AGRAPHOBIA: SYMPTOMS, CAUSES AND TREATMENTS - ECONOMÍA - 2024

The agrafobia is the excessive fear of being a victim of rape or suffer some kind of violent attack. The fear of this type of situation is very prevalent in our society, especially in women. It is especially common among individuals who have been victims of sexual abuse, however, it is not necessary to have suffered a rape or a similar situation to develop this disorder.

Agraphobia constitutes a specific phobia that can significantly alter the functioning of the person suffering from it, reducing both their well-being and their quality of life.

Situational specific phobia is the diagnostic category that is attributed to agraphobia. This means that this disorder refers to the phobic fear of a certain situation, rape or sexual abuse.

It must be borne in mind that agraphobia is a somewhat special type of phobia, since unlike other more common types of phobias, what is feared is not a situation itself, but the prediction of a situation.

In other words, while the phobic of 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 agraphobia only experiences it when they believe that they may suffer a rape.

Obviously, if the subject with agraphobia suffers a real violation, he will also present a high anxiety response. However, the fear experienced in that situation cannot be classified as phobic, since anyone would develop it in the face of sexual abuse.

Therefore, 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 dreaded stimulus of agraphobia is therefore not rape or sexual abuse, but the fear that it may appear at any time.

Fear of abuse

The defining fear of agraphobia has a number of important characteristics. In fact, before being able to analyze any aspect of this disorder, it must be taken into account that the fear of rape is something completely normal that does not correspond to a phobia.

Thus, the relevant fear of agraphobia should be focused on the possibility of suffering sexual abuse. That is, the person with this disorder is permanently alert to the possibility of rape.

The subject believes that at any moment he can suffer abuse and, apparently neutral stimuli, can be interpreted as phobic and responding to these with high feelings of anxiety.

Criteria for diagnosing agraphobia

In order to classify a type of fear as corresponding to agraphobia, the following criteria must be taken into account.

Disproportion

The fear experienced in agraphobia is disproportionate to the demands of the situation.

This first criterion is highly important since sexual abuse in itself creates a situation with very high demands that can justify any anxiety response from a person.

The person with agraphobia experiences anxiety responses and a highly elevated fear of sexual assault in situations that are not really dangerous.

This means that the individual can experience extreme panic of being raped in seemingly normal situations such as being alone at home or seeing a man walking down the street.

Irrationality

This is another of the fundamental points that allow us to understand and adequately interpret the fear that characterizes agraphobia. The person with this anxiety disorder is not able to reason and explain why he suffers this type of high fear.

The individual may be aware that the situations that they fear so much do not really have to be dangerous and know that they should not respond with fear and excessive fear that they experience.

Uncontrollability

Related to the previous point, the individual may be aware that their fear is illogical and irrational, but this is not enough for them to control it. Therefore, the person may want to not be so scared and so fearful of being sexually abused, but cannot help it.

Faced with certain situations that the individual can interpret as threatening, the anxiety response appears, without the subject being able to control their fear.

Avoidance

The fear experienced is so intense that the subject will try to avoid it as much as possible in order to avoid the bad time. Unlike other phobias where the situation or the feared element and to avoid is well defined, the situations that a person with agraphobia can avoid can be more unpredictable.

Continuing with the previous comparison, the person with a phobia of spiders will avoid any situation in which they may be in contact with this animal, that is, they will avoid being near a spider.

However, in agraphobia the term "being close to sexual abuse" is too ambiguous to be able to define what situations a person with this pathology will avoid.

Therefore, the individual with agraphobia can avoid a wide range of situations in which a stimulus is present that he interprets as threatening.

Persistent

At certain times in life, especially if we have recently experienced aversive events, people can be more fearful of multiple situations.

In fact, a victim of sexual abuse is very likely to experience a heightened fear of being raped during the moments afterward. However, this fact by itself does not explain the presence of agraphobia.

To be able to speak of agraphobia, fear has to be persistent, that is, it must be present for years and it does not have to be specific to a specific phase or period of time.

Maladaptive

Finally, it must be taken into account that the fear of agraphobia, as with all types of phobias, is maladaptive. This criterion acquires special relevance in agraphobia since the fear of suffering sexual abuse can be adaptive.

When an individual sees that they are about to be raped, they experience a fear that allows them to respond appropriately and adapt to the demands of the situation.

However, this does not happen in agraphobia, since the individual with this alteration experiences the sensations of fear in anxiety in situations that do not pose any danger to their integrity.

Symptoms

Agraphobia produces a series of symptoms on the person that can question its functionality.

On the one hand, it must be taken into account that the anxiety experienced by the person when phobic stimuli appear is very high and is accompanied by a series of very annoying symptoms.

The person with agraphobia 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, feelings of suffocation, muscle tension and even panic attacks.

Likewise, these physical symptoms can be accompanied by highly pernicious thoughts about sexual abuse. These negative thoughts increase anxiety and can take over the person's state.

Finally, the conjunction of these symptoms that we have described so far has a notable impact on the individual's behavior.

The person with agraphobia may have enormous difficulty leaving home because the fear of sexual assault may increase after leaving the safety of the home.

Individuals with agraphobia may find it difficult to establish personal relationships due to the mistrust that their fears create, and their phobic elements can also affect their sexual intimacy.

Causes of agraphobia

There is no single cause of agraphobia, however, there are a series of well-defined factors that are related to its appearance.

First of all, people who have been victims of sexual abuse are more likely to suffer from agraphobia. This fact indicates that direct conditioning plays a major role in the development of agraphobia.

However, not all victims of sexual abuse develop agraphobia and not all people with agraphobia have been victims of rape. Thus, there are other factors that can also play an important role in the appearance 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 witnessed.

Overprotective educational styles, in which a special emphasis is placed on the multiple dangers in life and the threats that people constantly face, can also contribute to the development of agraphobia.

How is agraphobia maintained?

All people who are victims of sexual abuse or harassment experience heightened feelings of fear and insecurity later on.

However, not all these people end up developing agraphobia, so it is postulated that there are some elements other than the original cause that are responsible for maintaining the phobia.

Although there are no irrefutable data, it seems that the main element that maintains agraphobia is avoidance.

In this way, people who, due to the fear they experience, avoid any stimulus that causes them feelings of fear and anxiety, will have a greater probability of maintaining agraphobia.

On the other hand, 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

Agraphobia must be treated with psychotherapy, through a therapist specialized in this type of alterations. Currently there are multiple types of therapies, however, the ones that have been shown to be the most effective in reversing agraphobia are cognitive behavioral therapies.

These therapies are based on what we mentioned recently, that is, on performing interventions of exposure to the feared stimuli. The exhibition can be done live or in imagination, through hierarchical strategies 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 to a stimulus, it is probably more appropriate to perform systematic desensitization to gradually expose the patient.

On the other hand, if a subject presents a very abstract phobic stimulus, the live exposure is probably too complex, so the exposure in imagination would be chosen.

Regardless of the modality, the therapeutic objective of these techniques is the same and consists of the person making contact with their feared stimuli without running away from them.

This fact allows the individual to gradually see how their phobic and feared stimuli are actually harmless, a fact that allows them to overcome fear and reduce anxiety responses.

In addition, it is often useful to incorporate relaxation techniques that reduce the subject's anxiety levels.

It must be taken into account that a person with agraphobia is totally incapable of exposing himself to his feared stimuli on his own, so the therapist, in order to facilitate the intervention, may choose to add strategies that allow reducing the level of anxiety and nervousness.

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