Last Updated on April 13, 2023 by Mike Robinson
Clinophobia is an abnormal, unreasonable, and long-lasting fear of going to sleep. Anxiety can occur as a specific reaction to getting into bed or, more generally, to falling asleep.
People often call this problem “somniphobia” or “oneirophobia,” but the correct term is “clinophobia.” It comes from the Greek words “klinein,” which means “bed,” and “phobos,” which means “head” (phobia, fear).
Causes of Clinophobia
Clinophobia, like other phobias and fears, develops due to learned emotions earlier in life. When a person interacts with their environment, they are constantly learning. The associations or results that produce those interactions between the person and their environment give rise to their learning history.
In this way, clinophobia can happen when there is a link between sleeping and something bad that happened after sleeping, making the person afraid or anxious. For example, a child who pees or poos in bed may develop clinophobia because they will associate these bad things with being in bed and going to sleep. In the same way, an adult could get this phobia because of other sleep problems like the syndrome of restless legs, bad dreams, etc.
Even though all of these things are true, the most common cause of clinophobia is severe sleeping problems. As explained from the previous point of view, the connection between going to bed and not being able to sleep would cause, in this case, a state of activation or anxiety before the behavior in question, which would cause the person to avoid it.
Common Symptoms
Most of the time, clinophobia shows up when a person goes to bed or tries to sleep. But sometimes, the person can feel the effects of the phobia just by thinking about trying to sleep. Sometimes the fear of sleep may be tied to a specific situation or event. However, a phobia can develop in response to harmless stimuli that remind the person of the original fear.
Depending on the severity of the phobia, the symptoms of clinophobia vary significantly from person to person. Before going to bed, a person may only feel anxious, uneasy, or agitated, whereas those with more severe conditions may experience panic attacks and anxiety.
Some claim that during a crisis, their senses may also become more acute in addition to unpleasant symptoms. When someone has clinophobia, they have symptoms that come from two different places. On the one hand, there are feelings of fear and anxiety caused by the phobia.
They can cause muscle tension, nausea or dizziness, agitation, tremors, hyperventilation, an increased heart rate, a feeling of suffocation, a dry mouth, dizziness, excessive sweating, and the inability to speak or think clearly. In the worst cases of clinophobia, people may worry that they will go crazy, lose control, or even die while they sleep.
The person with clinophobia also has symptoms that aren’t directly related to the fear. These symptoms result from a lack of sleep.
Insomnia is the most common problem that comes from having this fear. When people don’t get enough good sleep, they always feel tired. This makes them irritable, unable to focus, in a bad mood, and not caring about anything, and their physical and mental health, in general, worsens.
At this point, it’s important to note that insomnia can be both the cause and the effect of the problem.
Treatment Options FO Clinophobia
Clinophobia is a condition that causes many different symptoms, some of which may be related to fear and effects the quality or amount of sleep. Because of this, the approaches and treatments work in different ways. Here are some of the most common tools used to help people afraid of clowns.
Psychoeducation
The person needs to know what is going on. In this way, psychoeducation can help the patient understand the link between fear and how it shows up. The patient will be able to figure out where the problem came from, how it got worse, what is keeping it going, and what can be done to control and fix it. For this, the person should learn everything they need about their phobia, such as its causes, symptoms, treatments, etc.
Techniques Managing Anxiety
At the moment, there are many ways to relax that help control anxiety very well. For example, diaphragmatic breathing, self-instruction training, and progressive muscle relaxation by Jacobson are all good examples. Jacobson’s research proved that the anxiety that comes with phobic fear causes a considerable tightening of the muscles. This method aims to reach a state of general relaxation by making your muscles contract and then to let them go. So, it allows us to create, through progressive muscle relaxation, a response (relaxation) that is incompatible with the state of activation and stress that causes fear. This practice helps you get into a state of relaxation that affects not only the muscles and bones but also the central and autonomous nervous systems. Learning this technique makes it easier to recognize signs of tension in their bodies so they can control them later.
Systematic Desensitization
Systematic desensitization is one of the most common ways to treat specific phobias. It combines relaxation techniques with a gradual introduction to the thing the person is afraid of. When the person has learned to control their activation states (through relaxation techniques) and knows how phobias develop and stay strong (through psychoeducation), this technique allows them to react without fear to things that used to make them afraid.
The goal of systematic desensitization is to gradually expose the person to the item they are afraid of while teaching them how to relax. The goal is for the response of fear to go down by doing things that don’t go together, like relaxing. Since a person can’t be both anxious and calm simultaneously, this technique gradually helps them face dangerous situations. Here’s what you should do:
A list of situations that produce anxiety is prepared. First, things that cause fear are made, like putting on pajamas or brushing your teeth, getting off the couch to sleep, or locking the door with a key.
2: A hierarchy is made with the list.
After that, the different behaviors are put in a hierarchy, from the situation that causes the least anxiety to the one that causes the most. Each case is given a score between 0 and 10 based on how much anxiety it causes for the person.
3: The exhibition is combined with relaxation techniques.
The next step is to begin making the situation less stressful and tense. From that point on, they can start to mix exposure to the conditions that make them anxious with relaxation techniques they have already learned. Say, for example, that “getting up from the sofa to go to the room” is the situation that makes the person feel less anxious.
The session will start with the learned ways to relax. When the person is calm, the therapist will ask them to imagine “getting up from the couch to go to sleep” in the most vivid and detailed way possible. After a few seconds, the patient must say on a scale from 0 to 10 how anxious they are now about the situation. When the score exceeds 0, you will have to calm down and face the situation again.
Tips for proper sleep hygiene
Below is a decalogue of advice to establish proper sleep hygiene.
- Get up and go to bed every day at about the same time, or at least no more than an hour apart.
- Avoid naps as much as possible during the day. In any case, its duration should never exceed 30 minutes.
- Establish a constant “pre-sleep” routine.
- Take care of the room’s environmental conditions: light, temperature, ventilation, noise, etc.
- Avoid copious dinners before sleeping.
- Avoid the consumption of tobacco, caffeine, and alcohol, especially in the 4-5 hours before.
- Avoid active tasks in the final hours of the day.
- Use the room only to sleep. Avoid work and leisure in the bedroom.
- Avoid using televisions, computers, tablets, mobile phones, etc., in the room.
- Spend some time outdoors every day.
- Perform physical activity in the morning or afternoon, but never in the hours before sleep.
What is fear?
Fear is a healthy and common emotion. When confronted with specific circumstances or threatening stimuli, whether real or imagined, we all experience fear. We can survive hazardous situations because we feel fear. Sleep is one of the essential bodily functions, despite irrational fears and phobias, which are fear reactions to stimuli that are not potentially threatening or dangerous.
Also read: Atelophobia: Symptoms, Causes, and Treatments
According to a study by the Dávila Clinic in Chile, up to 50% of the adults who participated in the survey had sleep issues. We can overcome them if we are aware of and fully understand them.
