Non-Clinical Phenomenology

Non-clinical terminologies are used to describe the irrational fear or the dark, are Nyctophobia, Scotophobia, Lygophobia and Achluophobia. Nyctophobia is common in many children and adults because the brain imagines negative scenarios of ‘what would happen’ when in the dark. The word derives from the Greek roots, ‘nuktos’ and ‘phobos’ meaning night and fear. This paper will discuss the cause of the fear, physical and psychological symptoms, and statistics, ways to overcome the fear and the success rate.

A phobia is an irrational fear that isn’t like a general anxiety disorder because it is usually connected to something specific. About ninety percent of children and ten percent of adults have Nyctophobia. Nyctophobia usually generate from a traumatic experience from one’s past. For example, being left in the dark as a punishment or joke as a child to scare them, possibly making siblings and friends responsible for creating the fear. The film industry and

They may become clingy, insisting to sleep with someone, and/or unable to sleep without a night light. In both adults and children, physical symptoms may be aches and pains, rapid shallow breathing, heart palpitations, shivering and trembling, chest pains, feeling like choking, nausea, other gastrointestinal distress, crying, screaming, and/or reduced appetite or conversely overeating or binge eating. Psychological symptoms will be thoughts of death, dying-often associated with Thanatophobia (an abnormal fear of death), fear of being attacked by mythical creatures that adults often created to teach their children by frightening them into have good behavior; checking and rechecking under the bed or in closets, refusing to sleep alone or refusing to step out of the house when dark, trying to stay up all night, waking up several times, feeling dread, and/or feeling like running away at the thought of facing the