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Suffering from Cat Phobia?

by Farhana Ahmad
ARE you obsessed with fear to a point of oblivion over some silly irrational thing or other that makes others laugh or worse irritates them? Well. I ami I am petrified of cats. Do you say how can a grown woman be frightened of something so cute, so cuddly? I say easily! I get the creeps whenever I see a member of the feline species. Sometimes even the thought of one gives my nervous system a high voltage Jolt. They have a role in every nightmare that I have ever dreamt so far. The worst part is when a person Is as scared *f any particular thing she or he somehow or other has to have a daily encounter with it. That is what happened to me. I study medicine and cats cohabit with us In the hostel that I live in. You can imagine my torment when I first went there.
I lived in daily, dread. Everyday I heard different stories. Such as how cats liked to creep in under the quilts when the girls were sleeping. I was getting paranoid. The strange fact was that my roommate happened to be an ardent animal lover. She was crazy about cats. She had a couple of them back home and the cats at the hostel made her’ feel less homesick. I believe animals can sense these things. She always had cats coming to her begging for food. As that meant their coming to my room you can guess how 1 felt. In fact it even got to a point where 1 started studying in bed so that my feel were up and not at a risk of being rubbed by the four legged furry creatures. However, my other roommate was pretty supportive and she always tried to shoo the cats away before they came any-I where . near me. One night, after we had both gone to sleep, she suddenly woke up to find me standing erect on the bed in a trance. After she got up to see what was wrong with me. she saw that a cat had entered our room through the open window. Even my subconscious mind was alerted to its presence! I still cannot bear to leave the window open for the fear of the cat jumping in.
The worst of all incidents took place when 1 was taking history from a patient at the gynae ward. All the patients have a bowl under their beds to throw their waste in. Often they throw a lot of uneaten food there. So a cat ambled by to see if there was anything edible. As soon as I saw it coming towards the bed where I was standing. I pushed my patient almost off the bed and was up on the bed before you could caunt to three and gave a piercing scream. 1 don’t know
who was more frightened me. the cat. the poor sick lady or the rest of the patients in the ward!
The psychiatrists have a fancy name for this kind of fear. They term it as phobic neurosis. The definition they give being "a neurotic disorder characterized by the presence of irrational or exaggerated fear of objects, situations or bodily functions not inherently dangerous or the appropriate source of the anxiety."
There is usually some sort of history behind it. Maybe something had happened to you when you were very young and left its impact on you. In my case, when I was four years old. a pet cat at my grandfather's house lodged itself to the front of my dress by its claws and would not be dis-
a small household spider?
The cure for these particular problems? Is there one? Believe me, I have tried time and again to rid myself of my obsesslqn I would say that I am a little better. I have learnt to live by avoiding the obstacle created by it.
The psychiatrists suggest therapy, behavioural therapy and insight psychotherapy. These techniques decondition or desensitize the patient to the phobic stimulus by requiring him to confront the stimulus while using relaxation techniques including hypnosis to combat the anxiety aroused by the stimulus.
There are no pills that you can take to alleviate the fear. But your doctor will probably prescribe a minor tranquilizer or a tricyclic antidepressant to
lodged. Even now. two decades after the incident, I keep thinking that a cat is going to jump on me whenever I see one coming.
Sometimes fear of certain objects run in certain families. I know a fafhily where all the members are petrified of spiders. Maybe you can understand the 10-year-old little girl« fright but will you look kindly on her 20-year-old. 6 feet 3 inches burly brother’s irrational fear of a small thing like a spider? Maybe you can understand his being wary of a tarantula but how do you explain his obsessive phobia over
reduce the anxiety and the , panic attacks and of course to soothe your nerves.
One word of caution to friends, family and well-wishers of the people overcome with fear over irrational objects is don't try to rid him of his fear by confronting him with that object. Remember you are not a psychiatrist. You are not equipped to deal with a person on a high emotional level as one obsessed with fear. All you will be doing is scaring him out of his wits, making him lose all faith and confidence in you. Making him feel insecure when you are around.