Are You Somniphobic? Let’s Start Your Treatment
How would you feel if you couldn't sleep at night? Fear and anxiety are evoked in some people by the very thing that is calming to most people. Somniphobia is the medical term for this fear referred to as fear of falling and remaining asleep. As a result, many people have this dread at some point in their life and need to visit a sleep clinic.
What Is a Phobia?
A phobia is a persistent, exaggerated, and irrational dread of a specific thing, person, animal, or activity. It is a mental health condition that needs to be treated and extracted from root. Avoiding the object or situation that elicits the fear is one way to deal with a phobia. Persistence, excessiveness, and irrationality all feature prominently in this assertion.
Phobias are common in our culture. Approximately 12.5% of American people suffer from a specific phobia at some point in their lives, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. Anything can trigger a phobia. There include phobias regarding snakes, bugs, heights, health-related anxieties, large crowds of people, and confined spaces.
Somniphobia - The Fear of Sleeping
Anxiety about falling and keeping asleep at night is known as somnophobia .This anxiety keeps coming back, and it's out of control. In addition, it's implausible. Someone who has night terrors could be reluctant to go to sleep because they don't want to have a nightmare. However, there is no identified cause in most of the times. If you are one of the sufferers, you should get help from sleep specialists and psychologists in order to discover the main cause of your fear.
Somniphobic Symptoms
Somniphobics have a strong fear of going to sleep, and they avoid it at all costs. They may resist going to bed at a reasonable time and instead stay up until the wee hours of the morning. Pre-bedtime anxiety and panic episodes may also be a problem for them. It's not uncommon for this person to talk about their anxieties frequently. People with phobias, on the other hand, typically go to great lengths to conceal their feelings. Because of embarrassment or shame, this may happen. There may also be physical manifestations of the fear. Somniphobics may feel symptoms such as nausea, perspiration and chills as a result of their fear of sleep. Children may scream and cling to their parents to avoid going to sleep.
Causes
It's unclear what causes somniphobia. It all depends on who you ask. The following conditions and phobias can contribute to somniphobia:
PTSD
REM sleep twitching
Anxiety condition brought on by nightmares
In addition, there are other irrational phobias, such as fear of fire or dying while sleeping.
In other cases, there appears to be no known cause for the phobia.
Options for Treatment
Getting an appointment with a sleep expert and psychologist at a sleep clinic is the first step. In order to successfully treat an anxiety disorder, it's best to use a multidisciplinary approach. If the phobia is a result of a sleep condition, a sleep specialist can help. Nightmares and sleep paralysis are examples of these.
Sleep studies at OKOA help us better understand what is going on at night and how to deal with the anxiety that comes with it. Those with somniphobia may benefit greatly from three types of treatment: better sleep hygiene, anti-anxiety medication, and therapy.
Irrational and persistent anxiety of falling asleep should prompt you or a loved one to seek professional help. OKOA has treated many people with sleep phobias, and we can help you too. Contact us today to learn more about somniphobia and to make an appointment.
**Disclaimer: The information on this page is not intended to be a doctor's advice, nor does it create any form of the patient-doctor relationship.