Gamophobia is the fear of marriage.
By agreeing to get married, a person takes a very serious step on which his entire future life depends. It is usually considered quite natural to feel nervous before a wedding celebration or registration at the registry office.
However, there is a category of people who, at the mere thought of marriage, experience not slight excitement, but panic fear. Such a reaction is a sign of an anxiety disorder such as gamophobia.
The difference between reluctance to marry and gamophobia
Refusal to get married is usually associated with doubts about the choice of a partner, with a reluctance to change the usual lifestyle or burden oneself with additional responsibilities.
With gamophobia, a person may be confident in choosing a partner and ready to spend his whole life with him, but the thought of legitimizing the relationship causes symptoms characteristic of all phobias: increasing anxiety, rapid heartbeat, increased sweating, difficulty breathing, etc. In this case, fear of entering into legal marriage cannot be equated with reluctance to get married.
A person suffering from gamophobia may want to officially register a marriage, but the phobia creates a serious psychological obstacle , which forces the person to avoid the wedding celebration at all costs.
Modern methods of treating panic attacks
In modern medicine, outpatient treatment usually prescribes:
- Antidepressants.
- Sedatives and tranquilizers.
- It is recommended to avoid situations that can provoke a panic attack.
- Inpatient treatment in specialized neurological clinics with consultations of a psychologist and psychotherapist is recommended.
In the first days of taking the strongest psychotropic drugs, you become like a plant. Your diction resembles the diction of a person with disabilities, and it seems to you that you speak the same way as before - the fact of inhibited diction is noticed by your close people. When you start taking the medications, you may be able to walk to a destination that you would normally take 5 minutes to within an hour. Then your body adapts to the new drug and the inhibition gradually goes away, but you become dependent on antidepressants and tranquilizers.
You are forced to avoid the usual rhythm of life and the usual cheerful companies of friends due to the increased sedative effect of the drugs and their incompatibility with alcohol.
In addition to antidepressants and tranquilizers, during panic attacks, doctors usually recommend avoiding places and people that can provoke a new attack. Great advice if you have a couple of servants, preferably invisible, and a stable passive source of financial income. But what to do if you at least need to get to work, but you’re scared to death of going down the subway alone? After all, there underground your ears immediately become blocked, your head is spinning, your hands begin to sweat, your face turns crimson-red, you are suffocating, your heart is about to jump out of your chest and it seems that at any second you will lose consciousness!
What can cause a phobia?
- Negative emotions experienced in childhood. If there were tense relationships between the parents in the family and the child witnessed frequent quarrels, then a strong emotional shock could provoke the development of gamophobia. A man’s aggression and a woman’s degraded position form in a child a distorted idea of roles in the family and reinforce repulsive images of husband and wife.
- Negative experience. It is believed that an anxiety disorder can develop if a person has had to endure pain and humiliation in a situation related to marriage. However, research has shown that most people with gamophobia have not experienced anything like this. In this case, an important role in the development of the disease is given to films and television programs that tell about the difficulties of family life.
- Fear of divorce. If a person has already had to go through a difficult, scandalous divorce, then the fear of marriage hides the fear of repeated divorce and the negativity that accompanies a breakup.
Escape from fears
Having happened once, these terrible states come again and again, more and more often, with an ever stronger amplitude. You gather your fortitude and visit all the necessary doctors, and as a result, no physical illness is found in you. Instead, they make a mysterious diagnosis of “panic attacks” and, at best, prescribe you an antidepressant or strong sleeping pills.
Treatment with antidepressants significantly impacts your wallet, physical condition, and most importantly, your self-esteem. After all, God forbid anyone finds out that you are taking an antidepressant - this is a stigma, a white ticket for life. You have a new fear - to carry the status of a psycho for the rest of your life.
And no one cares that panic attacks are a neurological disorder, very far from psychiatric pathologies. Nobody cares
If you consulted a psychologist or psychotherapist, that means you are crazy and socially dangerous. Unfortunately, this stereotype still lives in our modern society.
Once you take a break between courses of taking antidepressants, attacks of fear accompany you absolutely everywhere. You become unable to live a normal social life.
I want to stay at home forever, in my favorite bed, and hide my head under a soft and warm blanket. And at the same time, it is desirable that someone reliable sit quietly next to you and guard your sleep, monitor your breathing, so that if something suddenly happens to you, he will immediately call an ambulance.
Some people experience terrible panic attacks their entire lives. Is this really forever? Is there really an effective cure or method to get back to your old happy social life?
Behavior of a person suffering from gamophobia
Sometimes a person suffering from this phobia can be suspected of frivolity, since he does not enter into long-term relationships. However, in reality this behavior is a consequence of gamophobia.
Due to a panicky irrational fear of marriage, a gamophobe develops a persistent dislike of deep affection. In some cases, a person finds the strength to agree to marriage, but due to a panic attack he does not attend his own wedding .
Slow breathing and poetry
I found a forum with people like me. There I poured out my despair, and they supported me. They also recommended special literature - I bought books, and they helped me a lot. I got most of the information from there: in one I read about the respiratory system, in another about muscle relaxation, I tried everything on myself. I made bookmarks and during the attack I read it like a mantra: “A healthy person’s heart can beat at a speed of two hundred beats per minute for many hours.” I often googled “can you die from a panic attack” and every time I saw that no, no one dies from panic attacks. I was also clinging to this straw.
