When you think about traveling by plane, your hands are already sweating, and a simple visit to your mother becomes difficult because of the elevator located in her apartment building. Are you afraid that you will suffocate among many people, and do you avoid small spaces and narrow passages? Then you are probably one of the many Dutch people who suffer from claustrophobia. Fortunately, there are things you can do to change this yourself!
What exactly is claustrophobia?
Claustrophobia is a strong fear of small or enclosed spaces. The name is derived from the Latin claudere (close) or claustrum (lock). If you suffer from claustrophobia, you are very anxious when you are in a room that is difficult to leave quickly. This includes elevators, airplanes and trains. In severe cases, panic attacks can occur, causing people to try to escape the confined space, even if this poses danger at the time. Sometimes it is possible for the claustrophobe to freeze due to fear. In other cases, the fear may occur when the person with claustrophobia is in a room with many people. Claustrophobia is a form of phobia that is very common among the Dutch population. However, if you go to a therapist with this complaint, the average treatment will cost you a lot of money and time. The threshold for entering a psychologist’s practice is often very high for people with claustrophobia. This is actually a shame, because claustrophobia is essentially easy to cure.
What can you do to reduce claustrophobia?
If you suffer from claustrophobia, your brain has linked certain circumstances to an exaggerated form of fear. This gives very unpleasant experiences. It is important that you first try to neutralize these negatively colored emotions in your mind. Ultimately, you were the one who gave you claustrophobia, and you will therefore be the best one to cure yourself of it. This may sound easy, but it really is. As quickly as you once contracted claustrophobia, you can get rid of it just as quickly. After you have neutralized your thoughts, you can start the actual work.
Find your fear
To get rid of your fears, there is only one method that really helps: confront yourself with them. Gradual exposure means that you expose yourself step by step to the situation that you are so terribly afraid of. Create a hierarchy for yourself of about five situations in which claustrophobia most often occurs. Number five is the least fearful of the five and number one is the situation that scares you the most. First you look for the situation that is number five on your list. Make sure that you really feel ready for this with every step you take, to prevent relapses. In a situation where you are so exposed to your fears, anxiety initially rises sharply, then reaches a kind of stable plateau, and then slowly returns to baseline levels. By letting yourself get used to a situation that you were initially very afraid of, step by step, your fear will gradually decrease.
Adjust your fear expectations
Going through the above method ultimately leads to an adjustment of fear expectations, and the physical fear responses also decrease by being exposed to one’s own deepest fears again and again. The hallmark of many claustrophobic people is that they are often guided by irrational thoughts (for example: ‘the plane will crash) and show associated emotional reactions, when in reality everything is fine. Talk to yourself and simply refute these catastrophic thoughts. Reassure yourself that flying, for example, is much safer than driving a car, or make sure that the elevator you are in has a sophisticated security system. This way you will gain more control over your own thoughts and the fear you have will decrease.
Shift your attention
People with claustrophobia show abnormal attention to stimuli that evoke fear, compared to more neutral stimuli. For example, someone with this anxiety disorder will focus much more attention than necessary on his or her body and, for example, notice that their heart is beating faster and faster. The fear will then quickly arise that the palpitations indicate that a frightening situation is actually occurring. To avoid this pattern, try distracting yourself by thinking about the goal you want to achieve, such as taking the elevator up to go to work. This way you can avoid paying too much attention to your own physical symptoms in the frightening situation. Instead, you achieve a more neutral focus on your goal, which will actually reduce the fear stimuli automatically.
Deal with a relapse positively
If you think you have been cured of your claustrophobia, and suddenly it returns, it is of course very unpleasant. However, try to convince yourself that you will emerge stronger from this setback. Go through the same steps as you did before, and don’t give up. Eventually, the claustrophobia will actually disappear from your system, and with this positive thought, you can probably survive half the world!