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What is claustrophobia

Claustrophobia (also called phobia of confined spaces) is an anxiety disorder about isolated spaces. Space phobia is a type of fear of place.

Patients are afraid of closed or crowded places because they are worried that unknown helplessness will occur in these places. In severe cases, anxiety and obsessive-compulsive symptoms may even occur.

Once out of this environment, the patient's physiology and behavior will quickly return to normal. Claustrophobia is classified as a mental and behavioral disorder, specifically an anxiety disorder.

Symptoms usually appear in childhood or adolescence.

Claustrophobia is often thought to have one key symptom: the fear of suffocation.

In at least one, if not several, of the following areas: small room, MRI or CAT scan equipment, car, bus, airplane, train, tunnel, underwater cave, cellar , elevators and caves.

Being enclosed or thinking about being enclosed in a confined space can trigger fears of being unable to breathe properly and running out of oxygen.

It’s not always the small space that triggers these emotions, but more the fear of being restricted by the possibilities of what can happen in that area.

When anxiety levels begin to reach a certain PPO level, the person may begin to experience: sweating and/or chills increased heart rate and blood pressure dizziness, fainting, lightheadedness and fear freezing dry mouth Hyperpnea Hot flashes Shaking or shaking, a "butterfly" feeling in the stomach Nausea Headache Numbness Feeling of choking Chest tightness/chest pain and difficulty breathing The urge to go to the bathroom Confusion or disorientation Fear of injury or illness Causes of Claustrophobia

1. Family education and upbringing methods. First of all, overly strict or dogmatic family education will simplify people’s psychological socialization process, reduce their social adaptability, affect their cognitive socialization level, and lead to a lack of understanding of objective things. Difficulty making correct judgments.

Secondly.

An authoritarian family atmosphere can easily distort the normal psychological development process of children, causing individuals to have wrong perceptions of external things.

2. Genetic and personality factors. Claustrophobia may be caused by psychological or life trauma in childhood. It is usually followed by individuals who previously showed timidity, shyness, and experienced major life changes. They are more likely to become adults as adults. Anxiety phobia appears.

In addition, the role of genetic factors in phobias has also received increasing attention from scholars, and the specific reasons for its impact on individuals are still under further study.

3. Biological Factors Scholars have found that the postsynaptic 5-HT receptors of phobia patients are more sensitive than ordinary people, which makes patients more susceptible to the influence of closed spaces and produces psychological and physiological symptoms. fear.

4. Schizophrenia factors Sigmund Freud was the earliest representative to study claustrophobia. Freud first considered claustrophobia as a chronic symptom of neurasthenia, and eventually regarded it as a chronic symptom of neurasthenia. It is related to anxiety hysteria in his early works. He explained that claustrophobia is the result of excessive individual sexual desire, which is suppressed by castration anxiety and Oedipus complex desire. The fear and anxiety plot cannot be released, and it will be from the face. Fear transfer is projected onto specific objects and situations.

How to treat claustrophobia? There are two treatments for claustrophobia: psychotherapy and medication.

Psychotherapy 1. Psychological counseling: provide necessary emotional support to relieve the patient's nervousness. If the symptoms are severe, the treatment must be interrupted in time and weaned out of isolation as soon as possible. 2. Systemic desensitization therapy: the current treatment The safest and most effective method for treating claustrophobia is for the doctor to set a "stepped" fear value, and gradually expose the patient to the things and environments that cause fear, and then gradually reduce it, and finally achieve the effect of complete disappearance of symptoms. The method is relatively mild and easy to be accepted by patients. The disadvantage is that the treatment time is long and the effect is slow.

Drug treatment 1. Anti-anxiety drugs 2. Anti-depressant drugs 3. Traditional Chinese medicine therapy.