‘Somniphobia’ is a medical definition of ‘fear of sleep‘. This is more common in the kids as they are more prone to absorb things especially scary incidents and retain them in themselves which in turn hinders them from sleeping in the night. This fear develops with the age in some people and fades away in most of the people. It is actually a symptom of anxiety disorder.
There are several reasons for different people for having fear of sleeping. It depends upon their surroundings, people, there childhood and also due to immense pressure at their work. The main fear they have when they sleep is that they might not wake up at all from there sleep even if the world around them is getting destroyed. They fear that somebody might hurt them or even kill them and they can’t do anything about it. Actually it’s not the fear of sleeping but it’s the fear of losing the control when they go to sleep.
These guys may be just fine through out the day but it’s only at the night they have this abnormal fear in them. Insomnia is the most common reason of somniphobia. Some common symptoms arising from somniphobia are excessive sweating, dry mouth, breathlessness, fear of madness or losing psychological balance etc.
There are many ways you can treat somniphobia- medication, meditation, yoga etc. The most important way to treat somniphobia is to reduce the anxiety levels in you. The medication helps you for sometime but it might not cut down the sleeping problem entirely and also u might experience many side effects and you can get addicted to it. So the best thing you can do is to a psychiatrist, take proper counseling and medication, follow some strict habits such as reducing the intake of caffeine and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
It’s very important to believe in yourself that you are going to be alright when u go to sleep. Some remedies might be that you sleep with someone else beside as it can reduce the fear of somebody might harm you. You must realize that worrying constantly will just add on to your problems rather than reducing it. So just calm down and relax and everything is going to be OK for you.
This is really helpful for me. I’m 14 and I always hear about break ins and stuff near my home. then I’m afraid something like that will happen while I’m asleep.then I normally don’t get to bed until after midnight. Which is bad because I have school… This really just took a big relief off my shoulders and I’m able to sleep now.
This is really helpful, im going to try some of this, im only starting to develop somniphobia, but i can tell im getting it because i have anxiety when i try to sleep, its hard to get to sleep, and sometimes when im about to go to sleep i just panic for no reason. Mostly this is caused due to my large fear of sleep paralysis rather than real life problems.