I’ve long described myself as claustrophobic but I seem to be getting better at handling it.
It’s typical for me to check for the exit before taking my seat in any venue: theatre, concert hall, basement – you name it. When we bought the Airstream one of my first reactions was to feel claustrophobic about there only being a door at the front of the 27-foot trailer. Hubby pointed out to me that any window can be thought of as an exit. I’ll just need to keep a sharp knife nearby to slash a screen. I’m serious. The knowledge that I could get out if I needed to makes my heart rate go back to normal.
This week we attended an award ceremony for a deserving friend. The room was long, and seated in the third row, the door was way behind us with about 50 people between me and it. I could feel my heart race and my throat start to close. So I started looking around for an escape route and noticed a high window. How would I get up to it? Well there was a table and a chair and one on top of the other would be tall enough for me to climb up and out. At times like that I don’t even think of a specific emergency that might occur. But my mind eases when it considers everyone else bunching up at the exit and me, climbing out this window instead of getting jammed in the crush of humans.
There were maybe four times during the evening that my fight-or-flight mechanism kicked in and I had the urge to walk out. It didn’t help that the air was still and hot as well. But I reminded myself of the escape hatch and took a couple of deep breaths and made it through the 90-minute ceremony.
It also hits me at more typical times. In Paris, France, when the smallest, oldest hotel elevator we’ve ever seen closed on us within centimetres of our noses, we both started to hyperventilate. The solution there was easy. We took the stairs to and from the sixth floor for the few days we were staying there. At checkout, we sent the bags down the elevator on their own and met them in the lobby.
In a pub in Kent, England, I was forced to skitter almost sideways down a short, narrow hallway to the ladies’ loo. It was either that or pee myself so I chose the lesser of two evils. But I breathed in and out through my mouth the whole time and tried not to think about how confining it was.
I suppose I’ve learned that distraction is the best method, for me, to get through a claustrophobic moment. I totally avoid caves, big crowds and confined spaces. Actually I trace this phobia back to childhood when a twisted adult neighbour thought it was funny to send me into her crawl space to retrieve an item and then locked me inside until I was hysterical. It doesn’t take a psychologist to figure that one out! Oh yeah, I avoid crawl spaces now too.