About Phobias And Their Hidden Meanings

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Phobos, the god of fear is the son of the god of war Ares and the beautiful Aphrodite. The Greeks composed myths about the invincible Ares and his sons, and psychologists "perpetuated" the memory of Phobos, calling him a violation of mental functioning and balance.

Phobia - This is a strong anxiety or fear of a certain situation, place or phenomenon. By themselves, these factors may not pose any danger, but they have a special subjective meaning for a person suffering from a phobia, therefore, for him they personify a threat. For example, the fear of spiders (arachnophobia): by themselves, the spiders that live in our climate are quite harmless, and it is not at all necessary to go to the tropics and pick up poisonous representatives of arachnids. Nevertheless, a person suffering from arachnophobia experiences a panic fear not only of the spiders themselves, but also of his image or at the sight of something resembling a spider.

There are many types of phobias. Fear can be associated with a fear of certain animals (zoophobia), with space (fear of open space - agoraphobia, fear of closed - claustrophobia), height (acrophobia). At the same time, the intensity of the feeling of fear is so great that it can be accompanied by somatic sensations: heart palpitations, sweating, shortness of breath, disruption of the gastrointestinal tract, and others. At the same time, in contrast to ordinary fear, there is a reaction of avoidance - a person suffering from a phobia tries to prevent any (sometimes even mental) contact with the object of his suffering. At the same time, he may be aware of the absurdity and groundlessness of his obsessive fears, but he cannot do anything about it, avoidance is outside the sphere of his control.

The specificity of the object that causes fear in phobias is usually associated with the theme of early childhood conflict, which, due to its young age and immaturity of the psyche, could not be realized, which means that it could not be experienced and processed. The memory of everything that causes strong emotions in us is stored partially in our consciousness in the form of memories, or, for the most part, in the unconscious - in the form of emotional traces (while the event that caused these emotions can be displaced from consciousness, that is forgotten, but it is important to take into account that none of the perceptions and experiences disappears in the psyche "forever" and "without a trace"). These emotions can be pleasant (but, for example, forbidden), but more often - just the opposite, because they are "forgotten".

Thus, the repressed early childhood conflict is stored in the depths of the unconscious, but associative reminders of it in reality always remain and cause pointless "free floating" anxiety - it warns the psyche that unpleasant experiences can suddenly be remembered out of place. The conscious organization of the psyche "loves" order and is looking for a way to "define" and legalize these incomprehensible anxious emotions, therefore, when a suitable object appears, which somewhat resembles the theme of the conflict that caused anxiety, but is not guaranteed to be, a connection is formed between the anxiety and the object. - this is how a phobia appears. That is, one of the main mechanisms in the formation of a phobia is displacement (mainly symbolic-associative). The individuality and uniqueness of each case of the occurrence of an associative connection that caused a phobia dictates the need to allocate enough time and patience to identify and overcome it.

Lida (43 years old) for 7 years after the death of her mother does not leave the house unaccompanied by someone from her family, she suffers from agoraphobia (avoiding open space and a large crowd of people; agora in ancient Greece was the name of the central square, where all important public meetings were held and market trading proceeded). Her son, daughter and husband take turns accompanying Lida during such outings, which are extremely rare and only in case of urgent need. When her daughter announced her upcoming marriage, the woman's condition deteriorated sharply, and she asked for help. At first, Lydia thought that the increased fear was related to anxiety about her daughter's health. The woman stopped sleeping at night, she began to have nightmares that her daughter could lose consciousness on the street or be hit by a car.

Through painstaking work, Lydia was able to discover the root cause of her fears. She remained the only child of her parents. The elder sister died when Lida was still very young and her mother turned all her tenderness and care to her. Mom needed her daughter so much at any age, they lived each other's life so much that even in adulthood, the woman yearned for the time when her mother was always there (mother lived with her daughter all her life and until her death and was, practically, the head families). The news of the upcoming wedding and the expectation that her daughter would now live separately from her, an independent life, revived Lida's forgotten feelings about the problems of her own separation (separation) from her mother and intensified her fears.

The child feels loved and protected "under the wing" of loving parents. The time comes and as he grows up, the child should have new desires and pleasures associated with his own hobbies, friends, loves. This is the stage of growing up and acquiring your own experience, separate from your parents. The right to these desires and pleasures is given by the energy of a healthy impulse of separation and individuation (based on healthy aggression associated with one's own growth and defending one's boundaries). Subsequently, a person who has ecologically passed this period has the opportunity to make his own decisions, be responsible for them, speak directly and moderately about his desires and unwillingness, refuse without fear of offending and the need to clothe his refusal in a rude form. Sometimes it happens that in the psyche, separation (separation) is associated with the loss of love, that is, if a child begins to feel and think “not like” like mom or dad, then it seems to him that they will stop loving him for it, and this is very scary. This is often accompanied by a sense of guilt if parents prevent their child from separating from adults by demonstrating to him in every possible way “what he brought them to” and how much damage he inflicted by his desire for a separate life from them. Then the psyche tries with all its might to prevent this separation. The phobia helps to hide and "legalize" the unconscious threat of secession, as in the case of Lydia. It was easier for her to be afraid to leave the house, and then worry about her daughter's health, than to experience panic horror at the recollection of her own forced) separation from her mother (Lida could not really survive her death). In addition, her illness was guaranteed to "tie" family members to her and helped to receive increased attention from her daughter.

