Phobias, Disappointments and Grief: A Fast Remedy

For example, one can develop the fear of feathers after hearing the news about the bird flu.

It’s worth saying that mankind has experienced phobias since the dawn of time.

In the works by Areteus of Cappadocea (latter half 1st century B.C.) there’s a description of a case in which you can easily recognize what today would be called agoraphobia.

“Some patients don’t show anything unusual at home, but in less familiar atmosphere, you can notice at once the incapacity of their mind. One carpenter was like this. He measured the planks carefully, was a skilled woodworker, made reasonable arrangements with the customers, but all this was only when he was within his usual scope of activity. But every time he was going to the square, to the market or baths he put down his tools with a deep sigh, bent his back, started to shake and went into a state of sad agitation as he was losing sight of his workshop and his apprentices. After he turned back home, he calmed down and went about work again.”

(Каннабих Ю. 1994. p. 45).

Felix Platter (1537—1614) describes obsessive-compulsive disorders amongst other mental diseases:

“One woman, a correspondence clerk’s wife, can’t dismiss a fear of killing her husband, whom she loves very much by the way. Another woman, a cantiniere, feels the same kind of worry concerning her newborn baby; both of them would like to forget about these thoughts, but they can’t”

(Ibid., p. 93—94).

The number of phobias is almost immeasurable. There are people who try to classify fears and add new exotic names to the list… This list called the doctrine of fears, was named by one specialist as “the garden of Greek roots” (You can see it at Appendix I). In my opinion, such classification is more philological than bearing any practical value. The keys to working through these unpleasant states is the knowledge about the processes which go on in the mind when a person is afraid, rather than the terms used to name various conditions.

Risk factors

There are several important factors which affect the chances of a person developing a phobia.

1. Natural factor: the nature of a person. There are people who are naturally resistant to changes in their surroundings and those who feel at a loss even if there’s a slightest confusion in their life. Some people worry and are frightened even when the reason for it is insignificant. Their body type is in most cases elongated: a narrow face, a thin neck, comparatively long arms and legs. This constitution type ([битая ссылка] phenotype) is called asthenic or gracile.

People with fine skin and soft hair often worry too much about their family. These peculiarities are typical of so called “pyknic”, or sumptuous body type.

There is another phenotype that falls within the danger area. These people are inclined to day-dreaming and exaggerating reality. They have deep-set eyes, a narrow nose and a chiselled face: their body type is “bony” and lean.

2. The memory of generations. According to the ideas of some researchers (B. Hellinger, V. Dokuchaev, L. Dokuchaeva), the information from the precedent generations can be transmitted to their succession through the family spiritual field, through the “big soul” which all of us belong to. Sometimes my patients notice that the positive experience and support comes from “the roots” or “from the back”. But the memory of stressful situation which the ancestors had gone through can also be inherited. In this case a person experiences fears which cannot be explained by his or her own life or the contemporary situation.

3. Early childhood impressions. It often happens that the beginning of life creates a base for phobias and other traumas. Lack of experience and support, high levels of sensibility; there aren’t many people who managed to avoid “childhood fears”. In many cases they transform and become a part of the adult life. Some of the authors also pay special attention to pregnancy and childbearing periods (O. Rank, S. Grof).

4. Type of education. It’s quite important what kind world view was received from the patient’s family. It’s great if the overall spirit was that every problem could be solved: “there’s a chance in every crisis, I see the goal and I don’t see any obstacles.” But it’s a different story if the mood of panic was predominant in the family and if every trouble is seen as apocalyptic. It’s one thing when the child was taught to lead a healthy lifestyle and to wash hands before eating. However, it’s a totally different thing if there was a constant “fight with germs” and if they suggested the idea of people being helpless as if the immune system didn’t exist at all. Of course the risk of development of stable fears is much higher in the latter case.

4. General level of education and life competence. The more you know about life and ways of solving the problems, the calmer and more self-assured you are. The calmer you are, the more adequate your actions are. The more adequately you act, the more self-assurance you get. And vice versa, the less experienced you are, the more nervous you get and it’s more likely that you won’t accept the challenge.

5. Situations when it’s really difficult to adapt. There are extreme cases which even a very reasonable person can find difficult to maintain his or her cool. Unexpected situations may arise at the time when one simply has no experience dealing with and feels completely helpless. Such situations can happen at any stage in our life: from infant to elderly.

6. Whether one enjoys or lacks the support of other people or of society in general. An active team member can find it easier to overcome challenges than a lonely person. Keeping one’s cool is much easier when everything is calm rather than when the situation is critical. A state with a well-established social programme facilitates the resolution of various emergency situations unlike a society where every man is for himself.

