minxy
10-18-2007, 03:57 PM
Are You Afraid of Halloween?
A young woman's eyes roll up as she twirls mindlessly in a dark, dilapidated house. In a gloomy forest, trees branches loom like skeletal arms over a young man, who picks up a horrifyingly unidentifiable bone-like object. Ghostly children stare as they hold hands near a deserted cornfield.
And that's just the preview.
Each Halloween, millions of people pay to have their wits scared out of them by seeing scary movies. Halloween itself is a celebration of the scary: We disguise ourselves in morbid celebration of the ghouls who scare us most. We decorate our parties with cobwebs and paper tombstones. On our front lawns, skeletons and ghosts greet passersby.
Most people face these fears with excitement and a sense of humor. For some people, though, fear is not exciting. It is neither an experience to seek, nor an emotion to induce on purpose.
It instead fills them with a real sense of dread, known as samhainophobia, or a fear of Halloween.
While probably not all that common, samhainophobia increases each fall, and may remind people of other fears: cats (ailurophobia), witches (wiccaphobia), ghosts (phasmophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), the dark (nyctophobia) and cemeteries (coimetrophobia).
Specific Phobias
So, if you feel a chill when you walk by a cemetery at night, do you have coimetrophobia? A little bit of fear is not a phobia. But a person who feels an overwhelming, irrational fear of a certain object or situation may have a condition known as a specific phobia.
Specific phobias go beyond fear and even extreme fear by also being irrational. People with specific phobias often know that their fears are irrational, but this logic does not prevent them from experiencing high levels of anxiety and even panic attacks when facing, or thinking about facing, their phobias. According to the United States Surgeon General, about 8 percent of American adults have specific phobias of some kind. Specific phobias usually begin during childhood, but many people with specific phobias experienced the onset in their 20s.
Specific Phobias vs. Other Anxiety Disorders
Other anxiety disorders may have similarities with specific phobias, and it's important to understand the difference, particularly when treating the disorder. If a person experiences something traumatic on Halloween and later has symptoms of anxiety every Halloween, for example, he or she may have post-traumatic stress disorder. The anxiety in this case is related to the traumatic event and not an irrational fear of Halloween itself.
If a person doesn't want to take his or her child out trick-or-treating on Halloween for fear of having a panic attack while walking around and not being able to find help or get to a safe place, then the person may have panic disorder. The anxiety is about having a panic attack in a certain situation, not a fear of trick-or-treating itself.
Treating Specific Phobias
Not all people with specific phobias need treatment. If one is indeed afraid of cemeteries, the fear may be avoided for many years. Some phobias, however, may affect people's lives in serious ways, such as when aviophobia (fear of flying) interferes with a person's ability to go on business trips. Treatment may be helpful in these cases.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the preferred method of treatment for specific phobias. Desensitization or exposure therapy also is used, supplemented with relaxation and breathing techniques. Desensitization is the gradual exposure to a feared object or situation. The majority of people who use CBT for specific phobias see results. The exposure therapy may be practiced on one's own (Edmund J. Bourne's The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook breaks down the process into clear steps), but finding a professional trained in CBT may make the process easier to understand as well as work more quickly. Medications also are used sometimes to treat specific phobias.
After seeing this year's scariest movie and losing sleep for a night or two, you probably won't need professional help. But if you're one of the many people suffering from a true phobia, then you may want to look into help for your problem. There's an excellent chance that you can get past your fears.
thanks,
minxy.
A young woman's eyes roll up as she twirls mindlessly in a dark, dilapidated house. In a gloomy forest, trees branches loom like skeletal arms over a young man, who picks up a horrifyingly unidentifiable bone-like object. Ghostly children stare as they hold hands near a deserted cornfield.
And that's just the preview.
Each Halloween, millions of people pay to have their wits scared out of them by seeing scary movies. Halloween itself is a celebration of the scary: We disguise ourselves in morbid celebration of the ghouls who scare us most. We decorate our parties with cobwebs and paper tombstones. On our front lawns, skeletons and ghosts greet passersby.
Most people face these fears with excitement and a sense of humor. For some people, though, fear is not exciting. It is neither an experience to seek, nor an emotion to induce on purpose.
It instead fills them with a real sense of dread, known as samhainophobia, or a fear of Halloween.
While probably not all that common, samhainophobia increases each fall, and may remind people of other fears: cats (ailurophobia), witches (wiccaphobia), ghosts (phasmophobia), spiders (arachnophobia), the dark (nyctophobia) and cemeteries (coimetrophobia).
Specific Phobias
So, if you feel a chill when you walk by a cemetery at night, do you have coimetrophobia? A little bit of fear is not a phobia. But a person who feels an overwhelming, irrational fear of a certain object or situation may have a condition known as a specific phobia.
Specific phobias go beyond fear and even extreme fear by also being irrational. People with specific phobias often know that their fears are irrational, but this logic does not prevent them from experiencing high levels of anxiety and even panic attacks when facing, or thinking about facing, their phobias. According to the United States Surgeon General, about 8 percent of American adults have specific phobias of some kind. Specific phobias usually begin during childhood, but many people with specific phobias experienced the onset in their 20s.
Specific Phobias vs. Other Anxiety Disorders
Other anxiety disorders may have similarities with specific phobias, and it's important to understand the difference, particularly when treating the disorder. If a person experiences something traumatic on Halloween and later has symptoms of anxiety every Halloween, for example, he or she may have post-traumatic stress disorder. The anxiety in this case is related to the traumatic event and not an irrational fear of Halloween itself.
If a person doesn't want to take his or her child out trick-or-treating on Halloween for fear of having a panic attack while walking around and not being able to find help or get to a safe place, then the person may have panic disorder. The anxiety is about having a panic attack in a certain situation, not a fear of trick-or-treating itself.
Treating Specific Phobias
Not all people with specific phobias need treatment. If one is indeed afraid of cemeteries, the fear may be avoided for many years. Some phobias, however, may affect people's lives in serious ways, such as when aviophobia (fear of flying) interferes with a person's ability to go on business trips. Treatment may be helpful in these cases.
Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is the preferred method of treatment for specific phobias. Desensitization or exposure therapy also is used, supplemented with relaxation and breathing techniques. Desensitization is the gradual exposure to a feared object or situation. The majority of people who use CBT for specific phobias see results. The exposure therapy may be practiced on one's own (Edmund J. Bourne's The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook breaks down the process into clear steps), but finding a professional trained in CBT may make the process easier to understand as well as work more quickly. Medications also are used sometimes to treat specific phobias.
After seeing this year's scariest movie and losing sleep for a night or two, you probably won't need professional help. But if you're one of the many people suffering from a true phobia, then you may want to look into help for your problem. There's an excellent chance that you can get past your fears.
thanks,
minxy.