TREATING IMPULSE PHOBIAS THANKS TO PSYCHOTHERAPY IN PARIS 9TH

Treating impulse phobias thanks to psychotherapy in Paris 9th

Impulse phobias are a particularly common psychological symptom which is most often found in the clinical table of obsessional neurosis.

Impulse phobia definition?

Impulse phobia is an irrational and unreasonable fear of harming someone or oneself.

How do you know if you suffer from impulse phobias?

While some impulse phobias are easy to recognise, both because of their intrusive nature and because of the feeling of incomprehension and horror they can induce, some impulse phobias sometimes go unnoticed because they are quickly rationalised and minimised. For example, the irrational fear of having a car accident could be trivialised by being interpreted as a rational fear linked to the risks inherent in driving a car.

Impulse phobia symptoms?

From the irrational fear of hurting someone or having the fear of dropping an infant or hurting a child, from the fear of harming oneself to the fear of "going crazy", of saying regrettable words or committing atrocities, the multiplicity of impulse phobias sometimes makes them difficult to diagnose.

Why do we have impulse phobias?

Like most psychological symptoms, impulse phobias indicate the presence of an intrapsychic conflict that is not resolved. These intrusive thoughts are the mark of an inner conflict that we are not necessarily aware of, but which is revealed and treated thanks to psychotherapy .

Origin impulse phobia?

There is no single, unequivocal origin for impulse phobias: they are linked to repressed thoughts, most often from childhood, which reflect the problem of ambivalent feelings.

Impulse phobia and drug treatment?

Despite misleading statements supported by certain pharmaceutical laboratories, there is no drug treatment for impulse phobias. As they are thoughts that compel the mind, they can only be cured by

deciphering, thanks to psychotherapy through psychotherapy, the repressed thoughts that manifest themselves in a veiled manner.

Like an encrypted message that continues to present itself until it is deciphered, impulse phobias can be understood as an enigma for the patients. That's why, rather than trying to cover them up or mask them, even if it means they keep coming back, psychotherapy aims to enable patients to talk about these disturbing thoughts so that they can free themselves from them.

CBT impulse phobia exercise?

If psychotherapy can be used to treat impulse phobias, there are also an infinite number of techniques aimed at avoiding and covering up these disturbing thoughts, for example by concentrating on exercises or tasks or by focusing on positive thoughts. But these avoidance systems, which form the basis of CBT and other autosuggestion techniques, should not be confused with the care or treatment of impulse phobias.Indeed, as it is impossible to cure an impulse phobia without treating the repressed thoughts that cause them, exercises aimed at camouflaging “negative thoughts' ' cannot be considered properly therapeutic. These conditioning systems lead to the symptom being displaced indefinitely.

Furthermore, it is easy to realise that by fighting against obsessive thoughts with positive thoughts or avoidance behaviours, it is the avoidance system itself that becomes obsessive: the avoidance system then becomes a form of obsessive routine. For example, if sports exercises or breathing exercises are used with the aim of short-circuiting impulse phobias, these same exercises end up becoming restrictive and time-consuming, constituting an obsessive action that the person must carry out or risk experiencing anxiety and discomfort.

How to treat impulse phobias? How to free yourself from obsessive thoughts?

It was Sigmund Freud who discovered how impulse phobias work and the method to treat them: the method of free associations. This consists of the patient saying each of the thoughts that cross his mind during the session, even if they are taboo, incomprehensible, shameful or incongruous. By making the effort to say each of his thoughts without judging them, the patient gradually discovers the unconscious thoughts that he or she is repressing and which come back intrusively in impulse phobias.

While the work of free associations is not always easy because we are used to judging and censoring certain thoughts, it nevertheless shows that impulse phobias are not inevitable.

Who can treat impulse phobias?

To answer this question, we need to emphasise on the word treat to clearly distinguish a therapy, which treats the cause of the symptom, and a technique which aims to avoid or camouflage the symptom. As we saw previously, the free association method treats impulse phobias by treating their cause while many techniques (CBT, coaching, exercises, tutorials, etc.) act on impulse phobias by inducing strategies avoidance (thinking about something else, thinking positive thoughts, short-circuiting thoughts by playing sports or concentrating on breathing, etc.)

This distinction therefore invites us to reserve the term “ care ” or “ cure ” for treatment which makes it possible to treat the cause of impulse phobias, not for techniques which aim to mask them.

Thus, only the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist trained in the method of free associations, whether a psychologist or psychiatrist with university training, is authorised to provide the treatment which makes it possible to cure impulse phobias .

Empowerment to use the free association method requires several years of intensive training, if not several decades. Firstly, this training consists of the clinician carrying out his own psychoanalysis: the clinician's personal treatment is the necessary condition to be able to use the method of free associations and ensure the treatment of psychological symptoms, particularly phobias. impulse. And for good reason, how can a clinician help someone to treat themselves, to discover the cause of their symptoms, if they themselves are in an avoidance strategy with regard to their own difficulties?

This ethical rule and the rigour required by training in the method of free associations therefore invite us to clearly differentiate the training required to treat impulse phobias and the learning of an avoidance technique. Because if the authorization to treat impulse phobias requires that the clinician face his own treatment as well as many years of theoretical and clinical training within a School of psychoanalysis, this rigour and this requirement contrasts with the few hours of training required to learn an avoidance strategy.

Finally, a century after the Freudian discovery, the questions raised by the treatment of impulse phobias highlight a major confusion that can easily go unnoticed, namely the confusion that equates the treatment of the symptom with its displacement, in other words the confusion that equates avoidance techniques with psychotherapy.

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