Other risk factors

There are other reasons that may cause fear. If one’s immune system is weak, it is easier to get an infection. In exactly the same way when the overall energy level of a person is low (or even when one hasn’t had enough sleep or has recently had the flu), then there is a chance that this person has lower self-esteem and might end up suffering from a phobia.

Our brain works consistently if it gets enough oxygen. In the case of painless ischaemia, that is in the case of insufficient blood supply, our brain’s energy “goes down”. In this situation a person is prone to “catching” a fear.

Lack of oxygen can also cause panic attacks. When the brain doesn’t get enough oxygen, it tries to increase the blood flow and triggers an adrenalin rush. As a result, the blood flow increases, the heart rate increases, and blood pressure goes up, but this state is rather unpleasant. In this situation a person might think that he or she is losing their mind or dying.

Unfortunately, the majority of people who experience a sympathoadrenal episode don’t know that this is a sign of life and not a preview of death. It’s just a very awkward way our body regulates itself. Such episodes trigger our fears that something might be wrong with our health. If that is your case, you will find more information on it in part 1.15 where I will show several examples from practice and will offer you a step-by-step action plan.

Special cases

Important information: some conditions can have different origins but are manifested through similar symptoms. It is very important to understand that not all these conditions have psychological grounds.

Anxiety and phobic disorders after chemical intoxication (delirium alcoholicum, for example) are to be treated with a complex approach. In such cases medication, and psychotherapy only wouldn’t be enough. More than that, relying exclusively on psychotherapy may lead to the death of the patient.

Phobias caused by endogenous psychosis such as schizophrenia, manic-depressive psychosis, etc. which are usually accompanied by hallucinations and delusions are a separate case. In these situations, a patient would also need a combination of medication and psychotherapy.

Organic lesion of the central nervous system (CNS) caused by oxygen deficiency during pregnancy or labour (asphyxia) or head injuries and brain tissue injuries, can also lead to phobias: nervous processes are characterized by lower degree of stability, and that is why failures such as micro epilepsy occur.

A vitamin D deficiency during childhood, which influences calcium uptake can lead to the conditions when a child becomes easily scared.

What doesn’t have to be treated

We have to note that one has to distinguish between manifestations of phobias or neuroses and a natural activation of energy sources which takes place before crucial moments in our lives. For an actor who is about to go on stage or for an athlete getting ready for a competition feeling nervous is absolutely natural. There is a special term for it: stage fright. It is characterized by an increase of the heartbeat and hurried breathing. However, this is a healthy reaction if it doesn’t reach any extreme manifestations. Many people would experience the same feeling before public speaking or before an important meeting. The reason why we have to go through these physiological changes is to get some additional strength. It is a way the body prepares itself for a challenge, thus it’s a preparatory stage and not some traumatic consequences.

Lack of confidence, however uncomfortable it may be, cannot be considered as a traumatic consequence either. What one might find there is the lack of competence and a feeling of one’s vulnerability but there is no psychological wound.

It is the reaction to psychotrauma that we would like to talk about in this book. According to the clinical scale “psychosis – psychopathy – neurosis,” we will focus our attention on the disorders of the neurotic level.

A phobia is an information trauma

A phobia is a result of an injury inflicted by frightening information at the moment of one’s confusion. This process triggers old survival strategies characterised by stereotypic simulation of defence mechanisms caused by any sign of danger, however distant and associative it may be.

In other words, a phobia is the state of a body when it experiences tension, feels traumatized by this encounter for the first time, and then tries to avoid this aspect of one’s life in subsequent situations.

When a physical trauma takes place, it means that a foreign object enters the tissue of the body. Trauma impedes the normal functioning of the body. In this case there is something that disrupts the integrity of the body and gets stuck in it (like a splinter, for example), and then there’s a reaction to this intrusion. The body cannot feel good unless this foreign object is removed. When our mind is traumatized, then it means that the “splinters” get into the body of our mind.

The signal of danger is like a splinter in this case. Our intellect fails to find an answer to an important question, and the body goes into emergency response based on the ancient strategies of survival. The trick is that this ancient reaction function in a single-shot mode. Having been activated once, it reappears every time when there’s even the slightest reminder of possible danger. This happens even in the situations when a new encounter doesn’t actually bear any harm but there’s just a hint of danger.

A phobia is similar to an allergy

Just like pollen might seem as a virus to a perturbed immune system, to a person suffering from a phobia some life circumstances are perceived as a threat which require an aggressive reaction, when in fact this problem can be resolved without panic.

