ALGOPHOBIA: SYMPTOMS, CAUSES AND TREATMENTS - ARTE - 2024

The algophobia is excessive and irrational fear of any kind of related experience with pain. People with this disorder are highly obsessed with any situation, circumstance or element that can produce pain sensations.

Algophobia can significantly affect people's quality of life and modify their habitual behavior. For this reason, it is important to know how to detect this pathology well and carry out the pertinent interventions to overcome it.

Algofobia is an anxiety disorder, specifically it is part of the well-known specific phobias. In a sense, it is a type of phobia in which the phobic element is pain as an experience and / or sensation.

It should be noted that what a person with algophobia fears is the subjective perception of pain. There are no mechanisms to detect which stimuli can be phobic for the subject and which cannot.

In other words, it cannot be established what type of pain or sensation will be high enough for the person to respond with phobic fear to it. However, in general, people who suffer from this disorder tend to fear any type of pain experience, no matter how slight.

In fact, in many cases no intense pain experience is required for individuals to develop the phobic response. In addition, it is not necessary for the person to be exposed to health situations that make them experience pain for algophobia to affect their day to day.

The simple anticipation of being able to suffer some type of pain can lead to an obsession in which the subject is permanently alert to the possibility of experiencing painful sensations.

Are all fear of pain relevant to algophobia?

The answer to this question is no, and it must be taken very seriously in order to understand and correctly detect the disorder. Like any other type of phobia, it is important to know how to differentiate the pertinent fear of algophobia from the normal fear of pain.

People can have a greater or lesser predisposition for pain sensations. There are people who do not usually live painful experiences as highly traumatic and there are people who do.

Likewise, there are people with a personality marked by the search for sensations that can make them more immune to pain sensations and there are people who may have a totally opposite character.

In general, these latter may have a greater predisposition to respond with fear to pain and fear these types of experiences. However, this does not mean that they have algophobia, since this requires presenting a phobic fear of pain.

Characteristics of the fear of algophobia

The fear of algophobia has a series of properties that define and characterize it. These characteristics are very important since they allow the presence and absence of the disorder to be detected, and they allow to establish the bases of its diagnosis.

In general, in order to classify the fear of pain as phobic, the following requirements must be met.

Disproportionate

The fear to be experienced must be disproportionate to the demands of the situation. This first aspect of the phobic fear of pain is highly important since the sensation of pain represents a remarkably demanding situation for living beings.

In other words, it is normal for people to fear those situations that can harm us. In fact, the experience of fear in situations that can harm us is a totally normal and adaptive response.

However, the fear experienced in algophobia does not meet these characteristics and the fear response is highly disproportionate considering the demands of the real situation.

Irrational

Being disproportionate, the fear experienced in algophobia cannot be explained through reason.

In fact, the fear that is experienced is irrational even for the person who experiences them, who cannot reason why they are afraid of pain.

Uncontrollable

The fear experienced in algophobia is totally irrational but it is also totally uncontrollable. The subject knows that there is no point in experiencing this type of fear but is totally unable to control it.

The feelings of fear appear automatically and take over the state of the person completely.

Persists over time

The fear of algophobia is not transitory or pertaining to a certain age.

The fear persists over time and is always manifested unless it is intervened and it is overcome.

It is maladaptive

All the above characteristics make fear adopt a clearly maladaptive character.

The sensations that the subject experiences do not allow him to adapt well to his environment and can cause a series of negative repercussions.

Symptoms

Algophobia constitutes an anxiety disorder because when the person suffering from the disorder is exposed to his phobic stimulus, he responds with clearly anxious symptoms.

The anxiety response of the disorder usually appears only when the individual experiences pain but this is usually very intense. In addition, you can also experience certain symptoms of anxiety preventing pain sensations from appearing.

In general, the anxiety response of algophobia is characterized by:

Physical symptoms

Anxiety disorders are characterized by producing a specific physical symptomatology. In the case of algophobia, the physical symptoms experienced can vary significantly from case to case.

In fact, anxiety responses can take different shapes and forms for each person. However, all of them are characterized by presenting a specific group of symptoms related to increased activity of the autonomic nervous system.

In this sense, you may experience increased heart rate, increased respiratory rate, pupillary dilation, excessive sweating or muscle tension.

