I think I have just a touch of it, but I’ve noticed a few times recently when I’ve reacted to something - a video or maybe just a passing remark - that stirred an uncomfortable feeling inside.
I was in my fifties the first time I was aware that I may have claustrophobic tendencies. It came about while watching the movie The Descent back in 2006 (great movie BTW). It takes place in a cave with some mighty tight passageways. I enjoyed the movie, but surprised myself with my reaction to the tight squeezes and the thought of being stuck underground.
OK, I just realized I lied. The first such feeling came about when I watched the scene in Kill Bill where Uma Thurman was buried alive. They showed her face through a glass coffin as shovels full of dirt were dropped on her. Kill Bill was released in 2003.
Flash forward. Nothing else noteworthy up until the last few months. One was a video of a guy swimming under the ice on a lake, going from one access hole to another. He became disoriented and was not sure in which direction the escape hole was, and seemed destined to perish while trapped.
The second video I saw just a few days ago. It is a guy, I dunno, maybe a utility worker, who squeezed himself into a very tiny hole to gain access to what I assume was an underground work area.
What I find interesting is that each of my claustrophobia-related reactions have come from me viewing a situation; never from me being in one.
You don’t really say what your reaction was. Intense discomfort? Panic attack? Were you uncomfortable for the person, or freaked imagining yourself where they were?
I can totally relate to the OP, I have the same reaction of uncomfort when I watch cave explorers on TV who go through openings that are barely big enough for their bodies. Same for submarine movies: Das Boot is a masterpiece, but it’s always hard to watch (though I actually visited the Bavaria studios in Munich in 1985 and went through the original U-Boot prop used for the film. Gave me the chills). My claustrophobia doesn’t really affect in me in everyday life, but it’s there in the background. My mother’s claustrophobia OTOH is much more pronounced and does affect her life: she doesn’t use elevators, would never step in a plane and very reluctantly rides in trains. Subways are also out, and since I’ve had a two doors car, she wouldn’t sit on the backseat where there’s no direct way of escaping in an emergency. I’m not that sensitive, but I can understand my mother because of my own unease in certain situations.
I have feelings of unease if I watch a movie with scenes of “trapped underground” or “trapped underwater”. Weirdly, submarine movies don’t bother me, but I can’t watch scenes of a sinking ship in which people are being trapped in a slowly filling room of water, like Titanic.
I know what the Kirk Douglas movie Ace in the Hole is about, and therefore I can’t watch it.
I’ve never had an MRI, so I don’t know how I’d react to that.
I wouldn’t have thought I had any claustrophobia, but I would be uneasy in, or even imagining myself in, situations like those described in the OP, where there is actual danger of being trapped and not being able to get out.
By contrast, I do have a fear of heights even in situations where there is no actual danger to me. I’d rather be underground or locked in a closet than up in the air.
I have occasionally have claustrophobia flare up on me. The first time it happened, it was while on an overnight Amtrak trip, when my wife and I had an economy sleeper room – the upper bunk, where I started out the evening, is close against the curved roof of the train car, and I freaked out a bit.
I’ve since had similar feelings while on airplanes, when I’m stuck in a window seat, and the person next to me is large (made even worse these days, when airlines have crammed in more seats by reducing the space between rows).
When it happens, I feel panicky. Not a fun feeling.
I have experienced a sense of uneasiness bordering on dread when playing certain video games where height is involved. For instance I’ve been playing the OG Tomb Raider games on Steam and much of the game involves climbing up on top of tall buildings and walls and whatnot and then jumping across some large chasm. It gives me the willies every time – not enough to stop playing, mind you, but enough to be noticeably uncomfortable.
I’ve an interesting manifestation of it. If I can control entry/exit for myself into a space, there’s no problem. If I cannot, then I’m quite uncomfortable.
I have so many phobias I’ve named my condition ‘allaphobia’
I don’t like feeling trapped and I have rising fear and panic til I can figure a way out.
But, I also am afraid of wide open spaces. Stores like Sam’s Club and Home Depot give me a feeling I wanna run and hide under something. I have actually ran to a restroom in those kinda places and puked.
I figured out it’s the fear the ceiling being so high and flimsy looking.
I’m usually ok out of doors but, occasionally I get a feeling I’m gonna fly away from the earth unless I hold on.
I refuse to look up at Walmart so I don’t get Phobia in there. I have other issues already.
So all in all I’m a basket case.
