Elevator Phobia Email

I recently received an email from a blog member (Henry) - with his permission I've reprinted his email and a reply to him below.

Henry is overcoming a phobia of lifts/elevators and planes (I think closely related to claustrophobia in his case as he indicates he prefers lifts without people in them - I know someone who won't get in a lift unless it already has several people in it).

I've put links in Henry's original email so you can check out the articles he mentions.

Something to focus on here is that regardless of the type of anxiety disorder or emotional problem concerned, the overall approach to healing any emotional disorder is the same.  Once you develop and understand your own effective healing approach you will find this to be consistently true.  The free pdf (The Semantic Mind) I mention in my reply is what I'm working on now - I intended it to be on here weeks ago but I keep finding more to write - it should definitely be on here soon!  This document talks about focusing on your body as the source of the energy fuelling the problem, rather than what's going on in your brain.

One of the hardest stages of the healing process is to do what I call 'going into the out of' and Henry has already started this journey.  The stage he is at now reminds me of my own experience of healing the phobias and panic attacks I used to struggle with.

Speaking to other people about these things is also an important break-through step, particularly because it 'normalises' these conditions for us and they then start to appear more acceptable to our unconscious.  Self-criticism on the basis of  'normal versus abnormal' just gets in the way of healing.   I know many people in my day job, for example, who appear completely 'together' on the surface but have powerful long-term phobias they regard as 'strange' and therefore don't dare face or discuss.

Realising these conditions are normal life events (they're not desirable, but they are normal) is an important part of the healing journey and I hope I get this across in this post.  Anyway,  as always, I write too much.

Here's Henry's email:

Hi Carl,

I have wanted to contact you since reading your insightful article published on Helium.Com entitled "How to handle anxiety and panic attacks".

You have described the internal psychological and subconscious processes of anxiety disorders clearer than just about any other source that I have read. Now I am glad to come across "The Three Elements of Emotional Acceptance" on another site as well as your blog and email address.

I have an intense phobia of enclosed places including elevators and planes.  I can only really be in touch with my reaction when I am in the confines of an elevator or a plane.  I do try exposure on my own, but it is very measured and not prolonged or intensive enough.  I have also experienced some rare setbacks which have eroded my confidence and have confirmed or reminded me that I am unable or unwilling to tolerate these remote but painfully traumatic worst-case experiences.These setbacks include being momentarily stuck and what I call near-miss or as-if misinterpretations.

I try to approach elevators with mindfulness and intentions of acceptance such as: "It is OK to be stuck; I can wait it out if necessary; It is not dangerous just frustrating and uncomfortable; It is only my feeling or anxiety; Even if it is stuffy and poorly ventilated, I can still breathe if it got stuck".

This has helped to an extent, but my intentions and supporting experience are still weaker than the pain or expectation of pain that I experienced or that I expect when my unfulfilled reaction to escape is triggered.

I even had an elevator game where I would remain on a motionless, empty elevator with the door closed for several minutes or until it was summoned.

As you mentioned: "To remove all emotional blocks..the unconscious must be taken into the emotional block and kept there.. After a while the truth dawns that the lion is not really dangerous and the unconscious makes a permanent change".

I know that elevators are reliable and I will take them when not crowded or too stuffy, but I am still very apprehensive about tolerating the rare and unexpected scenario that I have briefly experienced in the past. I have been reluctant to engage a Cognitive-Behavioural therapist because I do not see how I can be assisted with this as I ultimately have to do it on my own.

Carl, I would appreciate any thoughts or feedback that you could share. Please feel free to contact me at your convenience.  Thanks for listening and for sharing the wonderful articles.

Here's my reply to Henry:

Hi Henry

Many thanks for getting in touch it's lovely to hear from you. That Helium article was one of the very first things I wrote in regard to emotional healing but I do get the occasional email from people just like yourself as a result of it. The internet is an amazing thing, eh?

At the moment I'm working on my book on healing obsessions and am writing a section called 'The Semantic Mind - Your Body' which I'm going to put on the blog as a free downloadable document and people with any kind of emotional disorder will find it interesting I think.

Writing this document has kept me away from the blog for about 6 weeks so I'm pleased you've got in touch as it gives me a chance to do a good post - you set such an excellent example of 'what to do' I couldn't resist doing this; thank you for agreeing to my using your email in this way.

