How childhood fear of the dark continued into the author’s adulthood and one mode of coping with any fear in children.
Most childhood fears vanish with age, but my irrational fear of the dark continued well into my adulthood. For years, I needed a night light, compromising on the quality of my sleep. As it would be, I would not stand outdoors alone in the dark; and for the longest time, my childlike mind was convinced that creatures of the dark were adamant to harm me.
Only recently, with a lot of digging work was I able to identify the root cause of my immense fear. I was watching a foreign film with my father at the age of 4 when a horrifying scene of a big black furry monster shook me. The gloom of the scene, the sound of the roaring thunder, and the chilling voice of that monster from that movie set sent shivers down my spine, they all haunt me till this day. In my head, that’s what I envisioned Satan to look like. Nonetheless, over the years, Hollywood blockbusters simply amplified that fear of the “unknown” in a dark world within me.
It is such a pity that I always felt alone in this oddity and refrained from sharing it even with my own parents, worried that I’d be shamed for it. Children fear the dark but not adults, right? Throughout the years, I tried different modes of therapy, yet nothing worked. Sadly, the truth remains that this fear is as real today as it was 30 years ago.
The day I saw my son run away from the TV, frightened of a tiger scene was the wakeup call. Although this was a normal developmental phenomenon, I wanted to intervene to help him better handle his fears even at such a young age. Research1 not only shows that there is a “genetic contribution to fearfulness”, but that there is a positive correlation between the fearfulness of a mother and that of her child.
A phone call to my mother put my mind at ease as she gave me a tried and tested method known as desensitization. She suggested I repeat the same tv scene for my son whilst hugging him since trust is very important for a child’s healthy development. This way, we raise the child’s discomfort level gradually as we re-expose him to the same stimulus in small doses. The result is that my son no longer fears tigers on television.
Our brains are wired to fill in missing bits by speculating and imagining. Most fears start developing between the ages of 2 to 3 when the mind is still unable to differentiate between reality and imagination. Therefore, it is wise to pay attention to our children’s fears and assess whether they require intervention or they will simply disappear with age. As with my fear, I’ve had to resort to hypnotherapy sessions to reprogram my subconscious mind. My fear lingers as I continue to need a night light. Yet I am starting to look at the darkness in a different way and look forward to finally vanquishing this fear once and for all.
Resources:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8881095
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