Allergies are the state of heightened sensitivity, that is: excessive reaction of the immune system to the environment. A phobia has the same mechanism but at the psychological level. A phobia leads to the distortion of reality and to an inadequate energy-consuming response to a certain aspect of life.

What do our sensations reveal to us?

Fortunately, we are able to observe the processes that cause tension with the help of our internal vision. Our sensations function as a detector.

I have thoroughly studied the sensations of my patients suffering from phobias and discovered that there are two components in this feeling that one should learn to distinguish:

1. Fright as a trauma;

2. Fear as a reaction.

In the case of fright, we are talking about the information which our intellect failed to process and sent to the autonomic depths of our mind. If the intellectual response cannot be produced, then the body will provide an energetic one.

The signal that triggers autonomic reactions usually looks like greyness, darkness or blackness. When a person is frightened, it feels as if some black powder is poured through the top of the head to the solar plexus where it forms a lump of fear.

Ways to react

Fear leads to an increased heart rate and hyperventilation; it increases blood pressure, a person feels hot, there’s tension in the muscles, the pupils are dilated, and all the senses are heightened. When this happens, other functions, such as those responsible for digestion, rest and sexual interest are slowed down or upset. This is done in order to prepare the body for an attack or retreat. Mobilization effects are connected with the active work of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system.

Fig. 1. Physiology of the autonomic nervous system: as we see, the work of the sympathetic nervous system mobilizes the body, and parasympathetic brings it back to calmness and helps to store energy.

The opposite reaction is a collapse: blood pressure falls, and a person feels cool and close to fainting.

This reaction can be compared to the one of a bug that got touched: it keeps still and doesn’t make a single move.

There have been cases when people froze as if they were dead when meeting a bear, and the bear walked away.

We can see the similar reaction in the painting “The Nightmare” by Johann Heinrich Füssli (1741—1825). Fear is sitting on the stomach, while the mind is “switched off”.

Such reaction can be justified at the moment of danger but the problem is that the person remains in this state even after the danger has passed. The body seems to find it hard to return from the extreme mode to a normal state.

Fig. 2. J.H. Füssli. The Nightmare. 1790.

Psychocatalysis helps in the case of phobias

The techniques which help set oneself free from phobias and other psychological traumas have been developed within the frames of my original methodology called Psychocatalysis. Psychocatalysis is a method of focusing the attention of a person on the processes that get stuck, with the intent of restoring these processes back to normal functionality. Our ability to trace the signals in our internal space is the foundation of our self-regulation. This ability can serve not only for diagnostics but also as a way to introduce changes. When the conscious attention of a person helps the profound wisdom of a body, even long-lasting fears can be cured within a short period of time. Now let’s take a closer look at how phobias are formed and what one should do to get rid of them quickly and easily.

1.3. How phobias appear

Rest state

A well-rested healthy person feels that his or her body is light and cool, there’s the feeling of calm in the chest, and his or her head is clear. It is as if the person was filled with light. Energy of the body is flowing freely, and the mind is calm. In a state like that a person is absolutely aware of the fact where he or she is and what is happening. This person knows what to do next. The inner self at the level of the solar plexus is guiding this person through life. Reason at the level of the forehead helps the person. At the level of the chest there’s a firm and calm sensation. These are the three states of the completeness which save the person: the completeness of the mind, soul and will. Clarity, calmness and strength. I think this state is what we can find in the painting by Zinaida Serebriakova (1884—1967). Every person tries to maintain this state, but it doesn’t always happen.

Fig. 3. Z. Serebriakova. A Girl with the Candle. Self-portrait, 1911.

The beginning of neurosis

The metro trains in Moscow never come to a halt in the tunnel, but this time the train has stopped in the tunnel and it is not moving. One can simply wait for this episode to end, especially taking into account that there are people in charge of restoring a regular train service. One can simply continue reading a book or watching a film, listening to music or simply looking at the surrounding people and thinking his or her thoughts. This is exactly what most people do: they exchange opinions and interpretations on what’s going on and make some assumptions, all while remaining calm.

However, a person who is not used to the metro might think that the train will remain like that forever and there won’t be enough oxygen for everyone underground. Even though oxygen is not a problem, as the systems for oxygen supply are well thought through. Anyway the mind of such a person quickly pictures something really pessimistic.

What is happening at the level of the brain at this moment? Following some misleading ideas and fantasies our mind makes false assumptions and assesses the situation as an emergency. The cerebral cortex “freezes”, and the signal is sent deep down into the body where ancient evolutionary mechanisms spring to action. As a result, instead of sensibly doing something useful, a person suffers an autonomic storm. Moreover, once activated, this reaction will not turn off automatically.

This is what sets the beginning of neurosis. Most likely this person will not be able to enter a metro station again.

