Escaping Claustrophobia

HOW ONE CLIENT LEFT CLAUSTROPHOBIA BEHIND

By Georgina Smalldridge

I want to tell you about someone I worked with a while back, because it's stuck with me ever since.

She was in her sixties, and had lived with severe claustrophobia since she was in her twenties. And I mean severe. No tight clothes, no snug shoes, nothing that made her feel even slightly hemmed in. Small cars, tiny doorways, lifts, all a hard no. It had shaped her whole life for decades. And the thing that really got me: she'd missed her own son's wedding, because she just couldn't face the travel.

She'd already tried quite a lot before she found me. Multiple psychologists, a behaviourist, medication, and more. I think by the time she sat down with me she was a bit tired of hoping.

We started slowly and gently, with just relaxation. Nothing scary, nothing pushy, simply getting her nervous system to feel safe again. Once that was solid, we used hypnosis to help her imagine her way into those tricky situations, bit by bit, long before we ever tried them in real life. Between sessions, I'd set her real-world situations to practise too, and she really committed, applying everything consistently in her own time. Then, gradually, we brought it fully out into the real world, always at her pace.

A few weeks later she missed a session with no message, so of course I checked in to make sure she was okay. That's when she told me she didn't need any more sessions with me. Everything we'd worked on had simply started to click, and it just... worked. Not long after that, she got on a flight to go and see her son. And met her grandson for the very first time.

That's the bit that gets me every time. It was never really about doorways or car seats. It was about getting her life back.