AbdulSalamHave you ever felt afraid in a room full of darkness? That’s Nyctophobia, and this blog is about “How to Overcome fear of darkness”. Fear of darkness is a condition in which we get afraid of Darkness. Nyctophobia is primarily present in children from ages 18 to 16. This graph keeps declining with increasing age. Today we are going to discuss the causes and treatments of nyctophobia. So, Let’s Begin.
Causes:
The First step of answering “How to Overcome fear of darkness” involves understanding what nyctophobia really is. This fear is less relevant to Darkness but more to unknown dangers hidden in the darkness. These unknown dangers are always unrealistic. it gives us a scary feeling that something evil is present in the dark (as we have seen in horror movies). it is a natural phenomenon that we carry the fear of darkness in our genes, and we feel less secure and less confident In Darkness. Somehow this phobia is also relevant to the fear of being alone, even in the daylight.
Symptoms
The symptoms of fear of darkness vary from person to person as they depend on factors like environment and situation. However, some common symptoms of fear of Darkness are,
1. sleeping with the light on
2. feeling nervous In Darkness
3. feeling reluctant to go outside at the night
4. increased heartbeat
5. sweating while in dark
6. getting angry if someone asks you to spend time in the dark
Treatment
Psychology deals with a phobia through therapy, affirmations, hypnosis and even medication if the cases are severe.
Here are some tips and techniques to help you deal with the fear with a success rate of over 90%. Let’s study five proven techniques that are the most practical answers to How to Overcome the fear of darkness.
1-Desensitization
This process involves exposing yourself to small periods of Darkness in a controlled environment. For example, standing near the Light button and turning it off for 5 seconds with reverse counting (5 4 3 2 1 0) & then increasing time to 10 seconds, 15 seconds and so on up to 15 minutes. I personally believe that if we can hold ourselves for 15 minutes. Then we are capable of holding ourselves even for one hour later.
2-Understanding the reality
This simple but powerful exercise will help you deal with necrophobia. You have to stand at the door with the light on, and then move in the room and touch items like a table, chair, sofa, books, pencils, curtains and walls etc., then turn off the light and touch things again in the darkness. This will lead you to understand that nothing is changed, and this is just a simple law of physics that we can see things when light reflects from them into our eyes, with no change in the environment’s it.
3-Therapy
Therapy also plays a significant role in overcoming the fear of darkness. Talking to a psychologist, psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, psychotherapist or even to a mature family member helps us deal with the fear of darkness.
4-Meditation
Meditation lets us control our thoughts, like what to think and what to not. By doing meditation regularly, we can control our thoughts. This ultimately helps us control our negative thinking like evils present in the dark and make us mentally stronger to stand in darkness.
5-Medication
Many antidepressant and anti-anxiety medicines are available in the market, but I’ll recommend you use them only in severe conditions only upon the prescription of a psychiatrist. These medicines help us deal with our phobia by managing our thoughts.
These tools will help you change your programming about Darkness and make you capable of holding yourself in darkness even for hours. This was all about How to Overcome fear of darkness
if you like this information and blog, kindly share this with your circle of friends and family so that anyone of your loved ones can cope with the nyctophobia easily.
I am a psychologist, Author and Udemy Instructor. I have diverse Professional experience in teaching, training and counselling. For the past 7 years, I have contributed to the literature on positive psychology, self-help, personal development and student affairs. I regularly write a blog on www.abdulsalamspeaks.com, and here is the list of my publicly available resources.
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