Monday, March 12, 2007
Wish I Could Be There: Notes From a Phobic Life - book excerpt by Allen Shawn
I don't like heights. I don't like being on the water. I am upset by walking across parking lots or open parks or fields where there are no buildings. I tend to avoid bridges, unless they are on a small scale. I respond poorly to stretches of vastness but do equally badly when I am closed in, as I am severely claustrophobic. When I go to a theater I sit on the aisle. I am petrified of tunnels, making most train travel as well as many drives difficult. I don't take subways. I avoid elevators as much as possible. I experience glassed-in spaces as toxic, and I find it difficult to adjust to being in buildings in which the windows don't open. I don't like to go to enclosed malls; and if I do, I don't venture very far into them. Even large museums cause me problems, despite my hunger to visit them. In short, I am afraid both of closed and of open spaces, and I am afraid, in a sense, of any form of isolation. When I am invited to a new house or apartment or to an event of any kind, my first reaction is to worry about its location. Often I go. But I end up missing many things and harming, or losing many relationships. When I am in settings that are far from my own home, I sometimes do adjust. But just as often my body lapses into a kind of closed hypervigilance or maintains a steady interior tremor like a car engine stalled in traffic.
The degree of my self-preoccupation is appalling. ...
I don't like heights. I don't like being on the water. I am upset by walking across parking lots or open parks or fields where there are no buildings. I tend to avoid bridges, unless they are on a small scale. I respond poorly to stretches of vastness but do equally badly when I am closed in, as I am severely claustrophobic. When I go to a theater I sit on the aisle. I am petrified of tunnels, making most train travel as well as many drives difficult. I don't take subways. I avoid elevators as much as possible. I experience glassed-in spaces as toxic, and I find it difficult to adjust to being in buildings in which the windows don't open. I don't like to go to enclosed malls; and if I do, I don't venture very far into them. Even large museums cause me problems, despite my hunger to visit them. In short, I am afraid both of closed and of open spaces, and I am afraid, in a sense, of any form of isolation. When I am invited to a new house or apartment or to an event of any kind, my first reaction is to worry about its location. Often I go. But I end up missing many things and harming, or losing many relationships. When I am in settings that are far from my own home, I sometimes do adjust. But just as often my body lapses into a kind of closed hypervigilance or maintains a steady interior tremor like a car engine stalled in traffic.
The degree of my self-preoccupation is appalling. ...
Labels: suffering
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