Phasmophobia is the fear of ghosts. The word comes from the Greek phasmos, meaning “supernatural being, phantom,” and phobo, meaning “deep fear.” Many people, both young and old, are afraid of ghosts. This awe is deeply ingrained in us from childhood, fueled by television shows as well as religion and culture.
Another word for it is Spectrophobia, which comes from "ghost" or "reflection". For people who have an extreme fear of ghosts, life can become completely miserable. Many refuse to go outside after dark or to sleep alone or turn off the lights.
Halloween is a particularly scary time of year.
Causes
Anticipatory anxiety, fear of the dead or the unknown (or things that go "foot") are mainly responsible for triggering Spectrophobia. It is fueled by movies, scary folk tales, religious and superstitious beliefs, and news or reports of alleged "ghost sightings."
Amygdala, the lobe of the brain that secretes a chemical that causes fear. For gray matter, this is simply part of its defense mechanism. For example, a child may have been devastated by siblings or friends, causing them to tend to remember those terrible events whenever they are left alone or in the dark.
Television shows, Hollywood movies, culture or religions are also cool in our fear of ghosts. Phantoms are portrayed as evil beings that cause damage, harm, or have violent tendencies. Stories of ghosts carrying off and killing children or pets, stealing life's savings, or destroying households also trigger Spectrophobia.
Many scientists believe that phasmophobia is actually a fear of our own death or future events. The concept of "returning dead people" haunting a household is sometimes caused by stress that comes from the belief that someone close is about to die.
Causes and symptoms
Experts cannot name the only reason that causes phobias, but, as a rule, this is an echo of negative childhood experiences. However, an adult can also find himself in a situation that leaves a significant imprint on the psyche. Often people simply forget that bad things happened to them before, but for some adults they emerge in the subconscious - the connection between the incident and the emotions experienced is deposited in it.
There is an opinion that obsessive fear can be inherited and “triggered” after stress. A heightened instinct of self-preservation also contributes to the emergence of phobias.
As for the signs of this mental disorder, they are as follows:
1. The desire to avoid the situation causing the phobia by any means.
2. Feeling of a lump in the throat, inability to breathe.
3. The whole body is shaking.
4. Rapid heartbeat - the heart literally “breaks out” of the chest.
5. The appearance of sticky cold sweat.
6. Weakness in the body, it stops listening, immobilization.
7. Terrible fear.
8. The stomach hurts, there may be loose stools, vomiting.
Phobia: symptoms, main forms of the disease
The clinical manifestations of the disease primarily depend on its type.
There are several types of phobias:
- Simple. The patient develops an uncontrollable and clearly inadequate fear at the sight of a certain object, animal (insect), or before any situation (flying, going up to a height, changing weather, etc.). Due to a strong feeling of anxiety, a person diligently avoids such “irritants.” Some live in almost constant stress, often limiting themselves (for example, in travel, tourism, entertainment), without turning to a specialist.
- Social phobias. A person is afraid of situations when other people are watching him because of fear of discussions behind his back, criticism, ridicule. He tries to avoid public places (restaurants, cinemas, entertainment venues), avoids various meetings, conferences, lectures. This has an extremely negative impact on the patient’s quality of life, since fear often pushes them to use alcohol and drugs.
- Agoraphobia. A patient suffering from this form of disorder experiences extreme anxiety when he finds himself outside the home, among crowds, in places that he cannot quickly and independently leave. Agoraphobia is much more often accompanied by anxiety and depressive disorders, and depersonalization.
- Hypochondriacal phobias are fear of an existing concomitant pathology or fear of possible diseases. As a rule, they are afraid of oncology, infections (tuberculosis, tick-borne encephalitis, viral diseases, etc.). The patient constantly undergoes tests, undergoes examinations, turns to various specialists, but even a negative result relieves him of fear only for a short time. The patient listens to himself so much that the possibility of psychosomatic hypertension and autonomic dysfunction cannot be ruled out. And a banal slight deterioration in well-being, which many simply do not notice, can cause a panic attack.
Typical signs
The most common manifestation of a severe illness is a panic attack, for which the following symptoms are typical:
- heartbeat;
- tightness, feeling of heaviness in the chest;
- feeling of suffocation and lack of air;
- sweating;
- dizziness;
- a distinct fear of death or impending serious illness (heart attack or stroke, insanity, loss of consciousness, etc.);
- numbness in the body;
- convulsions (not common).
Clinical manifestations increase quickly; in general, an attack usually lasts about 30 minutes, less often - several hours.
According to the mechanism of manifestation, panic attacks are divided into:
- spontaneous, developing unpredictably;
- attributive, arising under the influence of certain circumstances or situations.
Without appropriate treatment, episodes of panic attacks and fear can develop into a chronic disorder. At the same time, in the intervals between attacks, an anxious and restless mood remains - the patient all the time subconsciously expects and experiences fear of certain objects.
