fear

The Psychological Correlates of Decreased Death Anxiety After a Near-Death Experience: The Role of Self-Esteem, Mindfulness, and Death Representations

Leave a Comment / Anxiety News, Anxiety Research, Death Anxiety, fear of aging, Fear of Death /

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Ahead of Print. Near-death experiences (NDE) are intense events that can have profound psychological consequences. Although decreased fear of death after an NDE is a well-documented phenomenon, it is unclear what psychological factors are associated with reduced death anxiety. In this study, grounded in terror management theory, we compared 102 people who had an NDE with 104 individuals who did not. Participants completed measures of death anxiety, self-esteem, mindfulness, and death representation. Results indicated that people who had an NDE had lower fear of death, higher self-esteem, greater mindfulness, and viewed death more as a transition rather than as absolute annihilation. Subsequent analyses found that NDE had a direct effect on death anxiety, and that the effect of NDE on death anxiety was also mediated by indirect effects on self-esteem and death representation. Implications of these findings are considered, limitations of the present study are acknowledged, and suggestions for future theory and research are proffered.

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Embarking on Recovery: When Does Stigma End? Investigating the Experiences of Discrimination and How These Affect Aspirations in Recovery From Substance Misuse

Leave a Comment / Anxiety and Addiction, Anxiety and Discrimination, Anxiety Research, Anxiety Resources, News /

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Ahead of Print. Background: Research into the impact of stigma and discrimination occurring while in treatment and recovery from substance abuse has reported that participants experience discrimination in areas such as employment, housing, and health care. Further research has suggested that there is increased anticipation of discrimination in these areas. Studies reported that fear of discrimination can impact on an individual’s willingness to disclose information about their addiction and recovery. Aim: The aim of the study is to fill a gap within current knowledge by exploring how experiences of stigma and discrimination impact on individuals’ aspirations in recovery from substance abuse. Method: A purposive sample of seven participants were recruited to take part in semistructured interviews, from which data were recorded for analysis using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Findings: Three superordinate and 10 subordinate themes were highlighted through analysis: “Forever an Addict,” “The Broken Social Contract,” and “A New Social Identity.” Conclusion: The findings of the study raise issues in the current approach to supporting those in recovery and suggest that there is a need for increased awareness and education at various levels in society.

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Future Time Perspective as an Operationalization of Existential Concerns Related to Time

Leave a Comment / Anxiety Research, Death Anxiety, Fear of Death, Fear Research, News, Psychotherapy Research /

Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Ahead of Print. Psychologists and other clinical therapists often focus on the psychological processes that result from the fact that human beings will one day die, not death anxiety/afterlife anxiety itself. Nevertheless, existential concerns are death concerns, and any anxiety associated with death should be understood through that lens—as resulting from concerns about death. Understanding how one views the amount of time left to live, and how this perception influences motives, goal cognitions, mood, and well-being, is of great importance from a humanistic–existential perspective. Socioemotional selectivity theory and the concept of future time perspective (FTP) capture these phenomena and have the potential to operationalize perspectives of time constraints within existential psychology. The present work attempts to show how FTP may be used to operationalize the problem of time from an existential perspective, specifically targeting the existential themes of death, meaning, isolation, and freedom. Clinical implications of considering FTP as an existential construct are discussed, as are limitations and future directions.

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Prefrontal engrams of long-term fear memory perpetuate pain perception

Leave a Comment / Anxiety Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Anxiety News, Anxiety Research, Fear and Pain, Fear Research /

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 06 April 2023; doi:10.1038/s41593-023-01291-x Can erasing bad memories relieve pain? Stegemann et al. uncover the cellular basis of fear–pain interactions, reporting that fear potentiates pain via memories encoded in prefrontal engrams. Blocking these memory traces reduces chronic pain in mice.

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Fear memory engram is the mind-killer

Leave a Comment / Anxiety Research, Anxiety Resources, Anxiety Treatment, Emotions and Anxiety, Fear and Anxiety, Fear and Pain, Fear Research, Pain and Anxiety /

Nature Neuroscience, Published online: 06 April 2023; doi:10.1038/s41593-023-01292-w Stegemann et al. have unraveled a long-lasting role for fear engrams in future pain perception. Prefrontal pain and fear representations become entangled following a fearful event. As subsequent painful experiences also reactivate the fear network, silencing the fear engram alone can alleviate both tonic pain and hypersensitivity

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How Prozac Increases Brain Plasticity

Leave a Comment / Anxiety and Medication, Anxiety Neuroscience and Neurobiology, Anxiety Research, Fear Research, neurobiology, Neuroplasticity, neuroscience, Neuroscience and Neurobiology, News /

Fluoxetine (Prozac), a common antidepressant, was found to enhance the erasure of learned fear responses and facilitate spatial pattern learning in mice. The study also found the TrkB receptor in PV+ interneurons plays a crucial role in these effects, which may offer new possibilities for the development of psychiatric treatments targeting brain plasticity.

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Exposure therapy to feared foods may help kids with eating disorders

Leave a Comment / Anxiety and Eating Disorder, Anxiety News, Anxiety Research, Anxiety Resources, Anxiety Treatment, Fear Research, Psychotherapy Research /

Whether you’re afraid of dogs, needles or enclosed spaces, one of the most effective interventions for this type of anxiety disorder is exposure therapy in which you confront your fear in a safe environment. A new study finds that exposure therapy is also a promising treatment for adolescents with eating disorders. They found that exposure to feared foods — such as candy bars and pizza — helped kids who were in a partial hospitalization program for eating disorders experience decreased anxiety toward food.

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