afraidofketchup

People don’t like to ride in elevators or wait for them. Many people can’t even get in one, or would really rather not. “They’re not psychotic,” Jerilyn Ross, a cognitive-behavioral therapist in Washington and the president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, said recently. “It’s just a misfiring of the fight-or-flight response.” Elevator phobia is a kind of claustrophobia, and as such the fear is as much of experiencing fear—of having a panic attack, in an enclosed space—as it is of the thing itself. Hoberman said. “I don’t have a fear of dying in an elevator, or of the elevator losing control—I have a fear of being stuck with my mind.”

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