The first time I had a panic attack, I was a young child at the Ohio State Fair. My mother and I were standing in line to attend a circus performance, and the queue had swelled to a throng. I remember looking up to a sea of knees as I stood next to my mother in a surging crowd; at once my excitement at seeing performing tigers, elephants, and trapeze artists was replaced with a single thought: “There’s no air.” The day was hot, and being small I could feel waves of heat emanating from the pavement beneath me. “They’re breathing all the air,” I remember thinking as I peered up at the grown legs that surrounded me like trees. “How can I breath when there is no air?”
I don’t remember getting out of that crowd; perhaps I tugged my mother’s hand and she bustled me away from the throng, alarmed at my reddened face and panicked expression, or perhaps I simply fainted. As I child, I was a finnicky eater, and it wasn’t unusual for me to faint from hunger, as if I were experimenting to see if a small child could live on air alone. Regardless of how I got out of that crowd, the simple fact remained: I never saw the circus that day, and ever since I’ve tended toward claustrophobia in crowds, terrified I might suffocate in a space with no air.
Knowing that air is everywhere does nothing to stem an oncoming panic attack: when you feel the elephantine crush of panic on your chest, there’s nothing rational that can force your lungs to expand. As an infant, I’m told, I was petrified by the car-wash, sandwiched with my sisters in the backseat of my parents’ car. “Mom,” one of my sisters would say, “the baby’s not breathing,” and no cooed words of comfort could cajole me to breathe until our car had returned to the light of day, dripping wet and shiny. Later as a toddler and small child, I remember standing with my mother outside the car-wash while my father drove the car through, a familial accommodation to my peculiar panic.
As an adult, I’ve grown claustrophobic in crowded nightclubs, a surging outdoor concert, and an upper bunk in a mountain cabin filled with sleeping campers. Sleeping in a tent almost always triggers a panic attack; at some point in the night, I’ll awaken feeling too hot, and the stuffiness of stagnant air will inspire the usual panicked palpitations. Whereas the cliched image of “panic” is that of screaming, incoherent irrationality, I tend toward the opposite, shutting down and growing steely with a grim resolution to marshal every last molecule of air. It’s as if I know that scratching and screaming won’t get me outta here any faster than quiet concentration will…so I tend toward the latter, holding my breath as I engineer my escape.
“Where are you going,” my ex-husband used to ask on camping trips when in the middle of the night I’d suddenly unzip sleeping bag then tent door, mosquitoes be damned. “I need some fresh air,” I’d explain, the care I took trying to be quiet belying the inescapable animal urge to escape at any cost. It’s probably no accident that when I divorced, one of the reasons I cited was the “need to breathe”: when even a two-bedroom apartment seems too small for two, a claustrophobe will do anything to escape the sensation of suffocation.
These days, my two-bedroom apartment feels bright and spacious, a quiet and solitary refuge where there’s plenty of air. But even today when I venture into a crowded place, I keep on eye toward the exit, the promise of accessible escape keeping possible panic at bay.
Jan 2, 2007 at 2:35 pm
Those formative experiences are difficult to shake. I have claustrophobia, too. Not sure where it comes from, but I have some of the same responses as you. I have a hard time on airplanes. I have to have water with me to calm me down. I have not flown since they started restricting liquids. I’m kinda scared to. Luckily, I do not fly often.
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Jan 2, 2007 at 3:46 pm
On the rare occasions that I find myself in a crowded shopping mall, I often get a sudden, irresistible urge to run screaming out of the nearest exit.
I’m not sure if that’s claustrophobia… or just good sense!
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Jan 2, 2007 at 4:19 pm
How interesting you should write this – I was away for a few days and returned early because of an impending sense of panic – not assisted by gale force storms and crazy weather…Thankfully it didn’t escalate into a full blown attack but I was so glad to be back in a familiar place
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Jan 2, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Great post, with a vivid and precise description of what we feel in an anxiety attack. My nightmares sometimes feature a pillow over my face, a big fear for me. Thanks for writing about this subject.
My New Year’s wish for you is “free breathing.”
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Jan 2, 2007 at 6:27 pm
What an excellent post. It is only recently that I learned that claustrophobia is not the fear of tight spaces, but the fear of not being able to escape a situation quickly and with a minimum of fuss. My fear of flying is not about the possibility of crashing, but about being separated from “freedom” by tens of thousands of feet of air. And my notion of freedom is pretty indistinguishable from my notion of privacy, which is not the privacy of a little room that other people know you are occupying, but the privacy of moving about without being noticed. Lots of layers here.
