Fears you need to stop being afraid of as you age

Causes

The loss of a family member is one of the most common causes of taphophobia (especially if it happened in childhood)

A person develops a fear of funerals for various reasons that have an impact on his mental health. In most cases, experts associate it with burials and death. People associate them with something negative and frightening, which they definitely don’t want to face.

Taphophobes are disturbed by any events that have to do with funerals.

Most often, people who are highly emotional and impressionable suffer from mental disorders. They also have a rich imagination, which allows them to imagine terrible pictures of death and burials in their heads.

The following negative factors lead to the development of fear of funerals:

1. Nervous overstrain. A person does not always need a stimulus that leads to anxiety. Patients with taphophobia manage to independently deplete their own nervous system by constantly thinking about their fear. Such thoughts give rise to depressive states, which are companions of phobia.
2. Death of a loved one. A phobia often arises after a tragedy. After losing a friend or relative, people begin to fear that something similar will happen to them soon.
3. Low level of stress resistance. This factor contributes not only to the development of fear, but also to its active progression. Within a few days, people who do not know how to cope with stress fall into a depressive state caused by negative thoughts about death and funerals. This factor has the greatest influence on the fairer sex. Men are considered more resistant to stressful situations.
4. Experiencing tragic events in childhood. The root cause of a phobia is often an unhealthy atmosphere in the family, which has a negative impact on the formation of the child’s personality and gives rise to many fears in him. Attending a funeral can leave a negative imprint. This is why psychologists do not recommend that parents take their children with them to such events, as this may lead to fear in the future.

If parents begin to notice signs of taphophobia in their child, they should immediately take him to an appointment with a psychologist. Also in this case, they must clearly explain what death and funeral are. The child must understand that these are completely natural processes that should not be too frightened.

Help yourself

In the treatment of taphephobia, self-education and independent work to strengthen mental health play an important role. High efficiency is achieved if the patient actively performs exercises and organizes simple activities:

• reads books and articles with life-affirming information every day;
• listens to calm and melodic music;
• watches informative films;
• playing sports;
• spends a lot of time outdoors;
• organizes his vacation as an active activity;
• looks at your fears objectively and analyzes them;
• studies the literature on phobic disorder;
• reevaluates and comprehends his life;
• reconsiders priorities in daily activities, highlighting creative activities;
• tries to minimize situations in which his fear manifests itself;
• excludes staying in closed, dark, stuffy rooms;
• avoids loneliness;
• talks with people who have similar problems;
• provides help and support to those who suffer from taphephobia.

When contacting a doctor, it is important for a patient to remember that only timely and comprehensive treatment will help quickly get rid of the problem of behavior disorder.

0

Symptoms

Clinical manifestations of taphophobia in all patients are individual. Despite this, experts were able to identify a number of symptoms that indicate fear of being buried alive and having a funeral.

Mental and emotional symptoms

A person becomes a “regular” of the hospital, looking for imaginary diseases from which he can die

The fear of burial and being buried alive does not develop unnoticed. Mental disorder is accompanied by a group of symptoms that are especially pronounced at the time of a panic attack.

Many people often ignore the mental symptoms of a phobia. Because of this, they are deprived of the opportunity to receive professional help from a psychologist in a timely manner. Therefore, it is recommended to carefully listen to your own body and your feelings in order to identify a disorder at the initial stage of development.

Taphophobia is indicated by the following psycho-emotional signs of illness:

• Sleep disorder. A person with burial anxiety experiences insomnia, interrupted sleep, and the inability to fall asleep due to awkward posture. A patient with taphophobia may simply be afraid to fall asleep, as he is afraid of the possibility of not waking up in the morning. He may also be alarmed by the thought that there is no one nearby who can provide emergency assistance in case of such need.
• Nightmares. In them a person sees himself buried alive. Such dreams lead to sleep disorders, as discussed above.
• Searching for information about funerals. The strangeness of this symptom lies in the fact that the taphophobe is interested in information about his own burial. Such thoughts force a person to start writing his will prematurely, making videos addressed to loved ones, which are intended for viewing after his death.
• Conveying instructions to verify your death before burial. This desire arises among people who are afraid of being mistakenly buried alive.
• Visit doctors regularly to assess your current health status. People with taphophobia turn to doctors without a compelling reason. This is how they try to protect themselves from lethargic sleep, due to which a living person is mistaken for a dead person.

