NICTOPHOBIA: What is it, Symptoms, Causes and Treatment

"The night is dark and harbors horrors" is one of the best-known phrases of Melisandre, one of the protagonists of the popular series Game of Thrones. And it is that although being afraid of the dark can be part of normal development in young children, that is not the case in older children and adults. Nyctophobia is an irrational fear of the dark that occurs inappropriately at certain ages and can lead to person to limit their activities, avoid certain circumstances and experience anxiety in anticipation of the lack of light.

In this Psychology-Online article we will explain what is nyctophobia, what are your symptom and their Causes, as well as the treatment more indicated for this disorder.

Index

1. What does nyctophobia mean
2. Nyctophobia in adults: causes and characteristics
3. Symptoms of nyctophobia
4. How to overcome nyctophobia
5. Is there a difference between nyctophobia and scotophobia?

The nyctophobia is he intense and irrational fear of the dark. This disorder is classified as a phobia within the disorders or anxiety disorders. Sometimes the fear may not be related to the darkness itself, but to supposed hidden dangers that occur in the context of the night (this is why in horror movies darkness is often used as a method to scare the viewer). Lack of security and confidence can also play a role, especially when you are alone.

Although it is not necessarily bad to feel a certain nervousness when we are in the dark, one of the signs that can alert us that we are facing nyctophobia is feeling anxious and distressed. Fear of the dark can become a disorder when it is so scary that interferes with the person's ability to function in your day to day, at work or in her social environment. The difference between a simple fear and a phobia is that the latter causes clinically significant discomfort. In the following articles you will find different types of fears Y types of phobias.

Contrary to what it may seem, the fear of the dark or nyctophobia it doesn't just affect children. Approximately 1 in 10 adults has nyctophobia or any of the characteristic symptoms of this disorder. An adult is able to rationally analyze the causes and motivations of her fears, but in phobias this is irrelevant, since negative feelings are triggered in spite of everything.

For its part, the causes of nyctophobia can be multiple. The origin may be in a traumatic experience suffered by the person and related to darkness or night; It may have been triggered by a bad memory or a distorted view of what it is really like to be in the dark; or it may originate due to a observational learning (what in psychology is known as vicarious conditioning), what happens when the person acquires the fear of the dark after seeing that another person reacts with this same emotion in such a situation.

The most common symptoms of nyctophobia are the following:

• Get nervous in any dark environment.
• Need to sleep with a light on.
• Being reluctant to go out at night.
• To experience physiological symptoms anxiety symptoms including: increased heart rate, sweating, shaking, feeling sick, nausea, headaches or diarrhea.

In addition to the latter, nyctophobia in adults can cause other more serious symptoms such as the following:

• Try to escape of dark rooms or surroundings.
• Compulsively staying inside a building (home, work, etc.) so as not to go out at night.
• Feeling angry or angry when someone tries to encourage the person to spend time in the dark.

To overcome nyctophobia, psychological strategies can be applied in the intervention and drugs can also be used:

Psychological treatment of nyctophobia

The good news is that nyctophobia, like the vast majority of specific phobias, has treatment and can be overcome. The treatment plan includes cognitive behavioral therapy, whose objective is to challenge beliefs and fears about the dark, so that negative thoughts are replaced by more realistic and functional ones. One of the therapeutic methods most used in this and other phobias and which we have already discussed in another article in Psychology-Online, is the exposure technique, a procedure that confronts the person with the situation or the feared object (in this case the darkness) to help you overcome fear and anxiety; for this it is important that it is carried out in a safe context, in a state of relaxation and with the help of the therapist, with the aim that the patient cannot escape from the situation of darkness and learns that the threat does not it is real.

Another variant of this technique is gradual exposure: the person is summoned to expose himself to an environment dark in "small doses" and progressively, under conditions of relaxation and in a safe and checked. Through this desensitization, the person gradually loses fear and, with repeated practice, anxiety symptoms are subsiding.

Pharmacological treatment of nyctophobia

Another possible way to treat nyctophobia, and complementary to the previous one, is the use of psychotropic drugs. Especially recommended in the most serious cases or in which the disorder causes dysfunction in one or more areas of the person's life. The most commonly used drugs are usually anxiolytics, drugs used to reduce the symptoms of anxiety and nervousness characteristic of this and other phobias; and medications antidepressants, Like the serotonin reuptake inhibitors, which serve to regulate the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain in the medium and long term. In the following article you will find what is serotonin and what is it for.

Nyctophobia or fear of the dark is also often called acluophobia, ligofobia, and scotophobia. However, in some areas an attempt has been made to differentiate between nyctophobia, the noun that designates irrational fear or phobia at night; and scotophobia, as the term that refers to the phobia of the dark. Logically, the night is associated with darkness, although in fear of it it is not so much the night that causes fear, but rather risks and dangers that the person imagines or assumes may lead to arise.

However, the three terms can be used synonymously because they allude to the same reality, which is none other than intense fear, and often incapacitating, to everything that has to do with darkness, be it a product of the night, the shadows or the dark.

This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

If you want to read more articles similar to Nyctophobia: what is it, symptoms, causes and treatment, we recommend that you enter our category of Clinical psychology.

• Levos, J., & Zacchilli, T. L. (2015). Nyctophobia: From Imagined to Realistic Fears of the Dark. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 20(2).
  
• Li, Y., Ma, W., Kang, Q., Qiao, L., Tang, D., Qiu, J.,... & Li, H. (2015). Night or darkness, which intensifies the feeling of fear?. International journal of psychophysiology, 97(1), 46-57.