Evaluating the Experience of Overcoming Pyrophobia - Research Paper Example

? Pyrophobia Pyrophobia is an overwhelming or an abnormal fear of fires and flames. A person, who is pyrophobic, may be so frightened by this phobia that he or she may be extremely fearful of campfires, fireworks, roast grills among others. This fear mostly occurs when a person is traumatized to some extent of life of which the trauma experience is from fire or even flames. For example, during childhood this person was engaged to a certain occurrence about fire of which it exposed him or her to pyrophobia (Pitchford, 2011). Also, this person might have experienced a damage caused by fire and resulted to severe injuries. In another case, if the fire was capable to escape and come out to the floor of the house, it creates a bad feeling of panic and fear. In human being environment, one is able to realize the good and bad aspects of an open even closed fire and recognize the feelings of happiness or fear it can build amongst us. For my case, I do not remember the root cause or origin of my fear of fire. Fire creates a source of extreme fear that is frequently out of control, which may create a negative impact on normal life. Some of these symptoms associated to this kind of phobia vary from one person to another. Of which they are confronted with their fears to flames and feel uncomfortable be nausea. Other people even become paralytic or panic attacks caused by anxiety (Pitchford, 2011). This symptom also causes an individual to lose their ability to function well during stress situations of which they feel uncomfortable being around the fire. This causes their heart beat rate increase gradually, lose their breath completely and begin to get fear and nervous and eventually faint. If the situation is not treated earlier when it occurs, the condition will worsen and lead a person to strain on social life and become unable to maintain their own lifestyles. Other symptoms of Pyrophobia are dizziness, can heighten senses, breathlessness, muscle tension, respiratory disorder, numbness and tingling, abnormal heart beats, dry mouth, trembling, and feeling out of control, feeling trapped and unable to escape and finally overwhelming feeling of anticipated disaster. People who have strong pyrophobia require getting some help from some experts or therapist so as to get relieved from this phobia. One of the most frequent treatments is through Exposure Therapy where if you suspect you have it or in which the pyrophobic people are introduced to it, they are advised to talk to their doctors who will recommend for a therapist. A therapist may also recommend additional treatments. The therapist will also form or introduce some cognitive behavioural therapy like show fire or flames to the patient, starting from the smallest amount, such as fire in a cigarette, to the general one, such as fire in the cooker or grills. The other treatment is by finding out the root cause of someone’s pyrophobia through Talk Therapy. This is where the patient is aided to remember the origin of his/her phobia, and then encouraged that there is no need to be frightened of fire as long as they are able to manage it. Apart from the above methods, one can also use other processes, which are usually five these are: Evaluation or is also known as Support Groups where one can describe and also try to talk his or her fears to one another and share their problems, as well as experience. This process is fairly common to be used as a method to cure this certain phobia of pyrophobic. Another process is feedback where the therapist gives an evaluation of this kind of phobia and its purposes and a treatment plan. The treatment plan may be done through breathing or repetitive method so as to reduce pyrophobic people’s stress and make them calm their unconscious mind. Then the patient and the therapist will create a list of scenarios involving their fears at a process known as develop fear hierarchy in each more strong than the last one. The patient will then start to expose him or herself to the items on the list starting from the least frightening circumstances (Groening, 2010). The patient will then realize that panicking will reduce within a few minutes of encountering the fears. And the last method may be taken by these patients who suffer pyrophobic so as to conquer their problem is through a process known as medication. Though, this method is not highly recommended since it is usually has a side back effect to the patient’s health. The excellent news about this exposure therapy is that it is successful to many individuals with this kind of phobia and not only this, but also many other phobias. However, getting a therapist who can be trusted can lead to some extreme difficult situations; therefore, one should use additional cognitive behavioural therapy techniques which can really help. For example, a therapist can help a patient realize that their thoughts about fire are deformed and educate them to think more logically. He or she may also inform patients that breathing or relaxation exercises can help to reduce their fears. During learning about anxiety and phobias, this is a very imperative step because it helps one to understand what is going on when one experiences it (Manning et al, 2011). Everybody, from being a child to the adult ones, gets experiences on anxieties and phobias at one time or another in their lifetime. Having this kind of feeling, that is, being anxious particularly in uncomfortable circumstances has never made anyone feel better. Nevertheless, with kids, these feelings are not only normal but they are even essential. So dealing with anxieties may prepare these young individuals to handle and pay attention to the worrying experiences and challenging circumstances of life. Anxiety is always normal and adaptive this is because it helps one to get ready for any danger. Therefore, the main aim is to learn and manage anxiety and not get rid of it. It can also turn out to be a problem when one’s body tells