The Panophobia Is a vague and persistent threat or fear of some unknown evil. It is an irrational fear there is no logical cause that triggers it. This phobia is best known as non-specific fear or fear of everything.
The term panophobia comes from the Greek Panto Which is all, and of Phobos Which is fear. It is considered that this word can also come from the Greek god Pan who infused feelings of fear or panic.
It is also called with the terms Omniphobia , Pantophobia T the Phobia . There is no specific classification for this phobia in mental disorder manuals such as DSM or ICD, but it is considered to be part of other pathologies such as schizophrenia , he Personality limit disorder Or especially generalized anxiety disorder .
In the latter, one of the main characteristics that define it is the excessive concern about the occurrence of a series of events as in the case of panophobia.
It is a phobia very limiting and harmful for the person who suffers it, because unlike other phobias that are concretized in some fact, object, animal, etc. Specific, in this case the range of fears is much wider.
Causes of panophobia
It is often difficult to know the causes that give rise to panophobia because often the person does not remember when or before what concrete event the fear began.
But most studies agree that the origin of panophobia is because the person has previously developed other specific phobias. For example, a person who is afraid to fly by plane ( Aerophobia ), To speak in public ( social phobia ), spiders ( Arachnophobia ), You can end up extrapolating this fear to the symptoms that you have to face these situations.
Having these previous fears makes the person more vulnerable and over time different events or places can cause the same fear as the first phobias. In this way the fear is generalized and the person begins to avoid and flee from all that causes that fear causing that in turn the fear increases becoming a vicious circle.
Experience of a traumatic event
Another possible cause for the development of this phobia is to have experienced a traumatic event or event during childhood or adolescence.
As a result of this situation the person develops an intense fear that this happens again and therefore generates a fear of that situation and it avoids at all costs that it is produced again. This avoidance again makes the fear increase.
Genetic heritage
Another cause for the development of panophobia is related to genetic inheritance. Some studies show that feelings of fear and anxiety can be transmitted through genes just as with some Personality traits .
According to the research, this transmission does not necessarily mean that the person is going to develop the phobia, but it will be more vulnerable or more likely to develop a phobia if it occurs along with another set of factors, such as being exposed to a traumatic situation.
Learned inheritance
And finally we can point out the inheritance learned as another cause to develop the phobia. Numerous studies show that when observing the fearful behavior of the parents or of the figures of reference before certain situations, events, animals, etc. The person learns to have that same fear.
The child learns to incorporate that same reaction that he observes in the parents. When a child has not yet reached the capacity for reasoning, and sees that his figures of reference constantly react with fear and anxiety in the face of different situations, he comes to believe that there is something real to fear in them. This learning process contributes to phobia.
The development of phobia is different in each person, but usually increases over time if no remedy is given and appropriate treatment is started.
symptom
The main symptom of panophobia is the fear or persistent fear of practically everything. It includes the fear of objects, animals, situations, people, etc.
The person who suffers from this phobia usually has a constant sense of fear, which leads him to avoid situations and contacts. One of the first symptoms therefore is social isolation.
At the psychological level the main symptoms are depression, anxiety, sadness or constant crying, low self-esteem and feelings of helplessness or culpability . They also appear Obsessive thoughts And recurrent on fear that do not let the person think or focus on other tasks.
In some cases there is also the fear of losing control or going crazy. The person has an intense and persistent fear and therefore the desire to escape or escape from the situation is also constant.
Physical symptoms include dizziness, palpitations, tremors, excessive sweating, chest pain, restless breathing, body pain and / or tension, vomiting, or abdominal pain.
A specific symptom of this phobia is the constant adrenalin Which suffers the person by the permanent state of alert. These discharges are always followed by a period of fatigue in which the body needs to recover from exertion. Having these discharges consistently the state of fatigue in these people is practically permanent.
Treatments
There are different specific treatments for panophobia. The application of one or the other will be defined by the characteristics of the patient, the severity of the phobia or by the therapist's own orientation.
Systematic Desensitization
Systematic desensitization is one of the most effective techniques in the treatment of panophobia. This strategy that has become one of the most used, was created by Wolpe In 1958.
It is aimed at reducing anxiety responses resulting from exposure to feared objects or situations and eliminating avoidance or escape responses. It is based on the implementation of responses that are incompatible with fear when it appears, preventing it from developing.
The incompatible response to fear is relaxation, so one of the main actions will be aimed at training this relaxation response to be able to start it when the person is facing the object or situation that produces the phobia.
