What is Agraphobia?

Agraphobia is abnormal fears relating to abuse, sexual abuse and attack, rape, or abusive relationships. The condition is surprisingly common but is not widely known or discussed. Agraphobia should not be confused with agoraphobia, which is fear of open space.

Agraphobia

Symptoms Of Agraphobia
Symptoms of agraphobia is similar to most phobias, which include breathlessness, abnormal sweating, nausea, dryness of the mouth, anxiety attacks, heart palpitations, excessive shaking, inability to speak or think clearly, a fear of dying, becoming mad or losing control, a sensation of detachment from reality or a full blown anxiety attack.

Some agraphobiacs are afraid at all times, while some react to different visual or audio stimuli, including a reminder of a traumatic event that occurred in the past which triggered the development of the agraphobia.

Those with agraphobia might be relatively housebound because fear of sexual attack may enhance once a person has exited the safety of home. Yet being at home is no guarantee of safety, and some people spend restless days and nights afraid that an attacker will enter the home. Relationships may be difficult to maintain, and even with wonderful people who have no ill intent, the agraphobic may be frightened of any form of sexual intimacy.

Causes of Agraphobia

In many cases it is easy to draw connecting line between a past experience linking emotional trauma with sexual abuse and agraphobia in the present. Such experiences do not have to happen to the sufferer: watching sexual abuse occur (even in movies or on television) can act as a trigger to the condition. The body then develops a fear of the experience occurring again as a way of ‘ensuring’ that the event does not occur.

In some cases sex abuse hysteria, caused by misinformation, overzealous or careless investigation practices, or sensationalist news coverage, can cause agraphobia as well: This being different than the PTSD-driven agraphobia that comes from real situations of sexual abuse. Day care sex abuse hysteria is one example of this erroneously caused agraphobia. Many people who were originally accused or even found guilty were later found to be innocent of sexual abuse, their ordeal having been caused by hysteria and misinformation-driven agraphobia.

It should be noted that evidence supports that both real sexual abuse and also false accusations of sexual abuse are prevalent, making a professional and carefully done investigation necessary to determine which type of agraphobia may be occurring in any particular case. Newer standards for sexual abuse investigation have been developed in some states (and are mandated by courts) in order to prevent such hysteria-driven agraphobia from causing prosecution of the innocent. These new standards are not uniformly applied or followed in all states, however.

Malicious intent can also sometimes cause hysteria-driven agraphobia in children. For example, a vindictive or abusive parent may purposely try to instill agraphobic hysteria in a child in order to manipulate a false accusation by a child against the other parent in a divorce child-custody case, or to trigger a damaging police investigation in order to abuse an innocent parent. This sometimes results in the prosecution of the parent who tried to cause the false accusation. Courts are increasingly viewing proven cases of intentionally-induced agraphobia in children as a form of child abuse, as well as being a crime against the falsely accused target adult.

There is also some suggestion that overt and obvious fear in parents that children will be sexually abused might cause this condition in adults. Studies on teaching “stranger danger” for instance, show that some kids become too fearful of all the negative things that might occur to them, and there has been some effort to modify these teachings so that they help children self-protect without creating too much fear.

Treatment of Agraphobia

Treatments for agraphobia can include counselling, hypnosis, desensitization, and medication. Alternative medicines such as energy therapy and hypnotherapy are claimed to have success rates.

Related posts:

  1. Contreltophobia: Fear of Sexual Abuse