Claustrophobia: Its Symptoms and Treatments

Some people may suffer from an irrational fear for being in enclosed spaces or claustrophobia. This situational phobia may happen to everyone with certain traumatic or unpleasant experiences. The experiences can be in the ones in childhood or later stages of life. For example, the experience of being trapped in child game or being trapped in an elevator. The person suffers from this phobia may get panic and or out of control.

Symptoms of Claustrophobia

We may find some symptoms to people with this phobia. Those symptoms may include that the person sweats a lot and has an accelerated heartbeat. In some cases, the person also suffers from nausea, or even he/she is fainted. Other symptoms are light headache, shaking, and hyperventilation.

Claustrophobia can be really bad for someone because he cannot enjoy the social living and suffers psychologically when the person is inside a room or a building or a vehicle. The person will not be at ease in a party, taking elevator or airplanes. It may even lead to depression and isolation.

Treatments for Claustrophobia

Claustrophobia can be treated with some techniques of behavorial therapy such as flooding in which the person is flooded with similar situations until the person can handle the anxiety. Another technique is counter conditioning in which the person will be given a relaxation before being reintroduced to the situation. We can also use Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) or regression hypnotherapy as the treatments and/or combined with some anti-depressants.