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Fears of losing control
Ablutophobia – fear of swimming
Abultophobia – fear of any water procedures
Agoraphobia – fear of being in large areas, open spaces
Aichmophobia – fear of piercing objects, most often pins
Aquaphobia – fear of water and other types of liquids
Acribophobia - panic experienced at the thought that you will not be able to understand the meaning of what you read
Acrophobia – fear of heights
Acrophobia – fear of heights
Alexiaphobia – fear of losing speech, forgetting how to read
Allodoxaphobia – fear of expressing one’s own opinion
Amaxophobia – fear of driving a car or other machines
Amnesiphobia – fear of forgetting something or losing memory
Anarthria - fear of stopping speaking clearly
Angrophobia - fear of one's own anger or the anger of others
Anirophobia – fear of crossing the street
Atazagoraphobia – fear of being forgotten
Atychiphobia – fear that something will not work out
Aeroacrophobia - fear that occurs in high places, clearly visible from all sides
Bathophobia – fear of being in a high-rise building
Battophobia – panic that occurs near a deep body of water
Vertigophobia – fear of feeling dizzy
Hamartophobia is the fear that arises from the thought of doing something wrong.
Gephyrophobia – fear of seeing bridges
Hoplophobia – fear of the sight of firearms
Dementophobia – fear of the sight of madness
Dyspsychophobia – fear of going crazy
Illingophobia – fear of dizziness when looking down from a height
Kenophobia – fear of places that are too open
Medomalacuphobia – fear of losing an erection
Oikophobia – fear of going crazy
Suicidophobia – fear of suicide
Hoplophobia – fear of knives
Social phobias
Agoraphobia – fear of being in large areas, open spaces
Anarthria - fear that you will stop speaking clearly
Venustraphobia - a feeling of shock that appears in front of beautiful females
Gymnophobia – fear of nudity
Glossophobia – fear of speaking in public
Glossophobia – fear of speaking in public
Homilophobia – fear of being the center of attention of others
Dysmorphophobia - panic when thinking about your appearance
Catagelophobia – fear of being ridiculed
Coinophobia is a fear that appears in a building where many people are located at once.
Lalophobia – fear of speaking due to the possibility of stuttering
Lyssophobia – fear of mental illness
Medomalacuphobia – fear of losing an erection
Paruresis – increased suspicion of urinating in public
Peiraphobia – fear of public speaking
Pettophobia – fear of releasing intestinal gases in the presence of strangers
Enissophobia – fear of hearing criticism
Infographics: fears and phobias
A phobia is a disorder that causes people to experience intense fear - causing them to avoid seemingly safe situations or objects. There are a great many phobias; doctors have been able to describe about half a thousand, and doctors are confident that there are many more. New phobias are being discovered all the time—scientists literally don’t have time to come up with names for them.
How afraid are we?
Regardless of what the phobia is called and what exactly provokes its occurrence, the symptoms of phobias are quite similar. When exposed to a situation or environment that causes a phobia, a person develops a state of panic. In the future, anticipating a repetition of a similar situation, he automatically experiences fear.
What happens to a person when he experiences a phobia? Disorientation appears: a person feels the unreality of his condition or everything that surrounds him. Physical sensations are also common - dizziness, loss of balance, palpitations, temporary disturbances in vision, hearing, swallowing and breathing, all this can be accompanied by nausea, vomiting, problems with urination and defecation, numbness, trembling, severe pain.
What are we afraid of?
Some phobias are common and occur very often. Others are rare - there are literally a few people in the world who suffer from them.
The most popular in Russia are two essentially opposite phobias: claustrophobia - fear of enclosed spaces and agoraphobia - fear of open spaces. In addition, Russians are often afraid of heights, spiders, the dark, rain, flying on airplanes, death and loneliness.
Some phobias (for example, the fear of snakes or spiders) have been known for a long time, while others appeared not so long ago and are caused by the development of technology. For example, more and more often doctors began to identify nomophobia - the fear of being left without means of communication or out of network access. Nomophobes experience panic in public places where the use of communication devices is prohibited, if their phone is low or while a train is traveling in a tunnel.
Ignorophobes are afraid that the message they send will be read, but will not receive a response - that is, it will simply be ignored. People suffering from this phobia begin to think that they did something wrong, regret sending messages, and feel unsure of themselves and their actions.
Treatment of fears and phobias
There is no universal method for getting rid of fears and phobias. Treatment tactics are selected individually, taking into account the severity of symptoms and the frequency of episodes of panic excesses. Not least important is how much the disease affects everyday life. Since even the most modern medications can cause adverse reactions, the specialists of the Cordia clinic, for uncomplicated fears and phobias, prefer psychotherapy. Behavioral methods of psychological influence are widely practiced, in which a situation that is alarming for the patient is artificially simulated (a similar method is called the exposure technique) and taught to cope with panic attacks. This approach to treatment gives good results, including correction of behavior to avoid provoking circumstances. At the same time, our clinic offers a phobia psychologist visiting the patient’s home.
Principles of drug treatment
Medicines are prescribed for severe cases of the disease, which are characterized by regularly recurring panic attacks.
Prescribed:
- antidepressants (a strict indication for their use is the presence of a depressive component in the phobia picture);
- anxiolytics;
- MAO inhibitors.
With the right medication, panic episodes stop within 2–4 weeks. But improving your health is not a reason to stop treatment. The prescribed medications should be taken for another 6–12 months. During this period, the doctor monitors the patient’s condition and, depending on the dynamics of changes, determines how to treat the phobic disorder further. In the vast majority of cases, it is possible to achieve a positive result and stable remission.
Many people simply don’t know if symptoms of a phobia appear, what to do? We will help you cope with the disease! Call us on +7 . Our consultant will answer all your questions, make an appointment or arrange for a psychologist to be called to your home in Moscow and the region.