Patients with mental disorders are constantly in search of information about everything related to death and funerals. They can shift conversations to such topics. These symptoms are striking to others and make it clear that the person needs the help of a psychotherapist.

Physical ailments

Uncontrollable outbursts of anger and irritability appear

Taphophobia can also be recognized by other symptoms that bother a person with a fear of funerals. When experiencing a stressful situation, the following signs of illness appear:

• Increased sweating.
• Problems with overeating.
• Lack of appetite.
• Sudden attacks of aggression.
• Inability to control your thoughts.
• Cardiopalmus.
• Decreased or increased blood pressure.
• Attacks of nausea, which may be accompanied by the urge to vomit.
• Half-fainting state.

The severity of clinical signs of phobia directly depends on how advanced the problem is. It is also influenced by the individual characteristics of a person’s personality.

During a panic attack, a patient may experience other painful symptoms. He is unable to keep most of them under control, so they are clearly visible to the people around him.

Taphophobia - fear of funerals, fear of being buried alive

Taphophobia is the fear of funerals and their paraphernalia, as well as the fear of being buried alive. This phobia is basic for a person and is based on the fear of death.

This phobia is cross-cultural because... its mechanism is based on the deep foundations of the individual and does not depend on society.

Sleep disorders

This may include insomnia, nightmares, sleeping in an awkward position and other sleep-related problems. Let's look at them in more detail.

A person may be afraid to go to bed; he associates the horizontal position of the body with a coffin. In this regard, he may take uncomfortable sleeping positions (for example, sleep sitting, standing, or with his legs raised high), thus putting a psychological barrier between himself and the deceased.

The thought that he might not wake up haunts him, especially in the dark. He tries to surround himself with people; it seems to him that if there is a person nearby, he will be able to wake him up, stir him up, and save him from deep sleep. The presence of people nearby creates a feeling of safety, but does not relieve all the symptoms of a phobia.

Nightmares are usually directly related to the phobia. A man dreams that he is being buried alive. He can feel not only the lack of air, but also the boards under him, as well as the earth that is pouring onto the coffin. It is very difficult for a person to recover from such nightmares. Therefore, for a long time after such a dream, a feeling of anxiety, suffocation, palpitations and all-encompassing fear persists.

Obsessive actions

These can be conversations, notes, video recordings, audio recordings, diaries and other behavioral manifestations.

Shackled by the fear that he will be buried alive, the person constantly talks about how to make sure of his death. He can write suicide notes every time he goes to bed.

It could also be video and audio messages to those who find him fast asleep.

Such messages most often contain requests not to touch the body for several days (and sometimes even weeks); verify death through a consultation of doctors and under no circumstances allow an autopsy of the body.

Frequent visits to doctors, especially somnologists, is also a distinctive feature of people suffering from taphophobia. To exclude the possibility of lethargic sleep, people constantly check the characteristics of their brain activity during sleep.

Phases, changes and deviations from norms are studied in detail.

Physiological manifestations

A set of manifestations in the body is characteristic not only of taphophobia, but also of most other irrational fears. This list is extensive and personal. Manifestations depend on a person’s personality, his reaction to stress, and the strength of his nervous system.

The most common physiological problems are: Sweating; poor appetite or vice versa – overeating; uncontrollable thoughts; aggressiveness; increased or decreased blood pressure; heartbeat; fainting; dyspnea; dizziness; "lump in the throat; nausea; stool disorder; pain in the back and limbs; dry mouth; memory impairment.

Causes/occurrence

It is impossible to talk about the causes of taphophobia with a 100% guarantee. The topic of phobias and their occurrence has not been fully studied at the moment. Experts say that the likelihood of developing irrational fear in people with a rich imagination is much higher. In such people, taphophobia may appear after watching films, reading books, even from accidentally overhearing a snippet of conversation.

The causes of phobias include stress and constant nervous tension (it can be associated both with an objectively existing cause and with personality characteristics). Taphophobia can appear after experiencing trauma, especially if it is associated with the death of a loved one or a person who was very significant.

If a person has a low threshold for responding to stress, the phobia develops rapidly and reaches destructive proportions in just a few days. It has been found that women suffer from phobias 2 times more often than men.