Congratulate Yourself

Congratulate yourself on what you're doing - you're on the way. I worked with two people face to face about a year ago; one had a phobia of lifts and the other had a phobia of cats and neither could bring themselves to do what you've already started. I put a lot of effort into these folks and by the third meeting they just stopped turning up without telling me why (I suspect they developed a phobia of me!).  The mistake I think I made here was I tried to 'soften the blow' by giving them some of the theory first - I felt if I told them straight what they needed to do they'd just refuse - I no longer think that way.  You have already made the decision to get on with it so it's easier for me to reply to you.  I'd be interested to know if it was the Helium article that persuaded you to take these steps or if you were already planning this process and the article just spurred you on?

I notice you mention not being able to get exposure that's prolonged or intensive enough - sounds like you're a bit frustrated about that but keep going, you'll get there. I had a chap with panic attacks talking to me a while ago who told me his counsellor had given him similar advice to do what you're doing and he'd fallen out with the counsellor over it - I advised him to listen. That's a good counsellor.

Increasing the Intensity

You understand this concept well - the fact you're frustrated at not being able to do this shows you 'get it'.  I remember my own doctor telling me to 'take it easy' because she felt I was trying too hard to heal and I understand why she said this but it's sometimes like being on a roller-coaster ride when you're just going over a hill - it does what it does and it's actually harder to stop than it is to just continue.  At first glance a person reading this might wonder 'why does he want to make it worse?' but that's not what you're doing here.  What you're doing is moving closer to a trapped emotional charge held within the body - you're not creating new charge, you're moving towards discharge.

The only additional emotional response you're creating is the frustration at not being able to discharge what's trapped inside and that will pass if you continue as you are doing.  Eventually you will start to notice changes.

You are wondering how to increase the intensity (in other words how to move closer to the trapped charge). It would help if you could recreate the experience in your imagination' or by arranging a physical experience that's similar but closer to home/easier to get to. You will need to be able to do this systematically and without interruptions otherwise you won't be able to focus in for long enough.

At this point, however, having the intention of 'moving towards' will eventually get you there. Does shutting yourself in a small cupboard, for example, create the same affect? Don't do something that's actually dangerous though, eh?! You need to be comfortable 'in reality' whilst moving into your buried emotional sensations.

The unconscious performs a number of functions for us but one of the most important functions is to protect us from pain - this works great when you don't want to start the emotional discharge process but works against you when you do want to start but your unconscious is convinced you won't 'survive' the experience.  At this point it helps if you can see your unconscious as a protective waiter who comes to the table and asks 'are you sure you're ready for this dish?'.  Then it brings you samples to taste - and asks if you're ready again.  The frustration is that of a hungry customer wanting the waiter to bring the full meal.

Don't worry, if you keep asking the waiter eventually brings the full meal.  Then when you've had enough the waiter takes it away again ...

"The Three Elements of Emotional Acceptance" Article

You're already demonstrating you understand this model; you know you've got trapped energy in your body that needs to be 'fed through the issue' and you've got to bring that up; you know you've got to bring yourself to accept the whole process as it happens; but I'm just wondering what the issue is: do you think it's about a fear of suffocation or more a social fear of other people closing in on you?

If you continue as you are doing you should eventually see these things appearing with more clarity. There are slight differences between obsessions and phobias - obsessions are based around 'shapes and experiences' held as reflections internally - an image will keep reappearing in the mind and an overwhelming emotional response accompanies it; with phobias  it's the same model but it only arises when you are close or know you are going to be close to these 'shapes and experiences' externally. If you can recreate that scenario strongly enough in your imagination you won't need actual lifts/planes to do the work necessary to clear the experience from your system.

Emotional Hijacking

'These setbacks include being momentarily stuck and what I call near-miss or as-if misinterpretations' - what do you mean by 'being momentarily stuck'? Do you mean not being able to think properly? That's normal - it's called 'emotional hijacking' and that's what you have to give in to.

When I (finally!) get 'the Semantic Mind' on the blog you'll be able to read more about this but basically what I say here is that the body runs the show and our job is to try and get the thinking minds to stop thinking so much and move on to allowing the body to do its job. Our minds must surrender to this hijacking for a given amount of time (as long as it takes, in fact - all judgemental self-talk gets in the way).

