Handbook of Anxiety and Phobia

Once upon a time, a policeman's little brother was afraid of injections, so after a voluntary blood donation, he became an expression pack:

The netizens who have been sprouted have said that they didn't expect steel tough guys to have such a baby side. However, laughing is laughing. Here, the deer still has to feel sorry for the little brother for three seconds, because only patients with needle phobia can understand the pain in the little brother's heart: the heart beats faster and the blood pressure rises, which are just routine operations. People simply can't afford to fall to the ground before a serious needle is inserted. While praising his brother's bravery, Xiao Lu takes you through the first chapter 1~3 of the Handbook of Anxiety and Phobia, hoping to let you know more about phobias and phobias.

What is phobia?

Phobia refers to the persistent and unreasonable fear of special objects, behaviors or scenes, which makes the subjects have to avoid these terrible objects, behaviors or scenes (p. 55). Born as a human being, we all experience fear to some extent. Fear is one of the basic emotions of human beings, but not all fear experiences will lead to phobia.

People may be dumbfounded, scared silly and scared out of their wits. However, only when the fear is strong enough to make people feel anxious, even panic attack (common symptoms are tachycardia, tinnitus, muscle stiffness, dyspnea, severe anxiety, etc. ) But they are not happy anymore. Can this person be diagnosed with phobia?

Who are the members of the phobia family?

1. Alien phobia

Will anyone be afraid of the square? Are you sure you're not afraid of the graceful dancing and overly dynamic music of the aunts who dance in the square dance? In fact, agoraphobia patients are afraid of the dense crowd in the empty square, including aunts. If three (xiong) long (men) and two (qi) short (ji) suddenly appear, whether it can be squeezed out is another matter, and fear of panic attack is the key point.

Perhaps you have found that if you are afraid of crowded places, people suffering from agoraphobia are actually afraid of playgrounds, stadiums, ski resorts and vanity fair in shopping malls at night. So, but where there are many mortals, agoraphobia patients dare not appear? That's true. As long as the patient thinks he may have a panic attack there and can't get timely help, he won't appear. So agoraphobia patients are generally otaku who stay at home.

2. Special phobia

A jun is afraid of dogs, b jun is afraid of heights, and c jun is afraid of blood ... Yes, special phobia itself is not special at all, just that people with special phobia are afraid of a special object or situation. Specifically, it can be divided into four categories:

(1) Animal and insect phobia, such as fear of spiders, even the sight of the word "spider" makes the scalp numb and the whole body stiff;

(2) natural environmental phobia, such as fear of lightning, shivering every thunderstorm, unable to sleep;

(3) Situational phobia, such as fear of a closed environment or being alone in a certain place;

(4) Blood injection-traumatic phobia, such as fear of seeing a child's scraped knee and fear of injection.

In addition to the above examples, common phobias include acrophobia, darkness phobia, crowding phobia, flame phobia, pain phobia, overpass phobia, airplane phobia, dentist phobia and so on.

3. Social phobia

I can avoid the meowing in the grass and the water in the swimming pool, but I still can't escape regular parties-speaking in public is an unspeakable pain for people with social phobia. They are either afraid of being judged when they speak in public, or they are worried that eating in restaurants will make noise or food will be humiliated, or they will avoid using public toilets to avoid being embarrassed by others seeing their bodies. What's worse, they will feel anxious when talking with strangers. If you meet an acquaintance, you can avoid it. If you can't avoid it, you will be exhausted if you say hello. Social phobia is widespread among women. Don't think that if you look good, you won't have social anxiety, and the goddess can't escape the entanglement of social phobia, such as the following one (it doesn't matter if you don't know, it won't affect your face appreciation ~):

As an actress, Scarlett's social phobia mainly appears in the form of performance phobia. Although she has been debuting for more than ten years, even if she is rated as one of the top ten sexy actresses in the world, the goddess has long been unable to show her face in such public places as Broadway live performances. However, for Scarlett, who won the best actress at the Rome Film Festival by her voice alone, it is no longer important to show her face.

How did phobia come from?

There are many reasons leading to phobia, both long-term and pre-existing (such as heredity, childhood experience, etc. ), short-term and sudden (such as accidents, life changes, etc.). ), even individual pathological factors may lead to phobia.

1. Association and avoidance. Take needle phobia as an example. A considerable number of patients are actually not afraid of needles when they are young. However, if they have family members around them (60% of patients have at least one family member who also has a phobia of needles) or people on TV (remember Xia Ziwei who was turned into a hedgehog by Rong Mammy in Palace of Kunning? _? ) There is an extremely frightened reaction to acupuncture, so children will also be emotional contagion, an adult, thus linking acupuncture with fear. From then on, children may be anxious at the sight of needles, start to avoid all situations related to needles, and even grow up, it is difficult to let go, so that they eventually become patients with needle phobia.

