Hypnophobia or Fear Of Sleep

The Greek god for sleep is Hypnos and the word phobia means in fear, hence the word hypnophobia was coined. The medical term is used to describe an individual’s fear of being hypnotized or sleep. To add to the root word origins, hupnos is the Greek word for sleep and phobia stays as the Greek word meaning fear.

Since phobia is abnormal, this specific sleep phobia can be safely defined as the persistent and unwanted fright of being hypnotized or sleep. And the number of people being afflicted by this type of phobia grows each day. And the treatment to sleep phobia may take years and may most of the time require an afflicted person exposure to his fear to be able to fill more comfortable in combating it. And an unchecked sleep phobia will certainly deprive a person from his ability to gain renewed energy brought about by regular sleep.

This odd behavior may have been spurred by a traumatic experience in the past and the patient has not been able to address the situation or seek medical help to treat the current medical issue. Panic attacks and strange behavior when awake can actually be the cause of the person deprived of sleep to be touchy and irate most of the time and because of this, he will be steered away from by his or her peers and by members of the family.
 
The causes of sleep phobia may stem from a number of things but the reason why the person is acting the way it is because of episodes in the past that could have been very traumatic and it occurred while the person is sleeping, hence the body is acting in a protective manner by telling the body to keep awake at all times.

It may be a very disturbing personal experience or a witnessing to an event that happened to a different person while she or he is asleep. Or it may actually be triggered by a viewing of a film or a television show that involves tragedy happening while the main character is asleep.

Since the body’s reaction to sleep phobia may be emotional, there are physical manifestations that person is under attack and here are some of them:

• Nausea
• Irregular heartbeat
• An enveloping and overwhelming feeling of fear or panic
• Sweating
• Shortness of breath
• And very rapid breathing

Now these symptoms may vary from one person to another, and some people may even show a totally different manifestation of the disorder so it would really take an expert to determine what really is bothering the person. Medication is available for people with sleep phobia.