Likewise, headaches and / or stomach pain, feelings of vertigo, dizziness, and experiences of unreality or fainting are other physical symptoms that can appear in algophobia.

Cognitive symptoms

The other group of symptoms that define the anxiety response are those related to the individual's thinking and cognition. In fact, physical symptoms are always accompanied by a series of thoughts that provide feedback.

Thoughts can take multiple forms depending on each case, and cognitions related to fear of the feared stimulus tend to be numerous and highly uncontrollable. Likewise, all of them are characterized by having a highly negative content on the phobic stimulus.

The subject who suffers from algophobia will develop multiple highly negative thoughts both about the experience of pain and about their ability to cope with these types of situations.

What maintains the phobia?

The other essential element that defines the presence of algophobia consists of the behavior that causes the disorder. To be able to talk about algophobia it is necessary that it notably affect the well-being of the person and modify their habitual behavior.

In this sense, the main behavioral symptom that causes algophobia is the avoidance of the feared stimulus. The person who suffers from this disorder will try to avoid whenever possible any experience that may cause pain, in order to also avoid the anxiety response that it causes.

Multiple studies have focused on examining the functioning of this type of phobia and it has been shown how the main element that maintains the fear of the phobic stimulus is the avoidance of it.

Because the person completely avoids the experience of pain, he is totally unable to adapt to it, so negative thoughts and fears about the stimulus remain.

In this way, many times these types of alterations are overcome by exposing the subject to its phobic stimulus, preventing it from escaping from it and working to reduce feelings of anxiety at those times.

Consequences

Unlike other types of phobia, the feared element of algophobia can be somewhat abstract and poorly defined. This means that the situations that the individual avoids can be numerous and uncontrollable.

In fact, what the person fears is the pain itself, but the elements that can be avoided due to algophobia can be any type of situation that can cause pain. This can lead to a notable change in the person's behavior, which can become highly fearful and avoidant.

The subject may refuse to perform many of the usual and daily activities for fear of experiencing any situation that may cause pain.

Likewise, the individual can develop a clear obsession with pain and illness, and these elements can guide both their thinking and their habitual behavior.

Causes

There is a high consensus in stating that one of the main elements that causes algophobia is conditioning. Thus, this alteration is considered to be a learned behavior.

However, this factor does not appear as the sole cause of the disorder in all cases, so it is considered that algophobia is a multifactorial pathology.

Direct conditioning

As far as conditioning is concerned, the one with the greatest potential is direct conditioning.

In this sense, having lived very intense and highly traumatic pain experiences can be an important factor that motivates the development of algophobia.

Conditioning through information

There are other types of conditioning that can play an important role and that, in algophobia, can be even more prevalent.

And it is usually very common for this disorder to develop in elderly people, when they realize that most of their friends and acquaintances are suffering from various diseases and pains.

Thus, conditioning through third-party information can also contribute significantly to the development of algophobia and is postulated as one of the main causes of the disorder.

In addition, in many cases, algophobia can be a progressive alteration, in which fear gradually intensifies until it becomes phobic. At first, the person may have some fear about illness and pain and some concern about the possibility of pain. Later, this fear can intensify until the presence of algophobia is configured.

Treatment

It is very important to intervene adequately for algophobia in order to avoid its dire consequences. In addition, the most positive aspect of this pathology is that there are effective treatments that allow, in most cases, to overcome the disorder and eliminate the phobic components.

In this sense, the therapeutic tool that has shown very high rates of efficacy is psychotherapy. For this reason, it is advised that anyone who suffers from this disorder consult with psychology services.

Cognitive behavioral treatment

Specifically, the therapy that has been shown to be the most effective in the intervention of algophobia is cognitive behavioral treatment.

The factor that maintains and increases the responses of anxiety and fear of algophobia is the avoidance that people perform on the stimuli that can cause pain.

In this way, the basic aspect that is treated in this type of therapy is exposure, preventing the individual from avoiding their feared situations and gradually approaching them until they overcome the phobic fear.

In some cases, live exposure can be difficult, so imagination exposure is often used as well. Likewise, cognitive therapy takes on special relevance when it comes to modifying all those distorted thoughts about pain and illness.

References

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