It’s my cross to bear. (I have a fear of crosses too, btw)
But seeing scenes in a movie doesn’t really bother me.
I can totally relate to the OP. I think my claustrophobia is slightly more severe, but mostly doesn’t affect me day-to-day. I don’t mind elevators or airplanes or other forms of transportation (even subways). On the other hand, I can remember visiting a touristy cavern (Luray in Virginia, maybe?) as a kid and getting fairly panicky.
Like the OP, representations of being buried alive or being underwater with ice above (even nature documentaries) can make my heart race. I had a really hard time with the news stories about the miners trapped in Chile (?) a few years ago that needed to be lifted out in a coffin-like “elevator” through a very long bore hole, and the kids trapped in the deep cave in Thailand.
I am mostly blind, and consume books almost exclusively on audio. A couple of years ago, I was walking to work (outside, under an open sky), listening to Blair Braverman’s Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube. Hearing her describe digging an snow cave to sleep in and waking up with solid ice a couple inches above her face and her backpack blocking the opening put me into a full-on panic attack. I immediately switched to an anodyne podcast and haven’t been able to bring myself to finish the book. Ridiculous, since she was narrating it, so I knew she came out fine, but there you are.
In 2018, my wife and I were in Jerusalem with a tour guide, and wanted to walk through one of the tunnels under the City of David archaeological site (the dry one). We entered the site at the top through a 1-way turnstile, and climbed down the staircase to the bottom (it’s essentially just under ground along a very steep hill), but before we entered the actual tunnel, I had a panic attack and really needed to exit. The tour guide found one of the people working there to let us out a side door–thank goodness there was one, or I would’ve completely lost my shit. I think she was a little irritated with me, but we got some iced coffee (which, in Israel, is basically a frappuccino), and I gave her a good tip on top of what we’d paid for driving us around Northern Israel and Jerusalem for 3 days. I will not be doing any more tourist attractions involving tunnels again.
So, yeah, I’ve got moderate claustrophobia. Don’t bury me alive–the panic attack will kill me.
It came up in another thread today: I’m an organ donor and have the card to prove it always with me. Good strategy to prevent from being buried alive (though that was not my main motive, just a side effect).
I think that’s probably quite common. I have a touch of claustrophobia (maybe more than a touch!) and that has a lot to do with it. I’m not claustrophobic on airplanes (even when jammed into my preferred window seat) I suppose because even if the seats beside me are occupied, I can always get out into the aisle. I never do, but knowing I can makes it OK. OTOH, I hate hate hate being in the back seat of a two-door sedan, because there is no side door. I also have a general dislike of elevators. Generally I’ll tolerate them, but I won’t like it. Once I got into an old creaky elevator in an old building, and before the doors closed a whole bunch of other people got in, cramming themselves in like sardines. I was out of there like a shot, and took the stairs!
I suspect that I would not be able to tolerate being sent into orbit in a tiny cramped space capsule!
{** Scratches “astronaut” off possible list of future careers. **}
Sounds to me like you suffer from omniphobia. Not a real word, but it fits!
Heh. The thought has occurred to me. My state ID does have me marked as an organ donor, but I’m afraid I might be getting too old and broken down for them to take anything truly vital.
This – and all the other stories in this thread of being mildly creeped out by scenes like these in movies – that all sounds to me like a perfectly normal empathy response. Scenes like those are supposed to make viewers feel that way, and I suppose most viewer do. That’s why they make movies with scenes like that. And people pay good money to watch them!
So when they think you’re dead but you really aren’t, you get your organs donated alive.
Many (maybe all?) four-seater airplanes are like this. Only the front seats have doors, and to get in or out of the back you tilt the front seat-back forward, just like in two-door cars. Even better still is the Piper Cherokee – It only has one door, in the front on the passenger (right) side. The pilot has to get in first or out last by climbing over the passenger seat. I think the theory is that if you crash, it probably doesn’t matter if nobody can get out.
Not only is there already a word for it, it seems there are four words: panphobia, panophobia, pantophobia, and … wait for it …
yes, omniphobia.
I think you’re just experiencing sympathetic anxiety at an actual dangerous/uncomfortable depicted situation, and it is in no way the same as actual claustrophobia.
If your heart races every time someone goes into an elevator or a small room in a movie, to the point where you had to stop watching the movie, that would be more like actual claustrophobia. Phobias impede real life, they are not just a little anxiety at someone else’s predicament in actual dangerous confined spaces or fictional depictions of them.
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