One evening, back in Riga, during a panic attack, I was shaking under two blankets. Mom sat down next to me and said: “Let's pray. Repeat “Our Father” after me.” That's how I learned prayer. Then it seemed that it was helping, but now I know that any poem can help me. You need to distract your brain, stop listening to yourself and your symptoms. It’s almost impossible to think about anything else, but you can force yourself to read poetry. I loudly told myself about everything I see: “I see a black TV, there are one-two-three-four-five trees on the street...” If there is a loved one who knows about panic attacks and understands, you can call him, just talk - not about attacks. At first it may seem that this is not helping, you will want to hang up, but once you force yourself to listen to your friend: the brain switches from panic to something else, the circle “adrenaline - fear - adrenaline” is broken.
The attack can grow like a snowball. I realized that if you learn to ignore the symptoms, they will not go beyond the first phase. I read that the best way to get rid of panic attacks is to forget them. Then it seemed to me: yeah, try and forget about it. But in fact, this is true: the less you pay attention, the easier they will pass. And in the end they will pass completely.
Consequences of Gamophobia
Gamophobia refers to those fears that can forever destroy a person’s personal life. The difficulty is that this disease threatens the well-being of not only the gamophobe himself, but also his partner. Constant disagreements about marriage often lead to a break in the relationship.
For some couples, planning children is possible only in an official marriage. Often a person prone to fear is well aware of his responsibility for the happiness of his partner and experiences a strong feeling of guilt for his reluctance to legitimize the relationship. To solve such problems, it is necessary to seek psychological help in a timely manner.
Treatment in a specialized clinic
In a specialized medical institution, the following methods of treating panic attacks are usually used:
- Initial consultation with a psychotherapist.
- General diagnosis of the condition of the whole organism and especially the patient’s brain.
- Prescription of potent tranquilizers, sedatives and antidepressants.
- Group psychotherapy sessions.
- Exercise therapy.
- Yoga and other breathing practices.
- Acupuncture.
- Physiotherapeutic treatment sessions (electrophoresis, magnetotherapy, darsonvalization, pressotherapy, etc.).
- Hydrotherapy (Charcot shower, cedar barrel, spa capsule and more).
- Complete nutrition.
- Massage sessions.
- Occupational therapy.
Treatment of panic attacks in a hospital setting is effective in the short term. During a hospital stay, in conditions of isolation from the usual emotional stress on the human psyche, panic attacks go into remission. This has less to do with the therapy methods described above, and more to do with the opportunity to communicate with people who have the same problems. The context of this conclusion will become clear a little later.
When a person returns to his usual environment, under the influence of stress, attacks of fear return again. The return of panic attacks after a course of treatment is also explained by the fact that, unfortunately, treatment in specialized neurosis clinics is aimed at eliminating the consequences of this illness, but the unconscious cause of panic attacks is not addressed. This mechanism becomes clear when examined at a deeper level. With the help of the knowledge of System-Vector Psychology by Yuri Burlan, we have the opportunity to more deeply and substantively consider the problem of panic attacks.
English plan to capture a runaway bride
On April 29, 2011, millions of television viewers watched the wedding of the heir to the English throne, Prince William, and his chosen one, Kate Middleton. Probably, many couples envied the endurance of the bride and groom, who, in the presence of numerous journalists and eminent guests, did not show their excitement with a single movement.
Despite the fact that the future Duchess of Cambridge never expressed doubts about the upcoming wedding, British intelligence services did not rule out the possibility that nervous tension would not allow Kate to cope with her emotions and she would leave her own wedding. In this case, a plan was developed to capture the runaway bride.
However, the woman was not caught in order to forcefully marry the prince, but solely for security reasons. Fortunately, Kate Middleton did not disgrace the royal family, and the intelligence services did not have to put their plan into action.
Adrenaline and fear of death
I was born in Riga. I had bilateral dysplasia (that is, congenital dislocation) of the hip joints, but doctors did not notice anything at birth, and my parents did not pay attention until I began to try to walk. After that, I spent a couple of years in hospitals - otherwise I would probably have walked with crutches. In the 70s, children in hospitals were alone, their parents were not allowed to see them: I remember how I, two years old, was taken to surgery, how I lay alone in intensive care and I was terribly scared. Over the course of two years, I had four surgeries, two on each joint. Each time, plaster was applied up to the armpits for several months. I think the roots of my panic attacks grow from there.
The first panic attack took me by surprise. This happened when I was about eighteen - I have no idea why. I looked at myself in the mirror, and it seemed to me that I was going to die: it was terribly scary, I was shaking like an aspen. Most of all I was afraid of this feeling of death: it seemed that now, in a couple of seconds, I would fall dead - but I did not fall, and the terrible feeling did not go away. I called my mother, she laid me on the sofa, asked what was wrong with me - I answered that I was going to die. Mom called an ambulance - twenty minutes later, when she arrived, I felt a little better. They listened to me, knocked, and said that everything was fine. They injected me with a sedative and left.