Many phobias are also often associated with separation problems, where the main frightening fantasy is the fear of losing your boundaries, turning into nothing, dissolving, being absorbed (fear of heights, confined spaces, various mechanisms, such as escalators and elevators) - that is, in fact, to return to an infant state, where there was complete merging with the parental figure and the conscious boundaries of my body and I (very valuable for any human being, were practically absent).

There are a few more examples of phobias that are based on the inability to show independence and experience feelings of the aggressive spectrum:

- Shyness, fear to blush (erythrophobia). A person confidently foresees criticism in his address and is afraid of it in advance. The psychological prerequisites here are fear of one's own aggressive reaction and feelings of shame in connection with the perceived criticism, combined with a desire for approval.

- Avoidance of decision making (decidophobia). A person carefully checks everything and constantly finds reasons to postpone the implementation of his plan. This phobia does not allow any global action to be carried out (it usually does not affect small decisions). The right to make a decision is always, in the end, given to others out of an unconscious fear of being aggressive / disobedient and because of the need for external approval.

The origins of many phobias often originate between the ages of 1 and 3 (the anal developmental stage, according to Freud). This is the period when the child learns to cleanliness, learns to control his excretory impulses, in other words, learns to potty. Fears of dirt, germs, pollution are usually associated with this period. This is also a period in which, along with self-control, the beginnings of independence arise and active psychological separation from parents continues (primary separation is just achieved, on average, by the age of 3 years, which is expressed in the child's readiness to go to kindergarten and spend most of the day without parents).

Valentina (54 years old). All her life she had the fame of a good housewife. The house was always shiny and Valentina enjoyed cleaning. But in the last 4 years, her efforts began to reach absurd proportions to cause wariness not only among others, but also among Valentina herself. She began to wash her hands five times every half hour, going out into the street, even on the hottest day, put on gloves and did not touch anything.

This obsessive fear of getting dirty is called misophobia. Neurosis forced Valentina to wash her hands not only with soap, but also to rub her skin with a special brush, and even peeled skin and the appearance of redness could not stop a woman in this compulsive desire. In the process of work, it turned out that Valentina "allowed herself for some century", as she put it, sexual intercourse with a man who had courted her for a long time and even called her in marriage, however, despite the pleasure of this connection, Valentina's psyche remembered the instructions in a Puritan manner educated mothers and grandmothers that “sex is always a dirty and shameful action”, therefore the fear of staining oneself and “getting dirty” grew from time to time, expressed in such a usual phobia, i.e. somewhat displaced, kind.

People with phobic neurosis often use rituals that "cancel" and "protect" from threat, unwanted emotion, or fear of punishment. They may be related to the topic of a phobia (as in the case of Valentina, the need to wash hands a certain number of times), or they may not have a visible connection (the need to read the name of the product in reverse before eating it). As well as the content of phobias, they can make sense only from the point of view of the person himself, or this meaning can be completely symbolic, and until therapy remain incomprehensible to the person himself. Obviously, walking backwards to bed may not be generally accepted as promoting good sleep, but for someone with a sleep phobia, this ritual may be a prerequisite for being able to fall asleep.

More than 100 years ago, Sigmund Freud, describing the clinical picture of neuroses, noted a lack of energy as one of the symptoms of neuroses in general and phobias in particular. The state of fatigue and tension at the same time arises due to prolonged containment (all energy flows to suppression) of their unconscious, primarily aggressive, desires due to the growth and development of the personality. In addition, people with phobias find it difficult to find partners for relationships or engage in creative activities, since they have to spend a lot of energy on controlling and holding unconscious emotions and compulsively searching for ways to cope with anxiety.

Phobias can act as a separate neurosis or accompany more severe mental illnesses (schizophrenia, severe personality disorders, addictions, psychosomatic symptoms). Then the psychotherapist works in tandem with a psychiatrist

The main psychotherapeutic approach to getting rid of phobias is the ability to find a way to unmask the very cause of the phobia, that is, to find a deep connection between the unconscious experience and the symptom caused by it. To do this, it is necessary to analyze the eventual and emotional context of the occurrence of a phobia, as well as to increase the client's sensitivity to his experiences and needs and the ability to distinguish emotions, to realize the psychological conflict that usually underlies the occurrence of one or another type of phobia. All this helps to create resources for dealing with election and obsessive fear, which in the process of working through unconscious conflicts loses its relevance.