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Autophobia is a form of anxiety that can cause a minor to extreme feeling of danger or fear when alone. There is not a specific treatment to cure autophobia as it affects each person differently. Most sufferers are treated with psychotherapy in which the amount of time that they are alone is slowly increased. There are no conclusive studies currently that support any medications being used as treatment. If the anxiety is too intense medications have been used to aid the patient in a continuation of the therapy.
It is not uncommon for sufferers to be unaware that they have this anxiety and to dismiss the idea of seeking help. Much like substance abuse, autophobia is mental and physical and requires assistance from a medical professional. Medication can be used to stabilize symptoms and inhibit further substance abuse. Group and individual therapy is used to help ease symptoms and treat the phobia.
In mild cases of autophobia, treatment can sometimes be very simple. Therapists recommend many different remedies to make patients feel as though they are not alone even when that is the case, such as listening to music when running errands alone or turning on the television when at home, even if it is just for background noise. Using noise to interrupt the silence of isolated situations can often be a great help for people suffering from autophobia.
However, it is important to remember that just because a person may feel alone at times does not mean that they have autophobia. Most people feel alone and secluded at times; this is not an unusual phenomenon. Only when the fear of being alone beings to interrupt how a person lives their daily life does the idea of being autophobic become a possibility.
Like many other phobias, lilapsophobia can often be treated using cognitive-behavioral therapy, but if it stems from post-traumatic stress disorder, then alternative therapy may be more recommended.
Autophobia can be derived from social anxiety. When people with this phobia are left alone, they will often experience panic attacks, which is a common reaction in those suffering from social anxiety. This disease can also stem from depression because when people become seriously autophobic, they start to find certain tasks and activities almost impossible to complete. This usually occurs when autophobes are faced with a possibility of going into a public place where there are lots of people or simply a place that is uncomfortable or unfamiliar to them. This phobia can also be closely related to agoraphobia, which leads to lowered self-confidence and uncertainty of their ability to finish certain activities that need to be done alone. People suffering from this phobia tend to imagine the worst possible scenario. For example, they might have a panic attack and then think that they are going to die from this event.
Another experience that doctors believe leads individuals to develop this phobia is children being abandoned, usually by their parents, when they are very young. This first causes childhood trauma that then persists to effect them as they grow up. This turns into autophobia because they are now afraid that all of the important people in their lives are going to leave or abandon them. Therefore, this particular phobia can come from behavior and experiences that these people have had when they were growing up. However, abandonment does not necessarily mean being left alone physically, this also includes being isolated financially or emotionally. Having drastic, life-altering experiences, particularly causes more trauma which makes this phobia worse. People that have very high anxiety and in this case are more “high strung,” are more susceptible to this phobia.
Although this phobia is often developed at a young age, it can develop later in life as well. Individuals sometimes develop this fear with the death of a loved one or the ending of an important relationship. Autophobia can also be described as the fear of being without a specific person. Tragic events in a person's life may create this fear of being without one specific person, but this often will eventually progress into a fear of being secluded in general.
Treatment of avoidant personality disorder can employ various techniques, such as social skills training, cognitive therapy, and exposure treatment to gradually increase social contacts, group therapy for practicing social skills, and sometimes drug therapy.
A key issue in treatment is gaining and keeping the patient's trust, since people with avoidant personality disorder will often start to avoid treatment sessions if they distrust the therapist or fear rejection. The primary purpose of both individual therapy and social skills group training is for individuals with avoidant personality disorder to begin challenging their exaggerated negative beliefs about themselves.
Significant improvement in the symptoms of personality disorders is possible, with the help of treatment and individual effort.
Lilapsophobes spend a lot of time watching the weather or checking weather online to keep an eye out for oncoming storms. When a storm hits, sufferers either watch for severe weather alerts constantly or take cover, like under the bed or in the windowless room. In the extreme cases, sufferers take tornado shelter as soon as rain starts falling, usually in the basement or storm shelter. Sufferers who have weather radio or mobile phones can watch the radar and alerts using it while hiding.
Being a personality disorder, which are usually chronic and long-lasting mental conditions, avoidant personality disorder is not expected to improve with time without treatment. It is a poorly studied personality disorder and in light of prevalence rates, societal costs, and the current state of research, AvPD qualifies as a neglected disorder.