Neurophysiology of fear

The Human being is a multilevel person

Our nervous system (NS) consists of mutually supporting elements which were developed at the different stages of the evolution. There are basic levels which unite us with much more ancient forms of life; there are also superstructural elements which are relatively newer from the evolutionary point of view: they are the unique patrimony of a human being.

Fig. 4. Neocortex is a “human brain”; limbic system is our “animal brain”, and our “reptile, or lizard brain” is located in the brain stem. In this figure you can see several elements of the limbic system: thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala, hippocampus, and a basal gland, all of which take part in the way our body reacts to any incoming message.

“Reptile level” is our brainstem: this is what unites us with dinosaurs, turtles, and crocodiles. “Animal level” is our limbic system, which we share with cats and dogs. Finally, there is the human brain, per se; it is called the neocortex, and it is what makes us unique. All of these elements coexist within our nervous system. Of course, such a division is only relative since dinosaurs also had a cortex. However, the cortex plays a far more important role in the life of a human being. To a large extent evolution can be viewed as “embraination”, or cephalization, as it was noted by a famous philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955).

Nevertheless, there is a more primeval nervous system; it is autonomous, and it is also referred to as “autonomic” which is represented throughout the body with ganglia, which look like “beads” along the spinal column (for instance, in the solar plexus) and even in some organs like our heart. One could observe the following principle: the lower we move down our body, the older the structures we encounter there.

There are several elements of our body which we share with annelid worms and even with hydras.

Our tender cortex

The cerebral cortex requires very delicate conditions to do its work. It is a well-known fact that it has little resistance to various injurious effects such as oxygen deficiency or the poisoning influence of ethanol. If the brain remains without oxygen for 5—7 minutes, its cells begin to die. In case of alcohol intoxication, the cortex starts deteriorating. However, the subcortex is much more resistant to harmful influence. The spinal medulla can remain up to 24 minutes without oxygen, while ganglia of the autonomous nervous system continue functioning without nutrition for many hours.

Emergency situations disturb the fine-tuning of the mind and take it to the realm of ancient survival instincts. When our intellect finds itself in a critical situation and it cannot find any optimal way of reacting to it, it “forwards” this task to the older structures of our mind. It is the place where our mind stores survival experience gathered from millions of years of evolution and this is what may lead to the altered state of mind.

Fright and primitive instincts

It also happens in the cases when the control of the situation is lost due to intoxication. A typical example in such case would be alcoholic intoxication: functioning of the cortex is temporarily slowed down, and a person is overwhelmed with primitive emotions, with aggressive, sexual or other desires which he or she can hardly control. There’s a reason why people say “Wine is in, truth is out”. There’s a similar reaction when a person is under anaesthetic. As you can see, if our cortex analyser fails to complete the task, the amygdala (the brain’s alarm dispatcher) redirects the task to the more stress-resistant structures. Our “subcortex” and autonomous nervous system step in. In these cases, the following behaviours are activated:

a) Bursting with energy and fighting for life;

b) Running away;

c) Preserving energy, “going into the sleep mode”, hiding.

There are not many options to choose from. Something happens that we are not ready for. The signal is sent to the higher divisions of the brain. Our intellect cannot find the solution. A person feels confused.

There’s a shift towards the primitive survival strategies; the autonomic nervous system is activated: reactions like “shock affection” or “apparent death” take place.

Fig. 5. Signal routing when an emergency situation takes place.

Like a bee against the window

It is a good moment to remind you about the observation of Ernst Kretschmer (1888—1964), an outstanding German clinical therapist. In his work “Hysteria, Reflex, and Instinct” first published in 1923 Kretschmer describes the way a bird or a bee behaves when it accidentally flies into a room. In its striving towards light it becomes hectic: “The creature is flapping and fluttering, moving chaotically from side to side; these movements repeat as convulsions until it finds its way through the window to freedom. Then normal flying movements are immediately restored” (Kretschmer, 1996, p.15)

Kretschmer saw the analogy between the above-mentioned behaviour and the way people behave in extreme situations. Thus, during an earthquake the crowd typically behaves irrationally and chaotically. But even these chaotic movements can be life-saving.

Two soldiers in the command unit

Kretschmer also gives another very bright example: “Two soldiers are incapable of dealing with the horrors of war. The first would think about his neat handwriting, his technical skills, and connections at home; he would consider the pros and cons, make several clever steps and would finally find himself working in a quiet office. The other is found in the trenches after heavy artillery shelling; his eyes are shifty. He is taken away, he begins to shiver, then he is taken to the psych ward and after that he is sent to work the garrison service where he meets the other soldier in the quiet office busy writing.