How is somniphobia treated in psychological therapy?

Somniphobia is a disorder linked to the fear of sleeping that can be treated through therapy.

If anything characterizes phobias, it is their variety. Practically any phenomenon that we can convert into concepts is capable of giving rise to a phobia, given the right circumstances: no matter how irrational it is to link that feeling of fear and anguish to a specific stimulus, situation or thought.

Somniphobia, or sleep phobia, is a case in point. Most people understand that sleep is part of normal, everyday life; however, there are those who experience the need to sleep as if it were a nightmare.

In this article we will see how somniphobia is treated in psychological therapy.and how the process of improvement of patients who experience this anxiety disorder is developed.

What is somniphobia?

As we have anticipated, somniphobia is the pathological fear of sleeping. Specifically, it is a specific phobia in which the idea or sensation of going to sleep generates moments of very intense stress, which can even resemble panic attacks.

This means that this type of phobia is not so much characterized by what happens during sleep as by what happens when you anticipate falling asleep.. Those who suffer from somniphobia feel a very intense discomfort in the last hours of the day, when they feel that the time is approaching when they will begin to feel sleepy and when everyone is asleep. In extreme cases, the discomfort may appear just thinking about the possibility of sleeping.

On the other hand, somniphobia can also go hand in hand with similar disturbances, such as the fear of being hypnotized, since it is very easy to relate both states of consciousness and consider them similar.

Symptoms

The typical symptoms of somniphobia are those typical of all specific phobias in general. in general; in this case, the only thing that changes is the type of stimuli and situations that favor their appearance. Some of the most frequent are the following:

• Tremors.
• Acceleration of Blood pressure.
• Catastrophic thoughts about what is going to happen.
• Increased sensitivity to any stimulus.
• Increased heart rate.
• Nausea.
• Accelerated breathing.
• Dizziness.
• Need to "escape" from the situation.

To these typical symptoms, in this case we can add another specific symptom of somniphobia: sleepiness and fatigue due to problems caused by little or no sleep.

Causes

As with all psychological disorders, there is no single cause of somniphobia, there is no single cause of somniphobia, but many causes.. There is a component of genetic predisposition to develop anxiety problems, although this alone is not determinative: no one will experience this phobia just because they have certain gene variants.

In specific phobias, the most important causes seem to be those arising from past experiences, from learning understood in a broad sense.

Thus, situations that have been perceived as problematic, even if at the time they did not cause much discomfort or special anguish, with the passage of time can become engrained in our emotional memory, favoring the appearance of phobias.

On the other hand, the causes that the patient identifies as the reason for his or her fear of sleeping can also vary from one person to another.. In some cases it is the fear that something bad will happen while sleeping, and therefore it would be a fear of lack of control over oneself and the environment. In other cases, what generates discomfort is the idea of losing consciousness, something that can be associated with death or coma.

In any case, patients with somniphobia (and with all other phobias in general) usually recognize that their fears are irrational, and that the problem is not so much in the thoughts of the phobias themselves, but rather in the thoughts of the phobias themselves. the problem is not so much in the thoughts and ideas through which this fear is expressed, as in the emotional states that escape the rules of logic.

How is somniphobia treated in therapy?

When those suffering from somniphobia go to a psychologist for professional care, the techniques and strategies used in therapy vary according to the characteristics and needs of each patient. However, there are several therapeutic resources that are used more frequently than others; at Psicomaster we use the most effective ones to treat this and many other phobias, both in adults and in young people, and we know from experience that psychological intervention is very effective for this type of disorder.

One of these resources is systematic exposurein which the psychologist poses a situation linked to the phobic stimulus and creates a context in which the patient can face this source of anxiety in a safe environment where everything is controlled. For this purpose, sometimes we work with imaginative exercises, sometimes we look for more realistic contexts, and we have even started to develop forms of therapy against phobias using Virtual Reality systems.

In addition, the professional constantly adjusts the level of difficulty of these challenges so that the patient can progress to a point where the symptoms have been reduced so much that they are hardly a problem.

Another way in which somniphobia is combated in psychotherapy is by using relaxation exercise training. using relaxation exercise trainingThese exercises help not to let anxiety lead the patient to lose control over his or her actions. Normally these exercises are based on breathing and awareness of how moments of relaxation are experienced, so as not to focus attention on what causes discomfort. The objective is to associate the situations of discomfort due to somniphobia with the moments in which the anxiety is reduced thanks to relaxation techniques.

Cognitive restructuring is another therapeutic technique that is particularly useful in cases where irrational ideas feed the intensity of the phobia. For example, if someone tends to believe that there is a risk of the heart stopping during sleep, or if they fear sleep paralysis, in therapy, situations can be created in which the patient questions these ideas, stopping to think about the extent to which he or she is afraid of sleep paralysis.stopping to think about the extent to which they conform to reality and are a risk that justifies this state of constant alertness.

The creation of routines and self-instructions negotiated between the patient and the psychotherapist also helps a lot. The simple fact of organizing one's time better also helps to mitigate the power that somniphobia has on oneself. This avoids situations in which the patient constantly postpones going to bed (which generates tension and anticipation of danger that reinforces the fear of going to sleep).

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychiatric Association (2013), Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Arlington: American Psychiatric Publishing.
• Edmund J. B. (2005). The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook, 4th ed. New Harbinger Publications.