The Stapledness Is the excessive fear of being the victim of a rape or suffering some kind of violent attack on the person.
Fear of such situations is very prevalent in our society, especially in women. AND S especially frequent among individuals who have been victims of sexual abuse, however, it is not necessary to have suffered a violation or a similar situation to develop this disorder.
Chiropractic is a specific phobia that can significantly alter the functioning of the person who suffers, decreasing both his well-being and his quality of life .
Situational specific phobia
Situational-specific phobia is the diagnostic category attributed to atophobia. This means that this disorder refers to the phobic fear of a particular situation, rape or sexual abuse.
It is necessary to take into account that the agrafobia is a type of phobia something special, since unlike another Type of most common phobias , What is feared is not a situation in itself, but the prediction of a situation.
Put another way, while the phobic to spiders ( Arachnophobia ) Responds with high feelings of anxiety when exposed to one of these animals or believes that it can be exposed, the person suffering from staphylococcus only experiences it when he thinks that he may suffer a violation.
Obviously, if the subject with staphylococcal disease has a real violation, he will also present a high anxiety response.
However, the fear experienced in this situation can not be classified as phobic, since anyone would develop it in the face of sexual abuse.
Thus, it must be taken into account that rape is a situation that poses a real and tangible risk to the integrity of the person, so the situation itself is not a phobic element.
The feared stimulus of agrafobia is therefore not rape or sexual abuse, but the fear that it may appear at any time.
Fear of abuse
As we have seen, the fear that defines agrafobia has a number of important characteristics.
In fact, before we can analyze any aspect of this disorder, we must bear in mind that fear of rape is something completely normal that does not correspond to a phobia.
In this way, the pertinent fear of agrafobia must focus on the possibility of suffering sexual abuse. That is, the person with this disorder is permanently alert to the possibility of suffering a violation.
The subject believes that at any moment it can suffer abuse and, seemingly neutral stimuli, can be interpreted as phobic and responding to these with high feelings of anxiety.
Criteria for Diagnosing Chromobia
To be able to catalog a type of fear as corresponding to the agrafobia the following criteria must be taken into account.
1- Disproportion
The fear that is experienced in the agrafobia is disproportionate with respect to the exigencies of the situation.
This first criterion is highly important since a sexual abuse of itself, makes a situation with very high demands that can justify any anxiety response of a person.
In this way, the person with agraphobia experiences anxiety responses and a highly elevated fear of being sexually assaulted in situations that are not really dangerous.
This means that the individual may experience extreme panic to be raped in seemingly normal situations such as staying alone at home or watching a man walk down the street.
2- Irrationality
This is another of the fundamental points that allow us to properly understand and interpret the fear that characterizes the agrafobia.
The person with this anxiety disorder is not able to reason and explain why he has this high fear.
The individual may be aware that the situations he fears so much do not really have to be a danger and know that he should not respond with the fear and excessive fear he experiences.
3- Uncontrollability
In relation to the previous point, the individual may be aware that his fear is illogical and irrational, but this is not enough to control him.
Therefore, the person may want to not be so afraid and so afraid of having sexual abuse, but can not avoid it.
In certain situations that the individual may interpret as threatening, the anxiety response appears, without the subject being able to control their fear.
4- Avoidance
The fear experienced is so intense, that the subject will try to avoid everything he can with the aim of saving himself the wrong time.
However, unlike other phobias where the situation or the feared and avoided element is well delimited, situations that a person with atophobia can avoid may be more unpredictable.
Following the above comparison, the person with a spider phobia will avoid any situation in which he may be in contact with this animal, that is, he will avoid being near a spider.
However, in sycophobia the term"being close to sexual abuse"is too ambiguous to be able to delineate what situations a person with this pathology will avoid.
Thus, the individual with agraphobia can avoid a wide range of situations in which a stimulus that he interprets as threatening is present.
5- Persistent
At certain times in life, especially if you have experienced recent aversive events, people can be more fearful of multiple situations.
In fact, a victim of sexual abuse is most likely to experience heightened fear of rape during later times. However, this fact in itself does not explain the presence of agrafobia.
To be able to talk about emphychobia, fear has to be persistent, that is, it must be present for years and does not have to be specific to a certain phase or period of time.