Trouble is it works much more slowly than our thinking minds do - for example it took 3 months of difficult daily practice for me to overcome my panic attacks and I did this by just allowing myself to 'feel' - with this I didn't get to identify the 'issue' in the Acceptance model as the issue was another emotional response so I couldn't logically identify and label it.

Much later when a single sentence popped into my mind along the lines of 'what's wrong with me?' it dawned on me that a single self-critical sentence was the cause of my panic attacks.  The interpretation that something was 'wrong' had caused a severe emotional reaction and it happened so quickly I didn't know I had caused it.  Often the thing that's 'wrong' with an emotional response, and which causes us to produce secondary blocking emotional responses in regard to it, is a belief that something is wrong.  We are socially programmed to believe that emotional responses are bad.  Inappropriate harmful external actions are bad, but the belief you must necessarily produce a harmful action as the result of a painful emotional experience is incorrect.

We can release an intense emotional issue without doing anything in the external world - we just have to be willing to endure that period of emotional hijacking.

Releasing Trapped Energy

'I try to approach elevators with mindfulness and intentions of acceptance such as: "It is OK to be stuck; I can wait it out if necessary; It is not dangerous just frustrating and uncomfortable; It is only my feeling or anxiety; Even if it is stuffy and poorly ventilated, I can still breathe if it got stuck".

So you're worried about the lift getting stuck and being unable to breathe - that seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to be afraid of; but the problem is that right now there is no current ' real problem' and you know this and need to release the energy attached to the problem that really only exists in an imagined scenario.  Here's something to think about:

I want you to imagine that at some point you had a genuine need to release a lot of energy into your body to deal with what looked like a genuine threat along the lines of the fears and issues you describe (because even though your fears are currently unfounded they are based around things we would naturally be afraid of when such things happen).  The energy produced to deal with your initial response is still trapped in your body. When you're in a similar situation now the energy inside is being told 'eh, we're near the issue' and so it wants to come out.

What you're feeling when you approach lifts/planes now is produced by your system releasing a bundle of trapped energy. The only thing you have to concentrate on thought-wise is 'I'm releasing the trapped energy' and allow it to come out for as long as it takes.  A caveat I would add to this is that there is probably a 'triggering response' set up in your unconscious mind for releasing new emotional energy but after a while this mechanism 'habituates' and stops triggering so the release of new energy stops.  The unconscious mind may be irritating, but it's not stupid - in fact in conjunction with your body it runs the whole show.

Re-Interpreting the 'Pain'

This has helped to an extent, but my intentions and supporting experience are still weaker than the pain or expectation of pain that I experienced or that I expect when my unfulfilled reaction to escape is triggered.  I even had an elevator game where I would remain on a motionless, empty elevator with the door closed for several minutes or until it was summoned'.

Lots of things to write about here!  I'm going to pick out some of your words and turn them into paragraph headings; then I'm going to talk about taking steps to re-interpret the pain in order to get your unconscious to see things in a different way - this may help it to surrender to the necessary emotional hijacking more effectively.  You have already started to do this but may not be aware of how subtle differences in the way you talk to your unconscious can make a difference.

Intentions

At this stage you should focus on a simple process: go in; experience; observe; come out.  Then do it again.  Then do it again.  Then do it again.

The intention here is to show your unconscious that what you've previously convinced it is a survival-related threat is not dangerous at all (I'm not talking here about the lifts/planes environment but your trapped emotional response itself - you have programmed your unconscious to believe releasing the emotional discharge itself is dangerous) .

Keep going in and coming out and there'll come a point when the unconscious will take over and do what needs to be done.  With your thinking mind you have hit the limit of what you can 'thoughtfully do' just by taking yourself into the response - the job of your thinking now is to observe and record information on what starts to happen.

By going in you tell the unconscious you are ready; when it really believes you it will allow emotional hijacking to take place.  By going in and then coming out again, and realising you are still alive, you reduce both the sense of threat and also start to instill a sense of having some degree of control over the process.  Achieving the understanding that 'I don't like it but I do get to have some influence over what I do with it' starts to build confidence.

As all these things progress and develop, observe.  Don't dictate what should happen with 'expectations', observe, but equally don't become self-critical over having expectations and getting frustrated they're not being met - frustration is a part of the journey.  If you observe closely enough you will see the 'little tricks' that will ensure you never suffer with this problem again.

