Claustrophobia is a mind game...

Vijay reminisces about his childhood and remembers hiding in the small cupboard without being suffocated or frightened of the dark. All that changed when Vijay, fresh into his teens got stuck in his building elevator. He pressed the alarm button but to no avail. When no help arrived, he panicked. After half an hour, when the elevator was repaired, he walked out, sweaty, suffocated and breathless. He had encountered his first tryst with claustrophobia.

Sadly, this experience hampered his growth in more ways than one. He stopped using the elevator from then on. His visits to the ‘stuffy’ theatre with his friends stopped. He avoided small rooms, tunnels and air travel with a vengeance. Claustrophobia had hampered Vijay for life. His friends never understood his condition and that made matters worse. It was only when he was employed on the 28th floor of a multinational company building that he decided to get himself treated for the condition.

What is claustrophobia all about?
Claustrophobia is an extreme fear of being confined or trapped in small spaces. A person dealing with claustrophobia often experiences great anxiety and difficulty breathing in small enclosed spaces and may experience feelings of panic or even have a full-fledged panic attack. Like Vijay, there are many of us who have claustrophobia, but we just don’t know it yet. We are called fussy or nit picky when we share our grievances about being suffocated in a small room, or are concerned about an airplane not having enough aisle space, or for that matter someone’s elbows touching ours in the train compartment. So what do we do? We avoid such places without really finding a solution for the problem and facing it head on. The good news is that claustrophobia is treatable.

Recollect a traumatic experience
The main cause of claustrophobia is often a bad past traumatic childhood experience which involves a temporary or permanent confined environment. Herein, the mind often makes a psychological connection that small spaces translate to danger. It can lead to a panic attack, this response then becomes data in the brain, establishing an irrational association between being trapped and out of control or experiencing anxiety.

Do you have claustrophobia?
Breathlessness, excessive sweating, heart palpitations, nausea or a parched dry mouth, light headedness, nausea, fainting, hyper ventilation and shaking are some symptoms. Other symptoms are a deep-seated fear of dying, losing one’s mind or losing control, being detached from reality or having a full blown panic attack and an inability to think or speak clearly. However, it’s only a phobia and can be treated.

Treatments for claustrophobia include:
Psycho-education, breathing exercises and relapse prevention.

• It’s all within: Psycho-education
This involves educating the individual about the meaning and causes of claustrophobia, and clarifying negative emotions such as fear, anxiety and phobia. Deep-seated notions involved in relating fear to cramped spaces are addressed, and the patient is encouraged to talk about his/her problem. Once the patient realises what triggered the claustrophobia, remedial measures can be taken to tackle the same.

• Rewind and erase: Past Life Therapy
This is a new-age technique wherein the counsellor takes the patient into a past life experience to delve into the present scondition of claustrophobia. Sometimes, a traumatic experience in a past life can be carried into the present. Once that is addressed, the patient discovers that the cramped phobia is gone forever in the present, paving the way for a phobia-free future.

• Learn to breathe again
This technique makes the individual change his fast breathing pattern to a slow breathing one. Anxiety provoking situations often cause hyperventilation. The consequences include an intensification of anxiety. This can be tackled by teaching patients a slow breathing technique to face the anxiety provoking situations in a more effective way.

• The way we perceive things: Cognitive therapy
Our responses to events or situations are the way we interpret them, what we think that situation really is and its meaning. Our thought patterns determine how we will feel about things. Sometimes, we make erroneous interpretations that can lead to distressing feelings. Applying cognitive techniques means trying to behave as scientists do: test whether our interpretations are right or wrong and find alternative ways of thinking about the situations that would lead to less distressing feelings and allow us to face situations more competently.

• Ignorance can be stuffy!
Ralph Waldo Emerson rightly said, “Fear always springs from ignorance.” So, the way out of that stuffy room, crowded airplane, or small office cubicle is to educate yourself by getting expert help.