What If This Clarify The Sudden Onset Of Your Phobic Symptoms?
In the following case studies you will notice the undeniable correlation between various destabilizing factors in your inner-ear system and the sudden onset of phobic symptoms. If you were "suddenly phobic," some of these stories may sound eerily familiar. Hopefully the experiences of these persons will help to clarify why your phobias suddenly surfaced.
Marcieīs case:
When Marcie was sixteen years old she developed mononucleosis. This left her with a severe labyrinthitis, an inflammation of the inner ear. For the next four years she suffered from balance disturbances, difficulties with perception, and a variety of fears and phobias.
"Since the mono Iīve had a terrible fear of heights. Even getting up on a step stool to change a light bulb throws me off-balance. And right after the mono there were times I was fearful of leaving my house. I felt like an animal with no feeling of time and space, and no protection.
I wasnīt paranoid, I just felt incapable of protecting myself from things that were happening to me or coming at me, like cars, people... even stepping off a curb. There was no barrier or filter to protect me from life. I felt defenseless... unbalanced. I had no sense of a physical center."
Disturbed by her worsening condition, Marcie started psychotherapy. Her fears and phobias were the main theme of her sessions. When asked if her symptoms had improved, she laughingly replied, "No, I just live with them better. Sometimes I can focus on them and control them. At other times I feel out of control."
Like many a desperate phobic, Marcie went to several physicians in hopes of finding a better answer. One after another, they examined her and left her with the same diagnosis: "Nothing is wrong, itīs all in your head."
Blancheīs case:
"One day as I was about to leave my home to run a few errands, I suddenly became rooted to the floor, just as I was about to open the front door. I was physically unable to walk through that door. From that day until four weeks ago, I was unable to leave my home unless my daughter accompanied me and I had a cane to help support me. In order to move around in the house I had to hold on to furniture.
I felt dizzy, dyscoordinated, and off-balance. Although I tried several drugs, my agoraphobia and an acute fear of falling persisted. I became totally dependent upon my children to help me whenever I needed to go to the store or the doctor. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, my phobias disappeared."
Alanīs case:
Alan went to his doctor following the sudden, seemingly unexplainable onset of two phobias; a fear of small, enclosed spaces, and a fear of death.
It all began when Alan, who had never suffered from any phobias or panic attacks, went into the hospital for a minor hernia operation. After receiving two pre-op injections to anesthetize him and make him drowsy, Alan was moved from his hospital bed to a stretcher. A hospital attendant then pulled up the metal bars on the sides of the stretcher and proceeded to wheel Alan out of his room and down the hall to an elevator bank.
Only able to look up at the ceiling, Alan began to find the perspective from the stretcher mildly disorienting. The elevator took him down to the basement of the hospital, and as he was being wheeled toward the pre-op room, the perspective from the stretcher, and the bars on either side of him, made Alan feel increasingly uncomfortable. He was beginning to feel trapped.
Once inside the small, windowless pre-op room, things got much worse. The room took on a surreal quality, and Alan began to feel seriously disoriented and dizzy. Within moments, he was panic stricken. He recalled:
"It was like something out of Night Gallery. Everything was so unreal. I felt like I wasnīt really there... like I was witnessing everything in the third person. Suddenly I wanted to get up and run out of the room. I needed to get to a window or door... get some fresh air... see some sunlight. But I was stuck on the stretcher with an intravenous in my arm, trapped inside those bars, thinking that any minute I was going to start screaming like a madman... it was like I was going crazy or something."
Shortly thereafter the injections must have taken full effect, for Alan barely remembers the surgery. Once he was fully conscious again in the post-op ward, his fears returned. But this time he was no longer scared of being trapped in a stretcher... he was thinking what it would be like to be trapped in a coffin, six feet underground, for all eternity. For Alan, a coffin represented the ultimate claustrophobic nightmare, the smallest enclosed space in which a human being could fit.
Alan was released from the hospital within a few days. But for a full week he could think of little else but dying and being put into "the box." He thought about being cremated, but that seemed worse. He tried to watch TV to distract his mind, but every program seemed to have someone being killed or someone dying of a disease. All this did was make him think of' "the box." Clearly, Alanīs phobia was beginning to take on a life of its own.
Soon Alanīs small studio apartment had taken on a boxlike quality, especially at night when he couldnīt see anything outside his windows. Furthermore, the thought of having hundreds of people living on top of him in his building, he lived on the second floor, was becoming unbearable. He panicked several times and ran to the window for air. But in his condition leaving the apartment was impossible, especially since the last thing he wanted was to wind up back in the hospital.
As soon as Alan was well enough to go out, his girlfriend convinced him to "lighten up" and go with her to the movies. Once inside the theater, he immediately felt uncomfortable. As soon as someone sat near him he would get up and change his seat. Ultimately, he found he could only be comfortable sitting in an aisle seat near the exit.
Sensing that Alan had become "a different person" since the surgery, his girlfriend suggested he see a psychiatrist. Instead, Alan called his regular physician and told him everything that had happened since he received the two injections in the hospital. His doctor told him, "You donīt need a psychiatrist, you need a priest."
Needless to say, this made Alan much worse. He began to be suspicious of everybody, including his girlfriend and his doctor. He felt like a victim in a crazy conspiracy, that he "really didnīt know any of these people at all."
Alanīs acute claustrophobia dissolved almost immediately when he started the right treatment with the right doctor. He wrote:
"It's been almost six months since I've had any serious attacks. I know the medication has helped, but knowing why this happened to me has also helped. I still think about death a lot, not as much as I used to, but more than I should. I've decided to see a therapist here."
Although the sudden appearance, disappearance, and intensification of phobic symptoms has always been noticed by phobics and clinicians, no one has ever offered an acceptable explanation, and for one very good reason. All previous phobic theories have overlooked the vital importance of the inner-ear system. As a result, they have necessarily overlooked the importance of various factors that can destabilize that system.
Download your free eBook "Stop Panic Attacks and Deal with Your Anxious Thoughts" here: FREE REPORT STOP PANIC ATTACKS or visit my blog: PANIC GOODBYE BLOG
- From Bertil Hjert The author of the Panic Goodbye Program. Read more about my brand new course at: PANIC GOODBYE PROGRAM
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