So, am I the only one geographical agoraphobia?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

No idea what else to call it…
Certainly not a social agoraphophia, with a fear of venturing out of your own house - got no problem with any of that stuff.
It is, literally - a fear of, like, wide, wide, WIDE open spaces.
Lived all my life in a geographical environment where my line of vision was always eventually broken up by topography of some sort; can only think of three areas around my city where one can get a full, unimpeded view of vast, open sky, with two of them being on the top of small mountains and the other one way out on the tip of a breakwater.
On the road with one of my old bands back in the day, we had to pull over on a stretch of highway about a hundred miles east of Medicine Hat, Alberta. OMfreakingG, when I got out of the van, I found myself one on one with the most vast, unending, 360-degree of nothingness but freaking horizon, everywhere. Boom. That’s it. Nothing more. Just land and cloudless sky that threatened to suck me up into the gigantic void, as I clutched, with increasingly sweaty hands, onto the gerry can, my body and face plastered hard against the side of the van to somehow avoid the sight of basically everything around me.
Even if I just think, contemplate it enough, my circulation speeds up, my palms get sweaty, and I get all woozy, recreating the vertigo that came over me back then, as I embarrassingly slunked back in the van and asked someone else to finsh the job I actually couldn’t finish - feeling almost ready to freaking faint.
I don’t think I’d fare very well on, say, Bonneville Salt Flats*, or driving down that famously long, straight highway in Australia.

Really? I’m the only one with this deal?

*heh - but even that vista - in the distance - is broken up by mountains.

2

I think I know what you mean… let me describe it for you.

I grew up in the greater Houston area, which if you’re not aware, is painfully flat. Like so much so, that for the Houston soapbox derbies, they shut off an overpass because of the lack of natural hills. So that level of flatness was normal for me, as was seeing the ocean (grandparents lived on the coast, friends had beach houses, etc…)

When I moved to the Dallas area, specifically the northern suburbs, I remember coming over a slight rise while driving, and being able to see for miles in any direction- there were not any significant woods, development, or anything else. I had this overwhelming feeling of being exposed and vulnerable - like I imagine a mouse must feel in the open when hawks are around.

I’ve since got used to it for the most part, but it took a long time for me to get over that feeling when driving certain stretches of road, and greater development helped, as there’s not line-of-sight for 20 miles either.

I figure it has something to do with being at the highest point, with nowhere visible to hide. Being on a mountaintop doesn’t do it to me, and nor does being on boats for some reason. But put me on a slight rise in mostly flat country, and I’m uncomfortable. Being in flat land where I’m not on a rise doesn’t bug me either.

3

I’ve experienced something at least similar to this – and, sorta amusingly, my grandmother suffered the inverse.

Grandmother, heck, my whole recent ancestry came from the farmlands of Iowa. Every one born, raised, married and died there with only brief excursions elsewhere. (At that time. In the fifty years since then much scattering has happened.) My parents married and became nomadic due to the early part of my father’s career. As in, his company kept promoting him each year, tied to moves from region to region. Maryland to Mississippi to California to Ohio to Nevada and so on.

My grandmother’s case happened when she came to visit us while we lived in New England the first time. She suffered from a feeling of near continual ‘claustrophobia.’ In quotes, because it wasn’t really that. She had no trouble at all while inside, no matter how small a room it might actually have been. What she couldn’t take was how ‘closed in’ it felt when she was outside. Everywhere she looked things blocked her eyesight. Buildings, yes. High rises all around! But even when we went out driving to a suburb or even up into the ‘wilds’ of New Hampshire it was no better, because whatever direction she looked there were TREES. Huge, big trees, trees thirty or more feet high! Trees she couldn’t look past, couldn’t look out over a long vista, couldn’t see the horizon! Not to mention those threatening mounds of rock looming all over the place.

The only time she felt good outside was when we went to the seashore. You CAN see for long distances out over open water.

This was when I was ten or so, and I remember being bemused about it. What the heck? There were patches of scrubby forest everywhere sure, but there were open glades and some farm fields and swampy/brushy areas too, so what the heck?

So, maybe five(?) years later our family went back to visit the rest of the clan in Iowa, and I started feeling oppressed when outside. All that emptiness! You looked out and all there seemed to be was miles of open fields, yeah, okay, with maybe a silo or two visible here and there. It took me a while, but I figured out that it felt to me like there was NOTHING holding the sky up. The whole weight of the open air was pressing down on me!

It didn’t rise to a panic reaction, but I was sort of mentally cringing when outdoors.

