Hope And Help For People Who Experience Claustrophobia - Book

Main Category: Mental Health
Also Included In: Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 19 Mar 2008 - 1:00 PDT

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Author Andrea Perry, an integrative psychotherapist, developed full-blown claustrophobia after a distressing incident on a train going through the Channel Tunnel. "Despite knowing intellectually and professionally that avoidance wouldn't help", she says, "the overwhelming sense of dread I experienced subsequently made using lifts, tunnels, the underground, even revolving doors practically impossible. The anxiety was highly debilitating".

In order to write the book, she kept a detailed reflective log of her own process of recovery, and received many firsthand accounts from other people who experienced and, in some instances, had overcome, claustrophobia.

Ben Timmis (FRCR) Medical Director of the London Upright MRI Centre, believes that with this book, Andrea Perry has "made a superb contribution to our understanding of this complex and ill-understood condition, which we know affects many millions of people". Ten percent of the population experiences claustrophobia, which can severely limit mobility, work and leisure opportunities, and undermines self-esteem. The anxiety tends to worsen with age.

Written in a warm and accessible style,'Claustrophobia - Finding Your Way Out (Worth Publishing 2008) encourages readers to use their reactions to the contents of the book as a means of improving their ability to cope with anxiety, and to build confidence through developing a stronger sense of self-efficacy and connection to other people.

Nicky Lidbetter, the Chief Executive of the National Phobics' Society, describes the book as melding an "authenticity borne of personal suffering and the objectivity of clinical experience" into a "compassionate, satisfying self-help study….. it excels particularly in avoiding the 'trap' of assuming a one-size-fits-all approach to recovery from mental distress".

Having described different aspects of claustrophobia, and its profound effects on the lives of those who experience it, Perry offers a wide array of self-help strategies and a comprehensive description of available therapies including EMDR, CBT, systematic desensitization, hypnotherapy, computer-assisted therapies, psychodynamic therapy, and the energy therapies. She clearly outlines the difference between approaches which stress the need to develop tolerance of anxiety, and those emphasizing anxiety reduction, leaving it up to the reader to choose. She reframes overcoming claustrophobia as an opportunity to both develop resilience and to make a social contribution, pointing out that: "in a panic situation, one person able to calm themselves will make a huge difference. What we do matters".

Claustrophobia may be triggered by a particular incident or series of incidents: replicate a response learned from a claustrophobic parent: be part of a wider pattern of avoidance of discomfort, or may represent the projection of other unrelated conflicts. However, presenting claustrophobia in a historical context, Perry also views aspects of the anxiety today as a rational and deeply human rejection of being controlled in the confined spaces of an increasingly electronically-controlled world. She sees people who experience claustrophobia as potential 'canaries in the coalmine', capable, having overcome the irrational component of their phobia, of using their environmental sensitivity and imagination to draw attention to potentially dangerous or traumatic aspects of the built environment. She urges designers and architects to include an awareness of potential triggers for claustrophobia in the creation of all spaces that hold humans.

"Claustrophobia - Finding Your Way Out: Hope and help for people who fear and avoid confined spaces"
by Andrea Perry
Worth Publishing - 2008 ISBN 9781903269091 (available in paperback)
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Andrea Perry is an integrative psychotherapist, consultant, writer and presenter. Her previous books include "Isn't It About Time? How to stop putting things off and get on with your life" (Worth Publishing, 2002) which describes a model of overcoming procrastination now widely used by UK University Student Counselling Services, debt and career counsellors, therapists, collaborative family lawyers and script writers. She contributes to Psychologies magazine, and has appeared on BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4.

Worth Publishing is an independent publisher of books in the psychotherapy, self-help and therapy-in-education fields, with a core philosophy of making key concepts from analysis and therapy accessible to a wider public. www.worthpublishing.com