And on the other hand a list is made with everything that causes fear to the person and under the supervision of the therapist is progressively exposed to all these fears, beginning with those that produce less fear until reaching the ones that produce greater discomfort one The previous ones.
The exhibition can be live (facing directly to the object of discomfort) or in imagination. At the same time the exhibition is carried out, the relaxation techniques previously learned and tested are put into action.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
The Cognitive behavioral therapy Has also been shown to be effective in the treatment of panophobia. This therapy is based on what a person thinks or says is not as important as what he believes.
If beliefs are irrational or distorted this leads the person to develop disorders such as irrational fear. Just as a person has learned to distort reality and to have excessive fear of objects that should not produce it, he can learn to stop having that fear if they are discussed and questioned the beliefs that have led him to have it.
The person who has panophobia perceives everything around him as dangerous and threatening and also at all times anticipates that something bad is going to happen. With this treatment the therapist aims to eliminate these types of disturbing thoughts and replace them with others that are realistic, rational and therefore do not produce fear or physiological activation of the above.
Autoinstructions
Derived from cognitive behavioral therapy another technique that has proven to be effective in the treatment of panophobia is self-instruction training.
It consists of a change of behavior in which the self-verbalizations that the person performs in any situation that causes him discomfort are modified. The goal of this technique is to introduce a change in what the person is told before encountering the dreaded situation, during and after. For example, before the typical thought of this phobia.
"Something bad is coming, something terrible will happen and I will not be prepared to face it. It will be horrible." The therapist proposes to the subject to modify it by another more realistic and adaptive thought such as"if the situation occurs that fears I will be prepared to face it.
It's not so horrible, I've lived it before and it has not been so harmful." This type of instructions are pre-tested so that at the time of exposure to the dreaded situation the person has internalized them correctly.
Hypnosis
Another of the treatments commonly used for panophobia is the hypnosis . The fundamental task of hypnosis is to locate in the subconscious of the person the first manifestation of that fear and the reason that triggered it since normally the subject is not able to recognize consciously when this event took place.
Once these data are known, hypnosis allows to associate the reactions of fear with other positive ones causing the irrational fear before that object or situation is reduced progressively until it disappears completely. Hypnosis breaks the negative associations that make the person suffering from panophobia continue to maintain that irrational and disproportionate fear of an animal, a situation, an object, and so on.
Mindfulness
He Mindfulness Is a technique that is currently used routinely for the treatment of the panophone. The main components of this strategy are to focus on the present moment, to focus on what happens by eliminating each one's interpretation of that fact, accepting the unpleasant as part of the experience and giving up direct control over what happens.
In this way the person is taught to stop anticipating that something bad may be coming, because it focuses only on the present moment, on what is happening here and now. He also tries to neutralize irrational fear because he accepts that a slight fear or anxiety about certain situations may be unpleasant but he accepts it. When the person learns to accept this unpleasant part of the experience does not reject it or fear it.
Drugs
Finally, medications are considered in the most severe cases of phobia and are used to control symptoms when they are excessively disabling.
They are effective in the short term and provide temporary relief but do not address the underlying cause of the disorder. There are three types of drugs that are used to treat panophobia.
On the one hand, the so-called Beta blockers , Whose main function is to block the flow of adrenaline that appears before the situations of fear or anxiety. This controls physical symptoms such as excessive sweating or palpitations.
Another type of medication that is frequently used are the so-called Benzodiazepines Which contribute a certain level of sedation without becoming very high or dangerous for the health of the person.
They also function as muscle relaxants and their effect is immediate. On the contrary, they present a high risk of dependence on long treatments. This makes a rational use of these drugs necessary, assessing how long the pharmacological treatment will take, depending on the diagnosis and the expected prognosis, and whether the benefits resulting from this treatment outweigh the risks that are assumed.
And finally the use of Antidepressants Can be useful when feelings of fear are especially serious and debilitating. In any case, medical treatment must be controlled and supervised by a specialist and not be a single treatment, since it will always be combined with psychological therapy to solve the fear from its origin.
Bibliography
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- Maharjan, R. Panophobia: Fear of Everything-Causes, Symptoms and Treatment. Healthtopia
- Crocq, M. (2015) A history of anxiety: from Hippocrates to DSM. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience.
- Dryden-Edwards, R. (2016) Phobias. Medicinenet.
- Preda, A. (2014) Phobic Disorders Treatment & Management. Medscape.
- Carbonell, D. (2016). Exposure therapy for fears and phobias. Anxiety coach.