How is somniphobia treated in psychological therapy?

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

Somniphobia, or phobia of the act of sleeping, is an example of this. Most people understand that sleep is part of the normal, of the day to day; 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 improvement process of patients experiencing this anxiety disorder develops.

• Related article: "Types of Phobias: Exploring Fear Disorders"

What is somniphobia?

As we have anticipated, somniphobia is the pathological fear of sleep. 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 it is characterized not so much by what happens while sleeping as by what happens when you anticipate that you are going to fall asleep. Those who suffer from somniphobia feel a very intense discomfort in the last hours of the day, when they feel that the moment in which they will begin to feel sleepy and in which everyone sleeps is approaching. In extreme cases, the discomfort can appear just thinking about the possibility of sleep.

On the other hand, somniphobia can also go hand in hand with similar disorders, such as 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 of all specific phobias 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 to somniphobia: sleep and fatigue due to problems with little or no sleep.

Causes

As with all psychological disorders, there is no single cause of somniphobia, but many. There is a component of genetic predisposition to develop anxiety problems, although this by itself 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 that arise 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 they can become entrenched in our emotional memory, favoring the appearance of phobias.

On the other hand, the causes that the patient identifies as the reason for his fear of the act of sleeping may also vary. 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 causes discomfort is the idea of ​​losing consciousness, something that can be associated with death or a coma.

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

• You may be interested in: "The 7 main sleep disorders"

How is somniphobia treated in therapy?

When those who suffer from somniphobia go to the psychologist to receive professional attention, the techniques and The strategies used in therapy vary depending on the characteristics and needs of each patient. However, there are several therapeutic resources that are used more frequently than others; in psychomaster we use the most effective ones to treat this and many other phobias, both in adults and in the most young people, and we know from experience that psychological intervention is very effective in this kind of disorders.

One of these resources is the systematic exposure, in 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 and where everything is controlled. To do this, sometimes we work by proposing imagination exercises, sometimes we look for more real, and even forms of therapy against phobias using Reality systems have begun to be developed Virtual.

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 reduced so much that they are hardly a problem.

Another way in which somniphobia is combated in psychotherapy is using training in relaxation exercises, which help not to let anxiety lead the patient to lose control over her actions. Normally these exercises are based on breathing and becoming aware 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 to the moments in which anxiety is reduced thanks to relaxation techniques.

Cognitive restructuring is another therapeutic technique that is especially useful in cases in which there are irrational ideas that 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 they adjust to reality and are a risk that justifies this constant state of alert.

The creation of routines and self-instructions negotiated between the patient and the psychotherapist also helps a lot. The simple fact of organizing your time better also helps to mitigate the power that somniphobia has on oneself. In this way, situations are avoided in which the patient constantly postpones the moment of going to bed (creating tension and anticipation of danger that reinforces the fear of 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.