4

When I was a little kid reading the Little House on the Prairie books, I thought that a whole lot of big flat nothing sounded so hideous and depressing.
But the first time I ever saw such a thing (I believe it was while traveling in Montana or Washington state), I was stunned. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
I sometimes fantasize about being on a huge flat plain on a beautiful day, and just walking for hours.

5

I have “Handicap Stall” Agoraphobia. The staff men’s room at my office is one urinal and one seat. And ADA code means that the stall has to be BIG so that wheelchairs can turn around. When I’m on that toilet, I have a wall to my left and the wall behind me. But there’s this HUGE space in front and to the right. The door is 5-6 feet away. I feel like I’m using the toilet in the middle of a football stadium. So exposed. I prefer the small regular stall where I can put my foot against the door if I have to.

6

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, where we’ve got highly varied terrain everywhere you look. And I had the exact same reaction the first time I went to visit family outside Ontario.

I remember the feeling distinctly. After we left the airport, we were on the top level of a parking structure, open to the air. I had this prickly uncomfortable feeling, like I was in danger, but I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It was extremely unsettling.

Until suddenly it hit me. Horizon in every direction. Nothing but flat terrain. No topography.

I felt like a bug on a billiard table.

So, yeah. I’m with you. I don’t like that feeling. At all.

7

Not far from the property I grew up on, in the Riverina of NSW, when travelling NE you can drive past a property called “Steam Plains” about 110,000 acres which is fairly typical for the area.

Now there is a spot on the trip, where unlike the 2nd pic (though it gives some sense of the vista which is usually not that green), you can see to the horizon for 360 degrees without your line of sight being interrupted by a tree and the highest point of the landscape is the road your are travelling on.

Our equivalent of the HHGTTG’s Total Perspective Vortex.

8

Aw yeah - enlarging that photo to a full 25" mointor!

:smile: :+1:

:nauseated_face:

9

You’re not alone.

10

The only time I’ve felt this was at the World Trade Center. I grew up near Seattle and went up in the Space Needle, and other tall buildings, plenty of times. I went to the observation deck at the WTC once; there were escalators going up but they were closed due to high winds. Never had a problem with any of it.

Until I went back to the WTC, and the escalators were open. They took me up to a catwalk on the roof. It’s not like I could look straight down, either, the walkway was about 15 feet back from the edge. Something about it just got to me. Maybe it was the openness like some of you have described, or the feeling like if I backed away from one side I’d fall off the opposite. The big problem was that I had to go halfway around the building to get to the down escalator.

The next few times I went up in tall buildings, it recurred a little bit. I remember a church in Munich with a very narrow balcony, for one. I didn’t want to give in to it, though. I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower when I visited Paris. I think I’m over it by now.

11

Interesting - “space phobia” sure sounds like what I have, however, after reading pages 387 - 391, I didn’t really get a sense of any of those patients having an issue with wide open spaces, but instead being besieged with a frequent sense of falling down.
That being said, the idea of an absence of visuospatial support sounds like it’s homing in on the matter, with my easy dizzyness in those situations.

12

No, what agoraphobia I have manifests more about actual wide open spaces. A packed small place is much less anxiety producing than a big place with fewer people. When it first hit, the feeling was like I was falling into the mountains in the distance while I was on a car ride. And I still sometimes get it when looking up outside, especially with both eyes open so I get depth information.

13

Spread out a picnic cloth or sleeping bag in a wide open area. Lay back and stare into the sky, preferably a night without clouds or anything else disrupting your view of the stars. Then think about how it’s only gravitation, the weakest of the four forces, keeping you from floating off into the void. Maybe gripping the ground isn’t quite so unreasonable?

14

:thinking:
Is that not what my OP is precisely about?

15

Big thank you for reminding me to reread Gretel Erlich’s book the Solace of Open Spaces! It won’t help with your fear/discomfort symptoms, but might give some spiritual guidance.
Personally, Billy Ray Gusdorf’s small part in The Milagro Beanfield War has had the same effect for me - coming out of a snowcave in a blindingly white huge valley - but now i need a good cleanse like that to know where i might fit in.

16

Certainly something to think about. Heh, sure wouldn’t work in daytime. Gripping the ground has indeed crossed my mind before, as I freak that everything has gone all topsy turvy and I’m about to plummet tens of thousands of feet into the blue void.

Yeah, it can get really freakin bad.

17

I read the novel when it was new. I feel old now. Thanks a bunch.

18

The title asks “am I the only one?” I said no.

19

This reminds me of the time I nearly had a panic attack on an international flight. After a few hours in the air, I wanted very much to hold on to the floor and scream for them to put me down.

20

So - “…manifests more about actual wide open spaces” than…?