2. heredity. So, can phobias be inherited? Although there is no real hammer yet, some studies have found that if parents suffer from agoraphobia, the probability of children suffering from agoraphobia is 3~5 times higher than that of the general population. Of course, this discovery does not directly prove that phobia can be inherited. According to Bandura's social learning theory, it is also possible that children learned fear behavior from their family members suffering from agoraphobia at an early age.

So is there any more reliable evidence to prove that phobia can be inherited? As mentioned above, all phobias are anxiety in essence, and geneticists have found that some special genes are inextricably linked with anxiety. For example, they found that a gene on chromosome 17 called SERT (also known as serotonin transforming gene) can affect people's sensitivity to stress. Specifically, the longer the SERT gene, the less prone to anxiety, in other words, the less likely these people are to suffer from phobia; On the contrary, the shorter the SERT gene inherited from parents' chromosomes, the easier it is for people to be anxious and the higher the probability of suffering from phobia. From this perspective, phobia is indeed possible to be inherited.

3. Born into a noble family. Although there are genetic factors, the development of phobia is not entirely a genetic pot. The author Bo Wen mentioned in the book that during his more than 20 years of treatment of anxiety disorder, nearly a quarter of the phobia patients he came into contact with came from problem families. These patients grew up in an extremely unsafe environment. Their parents either neglect or abuse their children, or pay too much attention to their growth and protect them too much, or have unrealistic expectations for their children and demand them with high standards beyond their abilities.

Some of these children may find it difficult to trust others when they grow up, and think that the world is dangerous and untrustworthy, and there is serious emotional avoidance; Some people may have a strong desire to please others and think that they must be loved by everyone. When these irrational beliefs develop to a certain extent, they will become the source of anxiety, thus making people suffer from phobia. For example, the reason why people with social phobia feel at a loss in social interaction is because they demand too much of their social performance and care too much about their performance in front of others and their evaluation.

It sounds as if family members and genotypes are factory configurations that we can't change. Don't Chinese cabbage in this life can only cry haw led by the nose by phobia? In fact, as long as you don't give up treatment, getting rid of the entanglement of phobia is just around the corner ~

How to overcome phobia?

The treatment methods of primary phobia include relaxation training, exposure therapy, cognitive therapy and drug therapy. In addition to these conventional treatments, Dr. Bowen, the author of this book, also provides an advanced scheme. He summed up his experience in treating anxiety/phobia for more than 20 years, put forward the concept of "comprehensive treatment", and advocated helping patients get out of the shadow of phobia from seven aspects: physiology, emotion, interpersonal, behavior, psychology, self and spirit, and gave detailed operational guidelines in the book.

After years of clinical practice by countless therapists, these treatments are undoubtedly effective in both early and late stages. However, the so-called deviant sword (fairy) is introduced here as the simplest and most practical treatment-breathing exercise.

Breathing exercises are divided into abdominal breathing exercises and gentle breathing exercises, both of which are part of relaxation training. Among them, the gentle breathing exercise originated from yoga practice, which can help practitioners to quickly restore calm and achieve deep relaxation (P.100);

1. Inhale from the abdomen, inhale slowly through the nasal cavity, and count slowly from 1 to 5.

2. Pause, hold your breath and count slowly from 1 to 5.

3. Exhale slowly through the nose or mouth, counting from 1 to 5 until the gas is completely exhaled (you can say "relax", "calm" or "put down" silently every time you exhale. If you insist on doing this every time you practice, you can return to a relaxed state directly by saying "relax".

4. If you have exhaled completely, breathe twice at a normal rhythm, and then repeat the steps of 1~3.

5. Keep practicing for 3~5 minutes, and make sure that step 1 to step 3 is circulated at least 10 times (breathing normally twice between each cycle). If you start to feel dizzy, stop for 30 seconds and then continue).

Referring to the above methods, practicing for 5 minutes at a fixed time every day for more than two weeks can effectively alleviate the panic and anxiety caused by various common phobias. Even if it is not used to treat phobia, it is only used to relax.

The above is all the contents introduced in this chapter. Finally, the deer wants to say, if you meet a little friend who is afraid of injection/going out/meeting people in life, please don't laugh at T A. Your care and companionship are what TA really needs.

Original works: blog post (20 18). (Zou,? Handbook of anxiety and phobia. Chongqing: Chongqing University Press.