| Re: Research
I don't have a reliable source to cite on this (though you may have come across it in your reading already, Mark), but I've read that some people inherit a genetic predisposition to develop phobias. It's a chemical thing. If you have a stronger physical response to fear or anxiety, you're more likely to develop a phobia about situations that set it off.
It makes sense to me. In my family, we have a long, proud tradition of claustrophobia. Other phobias and anxiety disorders turn up among us from time to time, but claustrophobia is the most common one.
For a long time, my mother could not get into elevators under any persuasion or any circumstances. Even if she needed to get some place that was six flights up, she would take the stairs. I remember many a long climb in her company. I don't have a huge problem with elevators -- although if they are too small, too crowded, or too slow I do get anxious -- but any space smaller than the average elevator -- say the size of a closet -- and I do panic. Anything that goes over my face, like a mask -- I get the same response. Even if I'm undressing and I can't get the clothes over my head quickly enough I panic.
Medical equipment -- the kind that is big and heavy and hovers over you while it scans you -- is also terrifying. If it's just over my body I can grit my teeth and endure it, but if it's over my head as well, forget it. What makes it worse is that medical technicians either don't get it, or they lie to you. You ask, is this anything that's going to bring about a claustrophobic reaction, and they say, oh no, we get people with claustrophobia in here all the time and they don't mind it a bit. Right. I guess they figure once they've got you on the table you're less likely to refuse the test.
And I can't stand being in any place so dark that I can't see my surroundings, because the darkness closes in on me. I always have a night light. This can be a problem when, for instance, you're on a trip and sharing a hotel room with friends who can't sleep unless it's really dark.
A couple of years ago I started having anxiety attacks. The kind where your heart races and you have difficulty breathing. When you're in your late fifties with diabetes and hypertension, doctors take this kind of episode very seriously -- because they're always afraid that you really are having a heart attack. Rather than just give you something to calm you down, you're hooked up to heart monitors and they keep you in the hospital overnight, and they're very, very reluctant to let you go the next day until they've given you every possible test. Now I have an anti-anxiety medicine I can take if I feel something coming on. It sure beats a trip to the hospital.
Since the attacks usually come in the evening, when there are not so many things going on to keep my mind occupied, it finally reached a point where just the fact that it was starting to get dark would serve as a trigger. I'd think, uh-oh, night-time (spurt of adrenaline, squirt of stomach acid), and unless I found an instant distraction it would go from there. Now it rarely gets past the knot-in-the-stomach stage, but as I said, on those occasions when I feel it escalating I have the medicine. Since the pills don't have any side effects -- I don't feel drugged or sedated or anything like that -- I'm not tempted to take them when I don't need them.
If I'd been born in the 19th century, I would probably have turned to gin or laudanum just to get through the bad nights. Then I would have developed an addiction and come to a bad end. |