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Jan 2, 2007 at 6:39 pm
I’ve not yet (luckily) had a full-blown panic attack on a plane, mainly because it’s fairly easy to get up and walk in the aisles. But on a trans-Atlantic flight last year, there was a bout of turbulence that led the captain to order everyone in their seats, and that freaked me out a bit. Being inclosed in a plane is one thing…but being forced to stay in my seat is something else. Luckily, I had my meditation practice to fall back upon, so I alternated stretching my legs under the seat in front of me while making a conscious effort to keep breathing.
It’s interesting to learn that so many others have experience with this sort of panic. It’s not something I originally intended to blog about–enough of my professional colleagues read my blog, I don’t want to paint myself as being too neurotic. π But something drew me to these images of fire-escapes I’d shot, and I realized it was my fear of not having an escape that made the images so resonant for me.
Roger B, I’ve never gotten claustrophobic in a shopping mall, but I do often slip into sensory overload, which I suppose is just as bad.
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Jan 2, 2007 at 7:24 pm
I didn’t know you get claustrophobic. I grew up with a mother who had panic attacks to the point of agoraphobia, so it’s no big deal to me to, say, sit in the back of church so we could leave if needed, to not get on a boat that we bought tickets for because of sudden panic, to leave a museum because an attack was on. Everyday, unquestioned things for me growing up. I’ve felt claustrophobic, but I don’t think to a panic extent. I’d definitely need to be drugged if I had an MRI, though.
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Jan 2, 2007 at 8:18 pm
Wonderful post. Resonates with me in all kinds of ways. Though I don’t have physical claustrophobia, I have I think the psycho-sociological equivalent. I panic at the mere thought of a day without a couple hours’ alone time in it.
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Jan 2, 2007 at 8:28 pm
I’m not predictably claustrophobic: I don’t “always” freak out in the way that my mom, who is acrophobic, is “always” afraid of heights. Some of the places I’ve panicked have been spacious, and there are small places where I’ve felt comfortable & safe. It’s as if the thought of possibly being trapped is the trigger more than the actual place itself. So I’m usually fine in planes, trains, and buses if they’re moving toward a destination where I can get out…but if I’m in a subway that gets delayed underground, I’ll get nervous. And yeah, I think I’d freak out if I had an MRI…
Dale, I can resonate with your need for privacy/solitude. One of the things that I fled when I was married was the sensation of being either rushed or crowded. It’s as if I needed physical and psychic space when I was working, so having someone “around” was maddening.
I don’t know how I would have survived in the old days when extended families lived in cramped quarters: maybe I would have become an anchoress in an attempt to find a Virginia-Woolfian “room of my own”? π
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Jan 2, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Fascinating. I never would have guessed this about you. I’m not prone to this sort of thing myself, but I was in a relationship once with someone who had panic attacks – it was scary.
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Jan 2, 2007 at 10:14 pm
Dave, I’m guessing that most folks wouldn’t peg me as prone to attacks of claustrophobia since I don’t freak out openly: instead, my heart races, my stomach flops, etc. The two times I’ve panicked at the Blue Note jazz cafe in NYC, I feigned an urgent need to go to the bathroom, and having people move their chairs so I could get out of mine (it’s a very cramped club) gave me enough of an “out” to regain composure. But part of the fear of a panic attack, I think, is the lurking question of what might happen if you aren’t able to control it: what happens if going to the bathroom & splashing water on your face isn’t enough to make the sensation go away? Then what?
I think it’s particularly frightening for non-panicky folks to witness another’s attack since there’s literally nothing you can do to help the person.
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Jan 3, 2007 at 7:17 am
I don’t remember such a personal post from you in recent months. Thanks for sharing yourself with us. All the best in 2007!
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Jan 3, 2007 at 9:10 am
I think it’s particularly frightening for non-panicky folks to witness another’s attack since there’s literally nothing you can do to help the person.
Yes, exactly!
I do hope you’ll consider writing more personal posts like this from time to time. Maybe someday I’ll have the courage to do the same. (I think I blogged something painful/revealing exactly once in 1,672 posts.)
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Jan 3, 2007 at 9:27 am
I haven’t had a panic attack in years, and hope I never have another. The last one I recall came during a classical music concert in a beautiful hall. No air. Went to the lobby for the balance of the show.
If I just think about tight spaces I feel fear. I can hardly watch shows about caving, for example.
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Jan 3, 2007 at 9:39 am
Luckily, the air does not realize panic attacks and refuses to participate. π
between matter and matter…tis an individual gate.
snowy
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Jan 3, 2007 at 9:45 pm
I didn’t realize I was claustrophobic at all until I got zipped into one of those mummy sleeping bags… I never would have thought myself capable of the “GET ME OUT! NOW NOW NOW!” panic that followed. I shudder just remembering it, and it was a total surprise to me!
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Jan 4, 2007 at 1:16 pm
What’s really fun is getting strapped to a spine board in first aid class. Even your head and arms get immobilized. It’s charming.
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