6- Deadaptive
Finally, we must bear in mind that the fear of agrafobia, as with all types of phobias, is maladaptive.
This criterion acquires special relevance in the agrafobia since the fear to suffer a sexual abuse yes that can be adaptive.
In this way, when an individual sees that he is about to be violated, he experiences a fear that allows him to respond in an adequate way and adapt to the exigencies of the situation.
However, this does not happen in the case of staph, since the individual with this alteration experiences the feelings of fear in anxiety in situations that do not create any danger to their integrity.
symptom
Agrafobia produces a series of symptoms on the person that can put in question its functionality.
On the one hand, it must be taken into account that the anxiety that the person experiences when the phobic stimuli appear is very high and is accompanied by a series of very annoying symptoms.
The person with agrabobia will respond in situations in which he believes that he may suffer sexual abuse with a high increase in the functioning of his autonomic nervous system .
This means that the individual will experience symptoms such as increased heart rate and respiratory rate, excessive sweating, tremors, hot flashes, choking sensations, muscle tension and even panic attacks .
Also, these physical symptoms can be accompanied by highly harmful thoughts about sexual abuse. These negative thoughts increase anxiety and can take over the state of the person.
Finally, the conjunction of these symptoms we have described so far has a notable effect on the individual's behavior.
The person with a staphobia can have enormous difficulties leaving home because the fear of a sexual assault could increase after leaving home security.
Individuals with atophobia may have difficulty establishing personal relationships because of the mistrust created by their fears, and their phobic elements can also affect their sexual intimacy.
Causes of staphylococcus
There is no single cause of agra- bobia, however, there are a number of well-defined factors that relate to its appearance.
In the first place, people who have been Victims of sexual abuse Is more likely to have staphylococcus.
This fact indicates that direct conditioning plays a major role in the development of agrafobia.
However, not all victims of sexual abuse develop staphylococcus, nor have all persons with staphylococci been raped.
Thus, there are other factors that may also play an important role in the onset of the disease.
One of them is vicarious conditioning, that is, the visualization of images, whether real or through television or the internet, in which some type of sexual assault or rape is present.
Overprotective educational styles, which place a special emphasis on the multiple hazards in life and the threats that people constantly have, can also contribute to the development of agraphobia.
How is corgrafobia maintained?
All persons who are victims of abuse or sexual harassment Experience high feelings of fear and insecurity in a later way.
However, not all of these people end up developing staphylococcus, so it is postulated that there are some elements other than the cause of origin that are responsible for maintaining the phobia.
Although there are no irrefutable data, it seems that the main element that maintains the agrafobia is the avoidance.
In this way, people who, because of the fear they experience, avoid any stimulus that causes them feelings of fear and anxiety, they will be more likely to maintain the agrafobia.
Instead, people who are able to expose themselves to their feared stimuli will realize that these elements are not really dangerous and will gradually overcome their fears.
Treatment
Chiropogia should be treated with psychotherapy , Through a therapist specialized in this type of alterations.
At present there are multiple types of therapies, however, those that have been shown to be most effective in reversing Cognitive behavioral therapies .
These therapies are based on what we talked about recently, that is, on performing exposure interventions to the feared stimuli.
The exhibition can be performed live or in imagination, through strategies of hierarchies such as systematic desensitization.
The choice of each of these techniques is made according to the needs of each subject.
If an individual has very high levels of anxiety before a stimulus, it is probably more appropriate to perform systematic desensitization to expose the patient little by little.
On the other hand, if a subject presents a very abstract phobic stimulus, the live exposure is probably too complex, so he would opt for exposure in imagination.
Regardless of the modality, the therapeutic objective of these techniques is the same and consists in the person contacting with his feared stimuli without running away from them.
This fact allows the individual, gradually, to see how their phobic and feared stimuli are actually harmless, a fact that allows us to overcome fear and reduce anxiety responses.
In addition, it is often useful to incorporate Relaxation techniques That allow to reduce the levels of anxiety of the subject.
It should be borne in mind that a person with atophobia is totally unable to expose themselves to their feared stimuli alone, so that the therapist, with the aim of facilitating the intervention, may choose to add strategies that reduce the level of anxiety and nervousness.
References
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