you that there is a danger even if when there is no real danger (Manning et al, 2011). Anybody can suffer from anxiety this is because it is one of the most ordinary mental health problems. Everyone both men and women can suffer from it, and, it can be generated by anything from dismissal to moving houses, relationship problems, and heights to crawling insects. Most victims commonly feel out of breath and have chest pains leading to quick heartbeats. It is also ordinary to feel like one will die this is because the heart pants rapidly. Even although one might feel as if he or she is going to die, during the panic attack one is not in physical danger. All these indications are caused by the release of hormones in the body, for instance, adrenaline. It is extremely unlikely that a panic attack alone can cause any lasting effect on the physical health of a person, unless there is there is an underlying physical condition. Phobias are extremely frequent in our lives (Pitchford, 2011). These phobias can dangerously hinder with the way people live their personal lives and unluckily most people feel they not capable of talking about it (Groening, 2010). They do not even look for help because they think there is no effectual cure for them. The different strategies of coping with phobias work differently for people. Some people might prefer to work on their own self help while others prefer to get involved in self help groups or to work with therapists and even do both. My real fear is about being burnt; thus, my Pyrophobia involves everything or anything with fire or flames such as lighters and matches. Fear is one of the most essential feelings when in contact with fire, generated automatically in the nervous. One is able to survive the instincts necessary to react with fear when one senses danger or even feels in danger for which it protects people. Fear makes a person be alert and gives a warning to danger and prepares one to deal with the situation. This is a natural feeling and helps in different situations that caution people to be more careful. Similarly, to all emotions, it can be gentle, average or even strong according to the circumstances and individuals. When one senses danger, the brain reacts immediately and sends signals that make the nervous system become more active (Pitchford, 2011). This allows the physical reaction to be faster in heartbeat, rapid breathing, and also increases in high blood pressure. Blood then pumps to the muscle groups so as to prepare the body for any physical action like running or fighting and the skin sweats so as to keep the body cool. Some of the people might become aware of feelings in their bellies, heads, chests, legs, or hands of which these physical feelings of fear can be gentle or even stronger (Groening, 2010). At times, fear is generated by something that is surprising or even unexpected such as a loud noise, even though it might not actually be dangerous. This is because the fear reaction is made more active immediately after a few seconds faster than the thoughts part of the brain can process or assess what is going on. As soon as our brains get enough information to realize there is no danger, it, therefore, turns off the fear response. Facing ones fears in a regular and reliable way is one of the ideas in the dominion of individual growth and is reaching so wide of which is becoming more dangerous (Manning et al, 2011). This is because I consider facing fears might be done in so many different ways. A number of the common ones have harmful penalties than constructive ones. The essential basis of guidance is that when facing ones fears and doing the right things, not only to get the required remarks, but one should ensure it goes away as he or she is getting used to it and the things he or she is afraid of. Nevertheless, a lot of people do not like to acknowledge they are facing fears because it does nothing to lower their anxiety, in fact, it worsens them. Cognition and psychology of a person plays a crucial role in understanding and managing fire. For example, a person who is afraid of fire either from matches or lighters, he or she comes to a decision as part of recovering her fear of fire, to face it head on. Therefore, he or she forces him or herself to start a small fire with matchbox, by lighting a candle. This makes the person to think that this way he will get over his fire fears forever. Thus, a person is there with the matchbox or lighter and a candle, feeling very scared as if he is seeing a burning house. He then thinks to himself; “God, I’m terrified! This is not a good thought” (Manning et al, 2011). In my attempt to eliminate fear of fire, I tried evaluating several activities in the form of a ladder from the least to the scariest. This include holding a lighter, match, watching someone light a match or clicking a lighter, looking at someone play with fire, being at close distance to open fire and finally being burnt. In conclusion, I have come across many people who face their fears each and every day. Fears and phobias manifest in physical feelings referred to anxiety, which if managed can effectively lead to handling phobias. I have fear of fire known as Pyrophobia, which I have been staying with for a long time now. Managing Pyrophobia might begin with using fire and seeing its benefits and eventually getting more exposed to it. This is what I tried to do in trying to manage my fear of fire. However, I did not manage to attain the goal of lighting a match, but the website helped me to a greater extent in evaluating pyrophobia and other phobias. References Groening, S. (2010). Pyrophobia Euro-American fear of slaves and fire in Charleston, South Carolina, 1820-1860. Library and Archives Canada Bibliothe?que et Archives Canada. Manning, M. K., Doescher, E., Carlo, M., & Loughridge, L. (2011). Scarecrow, doctor of fear. Mankato, Minn: Stone Arch Books. Pitchford, S. (2011). God in the dark: suffering and desire in the spiritual life. Collegeville, Minn: Liturgical Press. Read More