveled or eliminated completely. The help of relatives who will agree to sleep next to the patient during the treatment is also helpful. You can have a pet that will sleep in the same bed with hypnophobe - a cat, a dog of small breeds. The pet is especially recommended for those who are lonely. The same recommendation is often given by psychotherapists in the case of pediatric hypnophobia.
To treat the fear of falling asleep is difficult, and therefore ambiguous predictions. The reasons for fear are deliberate, and the manifestations are acute, which is why close cooperation between the doctor and the patient is important.
