Expergefaciphobia - The Fear of Waking Up

Let's start off with the most obvious - etymology of this clumsy tongue-twisting word that dwells in the title above: When I was sifting through various dictionaries and Internet resources in search of a term that would best describe the supposed mental condition of mine, the most convenient word I was able to find seemed to be expergefacio (itself put together from ex-pergo-facio), a Latin verb meaning to awaken. Since there was no phobia related to waking up, no description even remotely close to my conscious understanding of this condition, I found my last resort in making an elegant descriptive neologism, hence the word that you see in this blog's title. Now, it would definitely be an overstatement to claim that it is the ideal word to represent the ideas this phobia is built on, the truth of the matter is that it neither looks nor sounds pleasantly - thus its prospects of becoming the next hip buzzword in pop culture are very dim.

The key to fully understanding the expression requires a thorough explanation of its English translation, the fear of waking up. The phrase itself is almost always used in a metaphorical way, predominantly in a political context, but to be able to comprehend its meaning in a true phobic sense, a slight deterrance from the prosaic usage is required - for in this case, its meaning is quite literary.

The next arising question is naturally why is the act of waking up, the moment in which one starts fully regaining conscience after a period of hibernation so crucial, so important to cause an irrational fear in an individual, namely myself.

It is precisely at this point that a distinction from other related words can be made, thus narrowing the definiton further or at least giving it a desired direction. In addition, gaining understanding of expergefaciphobia through questioning its right to exist seems like a suitable approach.

If waking up is what one is afraid of, the logical conclusion is that the fear of sleep (hypnophobia, somniphobia) would be more entitled to receiving all the attention. However, this way of thinking is false - it's true that sleeping itself or even falling asleep eventually leads to the point of waking up, but an essential part of somniphobia among various feelings of insecurity and vulnerability is a fear of not waking up. In this case, it does not matter what had been occuring during the hibernation, it is not a matter of expergefaciphobia to deal with a nightmare or the negative events of the previous day. Even though it could be argued that the process of sleeping after all causes the awakening, it isn't the causes that we're after when it comes to defining the phobia - effects are the dreaded reason for showering this point zero, the moment of waking up with so much attention.

If it is the the effects that we're after, the wrong assumption to make would be that we're having a certain fear of the future, trembling before the mischiefs that start preying upon us the very moment we open our eyes after spending several hours in a blissful state of careless slumber. This would only lead to dismissing the issue as teen angst, which is clearly not the case, and even though I kinda like to feel young, angsty behavior isn't exactly a positive trait that would fall into this phobic context. If you see someone screaming in despair over the uncertain future of their 15 year-old life, the chances that you've stumbled upon a case of expergefaciphobia are very slim (still, such a possibility does exist).

At this point I would like to assure my readers that we still haven't run out of options for a credible exposition, even though we've eliminated both the past and the future from the pool of possible explanations by introducing several different phobias. What was still not addressed so far due to my hidden posting agenda is the present, these loathed undesired events and processes occuring as one is waking up - or rather, it is becoming aware of their occurence and inevitable effects that truly is the root of expergefaciphobia.

If I rephrase this revelation: the cause of my fear of awakening is the effect of waking up, plain and simple. However, there are some prerequisites for getting to this point in the first place...

You see, it takes a very particular and informed view of the world combined with a great deal of self-observation (as a result of having too much time on your hands) to even start thinking in such a way, to start seeing things (especially sleep) a bit differently. Let me try to describe for you what a bit differently actually means.


As I explained it to B to some extent, waking up horrifies me in two different ways: the first one is the feeling of dying every day and resurrecting as a different person. It is a "somewhat" exaggerated version of reality - which is precisely what makes it a phobia - but nonetheless true.

The reasoning behind it is that our minds are a subject to constant change. Despite the fact that the mainstream is treating personality (of a healthy full-grown human specimen) as a stable, permanent, fixed phenomenon (or a set of phenomena as I like to claim), it is in fact all but that: constant incremental changes are occuring within each fluctuating mind on a daily basis, too small pieces of a giant puzzle for anyone to take notice, slowly but surely reshaping your mental landscape. Naturally, sticking to the same cognitive operations undoubtedly can restrict your speed, course and extent of changes, but I'm guessing that in principle it still remains chaotic and unpredictable, its long-term effects impossible for our minds to grasp. As several researches have been discovering in recent time, the most substantial portion of changes is coming about during our sleep, meaning that it is not just (for example) the level of hormones that changes (which can by itself heavily influence our behavior and performance) but potentially also our individual selves.

The phobic component here is obvious: going to sleep will inevitably mean critical changes in thinking, moods and attitudes, which will lead to conflict with previous night's mental state and its plans for the future, almost certainly meaning a triumph over poor defenseless yesterday self. It is not necessarily always so but according to my own experience, waking up remains quite an unfavorable lottery.

That is why I more and more fear of waking up, prolonging my departure to bed until I've done all I could possibly think of for that day - simply because there is a good chance for your near future self to write it off for good. So once again, it is not the sleep that I fear (except perhaps a lack of it) but the predominantly (un)controllable consequences that it brings when waking up.

Speaking from my own experience, it is extremely hard for a chaotic mind to control such a situation - the main problem is of course the lack of focus or direction, a set of personal rules or principles that would need to be created to compensate for constant mental variability. Until you are capable of constructing something like that to hold on to as you journey from one day to another, there really isn't much you can do except shiver at the thought of waking up next day...


The second way in which waking up horrifies me is the physical zombie mode I start most of the mornings in. It significantly contributes to my early set of decisions (the first one usually being the binary to get up or not to get up), but can be manipulated relatively easily - getting enough sleep, changing the environment or waking up at just the right moment. The latter is of course easier said than done (and also another lottery) but things like aXbo alarm clock or the upcoming SleepSmart certainly do look promising... too bad that it costs 200€ just to try it out.


I truly hope that you have by now realized that waking up is not the easiest thing to do, in fact, for some of us it actually is the hardest thing imaginable - the endless flock of people complaining about being drowsy in the morning certainly doesn't fall into this category.
Of course, I am not trying to be apologetic, it's merely the fact that expergefaciphobia is a serious enough condition to deserve wider attention, at least for the underlying ideas if not anything else. The least this post could do (beside offering excellent therapy for myself) is to help make some sense of related issues to any desperate passers-by.