However, regarding taphophobia the data are opposite, i.e. the stronger half of humanity is more susceptible to it. According to scientists, this is due to the fact that a woman is a continuator of the family and, therefore, sees a continuation of herself and her life in a child.

Thanks to this, the fear of funerals and death recedes into the background.

The causes of taphophobia also include childhood experiences. If the child was unwanted, the likelihood of this type of phobia occurring is high.

This is due to the fact that, while still in the womb, the little man was not completely sure that the light would appear. Those. faced the possibility of death every day.

He retained these memories and carried them into adulthood, experiencing them as a phobia.

Treatment

The fear of being buried or buried alive may gradually increase. Therefore, a patient who imagines himself in the role of a person who happened to be buried will require medical attention. People who were afraid of funerals come to psychotherapists. They proposed individual therapy to cope with the phobia.

Psychotherapy

People who are afraid of funerals and succumb to such fear can be cured of mental disorder with the help of psychotherapy. The specialist selects a course of treatment, the action of which is aimed at eliminating the root cause of taphophobia. During the course of his therapy, the patient learns a lot of information about what really scares him. New knowledge allows us to build a more correct model of behavior when mentioning funerals and possible burial alive.

The following psychotherapeutic techniques give good results in the treatment of taphophobia:

• Neurolinguistic programming. The specialist instills in the patient certain tactics that suppress the severity of fear. For this purpose, special words or actions are selected that, at the moment of panic, allow you to reduce its intensity to a minimum value.
• Cognitive therapy. The doctor invites the patient to face his fear in order to be able to overcome it once and for all.

The patient is invited to take part in the quest. To win it, he needs to get out of the coffin. It is important that a person close to the patient is present during the test.

Medication method

You cannot self-medicate

Severe panic attacks can be suppressed with medication. Their appointment is required if the phobia leads to a critical condition that psychotherapy is unable to cope with.

Important! Taking medications to suppress the symptoms of a phobia is only possible with the permission of a doctor.

Sedatives, antidepressants and tranquilizers help normalize the patient’s condition and reduce anxiety.

Taphophobia – fear of funerals

Taphophobia is the fear of funerals, including your own, as well as the fear of being buried alive. Taphophobe also experiences fear of funeral paraphernalia and any mention of burial ritual.

This is a phobia that is a frequent consequence or companion of thanatophobia - fear of death. Both of them are closely interconnected with each other.

Taphophobia can also be accompanied by nyctophobia - phobia of darkness, claustrophobia - fear of enclosed spaces.

The phobia is based on cultural traditions, on a person’s personal perception of rituals and ceremonies associated with death. Taphophobia is not a social phobia.

Symptoms of taphophobia

The symptoms of taphophobia are individual for each patient. However, there is a general pattern of symptoms that is specific to everyone.

Atypical behavioral reactions

A taphophobe usually strives to leave as much information as possible to those who will bury him in the event of a sudden death. These are all kinds of wills, audio and video messages, instructions to friends and family.

Experiencing panic anxiety of being alive in a coffin, a person gives detailed instructions to ensure that his death is verified before burial.

Every time before he goes to bed, he leaves farewell notes with instructions for potential “finders of his body.” It can also be video or audio recordings with instructions.

The instructions, as a rule, include requests not to bury the body for several weeks after death, to confirm death with the help of several specialists, and not to perform an autopsy.

Taphophobes can exhaust themselves with visits to doctors, checking their physical health and eliminating the possibility of falling into a lethargic sleep. They constantly study information regarding a topic that interests them, reading about famous cases of burial alive. Thus, they only aggravate their anxiety, feeding their imagination with new images every time.

Somatic symptoms of taphophobia

The somatic symptoms of taphophobia are quite extensive and characteristic of many phobias. Each patient has an individual set of symptoms and depends on the intensity of the response to the stressor, as well as on the stability of the nervous system.

The most typical symptoms of taphophobia are:

• increased sweating;
• eating disorders (anorexia, bulimic attacks);
• obsessive thoughts;
• aggression;
• pressure changes;
• rapid pulse;
• fainting conditions;
• dyspnea;
• headache;
• vomiting, nausea;
• diarrhea, constipation;
• muscle pain;
• forgetfulness, absent-mindedness.