There are many people who are acutely experiencing the loss of their own time. Sometimes this fear turns into a phobia. To select an effective treatment, it is necessary to carefully understand the features and causes of the uncontrollable fear of the passage of time.
What it is?
Chronophobia (from ancient Greek chrono - “time”, phobos - “fear”) is a neurotic fear of time. A person experiences an all-consuming horror of instantly flying hours and years, inevitably leading to death. Most often, an overwhelming fear arises at the moment of waiting for a very important or desired event: some solemn event, wedding, exam, or watching a favorite show. A person painfully begins to count down the months, days, minutes to the expected moment. Life turns into a complete nightmare.
This phobia can occur spontaneously, even if during a period of strong psycho-emotional stress. For example, some modern teenagers first experience inexplicable excitement when choosing an educational institution. As the time goes to school, anxiety increases and gradually turns into fear. And a few weeks before graduation from a teenager who has not yet decided on a future specialty, anxiety can be transformed into a phobia.
Young people often acquire anxiety disorder, if they want to do the job quickly, because they are afraid not to have time to cope with the task by the appointed date. As a result, the task is performed poorly, but much earlier than the scheduled time.
Most often, a phobia occurs in suspicious persons with an unstable psyche. Sometimes people between the ages of 40 and 50 anxiously look back and realize how much time has been wasted. They have a fear not to have something very important in life. The elderly face chronophobia as a result of understanding the inevitability of death.
For the first time, a phobia was recorded during the observation period of convicts for a long time. Prisoners of the departure of such a long term is something that is beyond reality. For a short time, the initial intensity of the symptoms decreases.
Man turns into a non-interested being with primitive needs. This condition is called a prison neurosis. This is one of the most difficult phobias due to the absence of a tangible object of fear.
Causes
The appearance of this pathology can contribute to a variety of reasons:
- genetic predisposition;
- traumatic event that occurred in childhood;
- unsuccessful experience of accomplished action, which brought not entirely desirable results;
- transferred stress in anticipation of any event;
- imposed fear from the outside: from the media, books, films, messages of friends or acquaintances;
- stressful situations: job loss, divorce, death of a loved one;
- health status: hormonal imbalance, surgery, heart disease, menopause;
- depression, depression.
Sometimes chronophobia can appear completely suddenly due to an accidentally heard phrase about the transience of life.
Symptoms
Unlike most phobias, this anxiety disorder is constantly present in a person’s life, and does not appear periodically at a specific meeting with an object of fear. Sad thoughts pursue a person mainly in the evening and at night. He begins frantically to sort out in his head how many cases he managed to complete in a day, while emphasizing the unfinished process.
Chronophobe begins to overcome panic. He wants to run somewhere far away, hide.
Simultaneously with pathological fear, the following physiological symptoms appear:
- sudden jumps in blood pressure;
- tachycardia;
- rapid breathing;
- digestive system disorder;
- dilated pupils;
- trembling in the legs and arms;
- fainting;
- increased sweating.
Psychological symptoms include unwillingness to plan long-term business.
Young chronophobes prefer to live one day. They are afraid to face the feeling of lack of time.
Age patients, on the contrary, make detailed plans, fearing something not to be in time. Phobias suffer from the following psychotic symptoms:
- constant internal stress;
- nervousness;
- discomfort;
- insomnia;
- feeling of irretrievable loss of time;
- feeling of unreality of the events;
- bouts of depersonalization.
The behavioral symptom of pathology is the refusal to wear a watch.
The look of the dial with hands can lead to despair. The excessive mention of time often provokes a panic attack. Harmless watches become the object of fear.
How to treat?
At the first signs of a phobia, it is necessary to contact an experienced specialist, who most often prescribes a complex treatment to the patient. First, it turns out the root cause of the appearance of horror before the inexorably rushing time. Then, special situations are modeled to help get rid of the fear of transience of life.
The psychotherapist prescribes those in dire need of pharmacological treatment. tranquilizers, antidepressants, antipsychotics. Drugs must be applied strictly by appointment of a specialist and under his direct supervision. Short courses of taking medications improve general well-being, but they do not completely eliminate phobias.
There are many effective psychotherapeutic techniques. Experts recommend to divide the execution of the task into several time periods and act in stages.
This phobia manifests itself in every person in its own way, therefore There is no universal method. The psychotherapist selects an individual approach to each person. Cognitive behavioral therapy is used to teach the patient how to control his thoughts and emotions. Parallel formed critical attitude to the object of fear.
The specialist can advise hypnotic sessions. A hypnotist gives a person to a person in a state of trance to be set on the correct perception of the stimulus. Negative thoughts are gradually being squeezed out of consciousness. Man set up in a positive way. Hypnologist directs the psyche chronophobe in the right direction. After completing the full course, the negative symptoms of the disease disappear.
Neuro-linguistic programming is also successfully used in the treatment of exaggerated anxiety due to fast-running time.
Biased ideas about the future are transformed into positive thoughts.
A person is able to help himself with regular auto-training, which reduces stress. The fictitious neurotic fear of wasting time brings to exhaustion, but in reality does not carry any danger. Autotraining contributes to changing the wrong installation.
Not bad distract from the disturbing thoughts of affirmations, relaxation, yoga. An active lifestyle helps to increase endorphins and hormones of happiness, joy. The nervous system of hawthorn tincture, valerian, peony and herbal tea based on peppermint, oregano and lemon balm are well calmed The beneficial effect on the patient has the presence of pets.
Self-medication is effective in the initial stage of the disease.
About the top 5 phobias, see below.
