“I can’t stand closed places – I feel like there are no escapes and I’m trapped. I just feel like you have no control in that position. People could attack me and I wouldn’t be able to get away. This happens in almost any tight space – elevators, tunnels, even a haunted house. Just the other day I was in the bell tower and it was really scary. To go up you have to climb up a narrow flight of stairs and there’s this line to go up it and you can feel the walls on either side of you and then there is someone right in front of you and right behind you. I started hyperventilating because I couldn’t go down or up and there was just no way out and I wanted to back out of the tour altogether.”
Claustrophobia is defined as the fear of having no escape and being in closed or small spaces or rooms. It is typically classified as an anxiety disorder and thus an irrational fear. One study indicates that anywhere from 5–7% of the world population is affected by severe claustrophobia, but the number of more average cases is believed to be quite a bit higher as Claustrophobia is generally common. The two key symptoms of Claustrophobia are the fear of restriction and the fear of suffocation. A typical claustrophobic experiences these in at least one, if not several, of the following areas: small rooms, locked rooms, cars, airplanes, trains, tunnels, cellars, elevators, or caves. Some claustrophobics thus fear trivial matters such as sitting in a haircutter’s chair or waiting in line at a grocery store simply out of a fear of confinement to a single space, or even sitting in a dentist’s chair, particularly during dental surgery. Often, when confined to an area, claustrophobics begin to even believe that there may be a lack of air in the area to which they are confined. Possible signs and symptoms of Claustrophobia include breathlessness, excessive sweating, dry mouth, shaking, heart palpitations, inability to speak or think clearly, a fear of dying, becoming mad or losing control, a sensation of detachment from reality, or a full blown panic/anxiety attack. Possible causes of Claustrophobia include past conditioning experiences or genetic predisposition. Past conditioning experiences include a traumatic childhood experience such as being locked in a closet, being shut into a box or pitch-black room and unable to find the door or light-switch, falling into deep pool not knowing how to swim, getting separated from parents and lost in a large crowd, getting stuck in a hole or getting his or her head stuck between bars such as of a fence, or being left in a car, truck, or van – all resulting in the mind connecting confinement with danger. Vicarious classical conditioning is also a factor – a person seeing another person exposed directly to an especially unpleasant situation – in this case, observing someone getting stuck in a tight space, suffocated, or any of the other aforementioned examples. Genetic predisposition goes along the lines of the acquisition of claustrophobia possibly being a part of a vestigial evolutionary survival mechanism, a dormant fear of entrapment and/or suffocation that was once important for the survival of humanity and could be easily awakened at any time. Hostile environments in the past would have made this kind of pre-programmed fear necessary, and so the human mind developed the capacity for response to certain classes of seemingly dangerous stimuli. Possible treatments include Cognitive therapy, In vivo exposure, and interoceptive exposure, and the still-being-tested virtual reality distraction and separation of the fears of restriction and of suffocation.
Fun Fact: The opposite of Claustrophobia, Claustrophilia, is the love or arousal of enclosed, tight places.