Eventually you'll learn how it all works as opposed to how you would like it to.  One of the hardest things we have to learn here is that we are natural, organic beings first and not in control of everything.  We are not logic-based machines as our egos like to pretend we are.  Your organic body is designed to sort this kind of problem out for you, but you have to allow it to.

Supporting Experience

The only supporting experience that would have any meaning for you in this situation was if you had a professional history of observing and helping others go through the emotional healing process you're working with or if you have previously had another phobia/anxiety disorder you have healed from (as I said earlier the approach that heals one emotional disorder can be used to heal them all - they're all slightly different in flavour and certain 'tweaks' can affect one emotional disorder better than another - but the same basic approach works on all of them.

Once you've healed your phobia you will have all the experience you need to heal another one much more quickly should it ever happen again.  Don't chastise yourself for 'not knowing exactly what to do' - you don't know what you don't know until you take the learning steps that lead to knowing and the learning is an 'experiential' process rather than an intellectual one. One of the benefits (yes, there are benefits) of working through this kind of emotional blockage is you more naturally come to associate uncomfortable emotional periods with achieving unconditional happiness as a side affect and so are more willing to endure periods of discomfort for the later reward.

The Game:  'I even had an elevator game where I would remain on a motionless, empty elevator with the door closed for several minutes or until it was summoned'

I like the word 'game' you use here - this kind of remark tells me you know what you're doing and are on the right path.  Can you see the 'tone' this gives to what you're doing?


The unconscious responds not just to being 'shown' the situation is not dangerous by being taken into it repeatedly, but also to the 'tone' you communicate to yourself as you do this - even if it is a scenario taking place just in your imagination. The unconscious does best when repeatedly 'shown with tone'.

This may seem a minor thing, but it isn't. If you think of your unconscious as a toddler who you are trying to convince to sleep in a room with the lights out it's a similar conversation. The unconscious has to be gradually persuaded - tell your toddler off for not being willing to sleep in the dark room and you get exactly the opposite affect of that wanted.  When you use this kind of fun-tone in your self-talk you start to re-interpret your 'pain'.

Acceptance Power


I pick up from the things you write that you are looking for something with greater catalysing 'power' to get you through the Acceptance process more quickly (my intentions and supporting experience are still weaker than the pain or expectation of pain).  You're already aware that the standards set by your logical thinking - this thinking is based in your left neo-cortex - is struggling and frustrated by the work and this mind is telling you 'not good enough'.

But by now, as a result of the work you've done so far, you will have sensed and be curious about the 'differences' you are experiencing by deliberately going into the emotional response itself (this is the MOST powerful thing you can do, but the power of it is overwhelming and the brain translates this as 'pain' at first).

What you're looking for now is a translating method that turns what you're experiencing at the emotional level into something you can understand and adapt to at the intellectual level so you can set yourself more realistic targets (am I right?).


Re-Interpreting the Pain Using Imagery Techniques

By 'seeing it as a game' you have already started the intermediate translation process using the mind that 'sees'.  This mid-stage mind has slightly more power than the logical left neo-cortex, but still much less than the unconscious and the Semantic Mind (your body).  The mind I'm talking about here  is your pattern-making mind in your right neo-cortex.  You 'see' with this mind and if you 'see' your experience as a game you communicate strongly to your unconscious in a warmer tone.

OK, I'm going to give you a tip-top secret.  Don't share this with anyone, they won't understand how important this is and you may lose friends.

When I was working on removing my panic attacks (which, as I say, took several months) I did exactly what you're doing - minus the elevators and the planes - and in the middle of it asked my unconscious to provide me with something I could use to speed the process up.  I started to get some very strong imagery appearing and at first I didn't realise what it was - it just seemed totally unrelated.  Then it started to dawn that my unconscious had been provided 'new ways of seeing' and I'd not understood what they were for.  What I'm going to give you now is my 'Sherbet Dab' imagery technique - believe it or not this helped heal my panic attacks a lot faster.

Evaporating The Sherbet Dab Technique (don't laugh - and yes, there's a certain lady I know who's going to rib me over this one)

There used to be a sweet I ate as a child called Sherbet Dab - Sherbet is that usually yellow coloured sweet-stinging-sour-tasting sweet.  Remember it? It's still around.  Go to the sweet shop and buy some.

When this appeared for me I'd been wanting to find a way to change the 'tone' of the emotional pain I was feeling and I started to say:

when I feel the panic symptoms coming on I'm going to imagine that I'm moving into a hill of sherbet; I'm going to imagine I'm converting the sherbet into a yellow gas as I release the energy and I'm evaporating that yellow gas out into nothingness around me.  This pain isn't pain - it's a sweet and sour thing; it doesn't really hurt.  I'm just absorbing sherbet into my body, converting and releasing it.

From then on every time I started to feel the sensations of intense panic I would introduce this imagery and go further into the 'sherbet hill'.

I've never eaten so much imaginery sherbet before.  But it worked.  There are some other techniques I'll be sharing in that book I'm going to finish one day - but you've got to be open minded to use them.  One thing to learn is that when you're working with the unconscious mind you're not working with 'reality' but it's interpretation of your reflections of reality.  Tell it that pain is the releasing of a sticky sweet'n'sour energy source and it'll eventually believe you.

Anyway, it was fun while it lasted and no Sherbet Dabs were harmed during the making of that experience.  Now, take a look at the things I've just written - can you see how the 'tone' of the experience is completely changed by applying this pattern?  We even got a laugh (I did, anyway) out of it.

Give it Time

Patience is required - that's one of the more difficult lessons when healing an emotional problem because the healing hurts.  A broken leg takes about 6 weeks to heal and an emotional problem works in a similar action and time-bound way.

I had a guy telling me a while ago that emotional problems were 'abnormal' so I pointed out to him that people never regard broken legs as 'abnormal' but we've got this daft idea that emotional blocks are abnormal when I know many more people with emotional problems than I do with broken legs.

Emotional problems are even more like having broken legs than having broken legs are - they're not desirable, but they are normal, and they take time to heal.

If you're expecting your thoughts to quickly resolve an emotional problem just ask yourself how quickly would your thoughts heal a broken leg? It's the same principle. It's the action of taking yourself into the emotional response/place you fear that eventually causes the healing to occur; it just takes time. Your intention is working exactly like it should be doing.

I have been reluctant to engage a Cognitive-Behavioural therapist because I do not see how I can be assisted with this as I ultimately have to do it on my own.

I would always recommend getting good professional support if you can (depending on your available resources).

I accessed counselling support both through my GP and through work - my counsellor was a person-centred counsellor, not a CBT. My GP also arranged for me to see a psychiatrist who diagnosed me with a complex form of OCD and also severe depression (at the time I couldn't believe I had depression because I was so 'positive minded' but they were right; it related to a personal loss when I was in my early twenties).

When I decided to start healing (I had suffered with obsessions and panic attacks etc for more than 20 years beforeI decided to get sorted) I set myself a three month target and went to see my GP and told her my plan.  She wanted to help through the use of a psychiatrist and medication but I asked her if we could hold back on that (it actually took 3 years to heal my obsessions but that's good going - some folks remain ill permanently because they can't do the kind of self-work I did and you're doing - both my psychiatrist and my GP told me they were amazed by my progress when I started as they're used to dealing with people who are 'stuck').

Three months into my healing agenda I started to collapse with what's called the 'immobilisation response'. The immobilisation response is something that mammals do when their unconscious believes they are about to be eaten. For people it creates the sensation that your body is physically separated off from your mind - when I looked at my hands, for example, they didn't appear to be attached to my body. It's also called the 'disassociation response' and the purpose behind it is to reduce your physical pain by detaching your conscious mind's connection to your body - an impala goes through exactly the same response when attacked by a predator.

At the time I thought I was going into a diabetic coma! (I'm not diabetic but I searched it up on the internet and that was the conclusion I came to). My GP saw me straight away and explained she saw this kind of thing all the time and it was normal for someone with an anxiety problem. As soon as she explained it the whole problem disappeared of its own accord and a few weeks later my panic attacks had gone.

I did ask for a cognitive behavioural therapist myself but I don't think there was anyone local.  But to tell you the truth I'd already got my own plan together and I dare say it mirrors quite closely what a CBT would probably tell me to do (it looks as though you feel the same way).

However, having a counsellor and a GP (and for a shorter period a psychiatrist) helped me enormously - I'm going to write an article on ezinearticles about this shortly.

That's all for now, Henry.   I would love to hear of your progress (and please if anyone else wants to contact me like Henry has write to me at carl@managemesystems.com or leave a comment below).

'Keep going in, you will eventually come out'.

Regards - Carl