Claustrophobia: finding your way out. Hope and help for people who fear and avoid confined spaces [Paperback]

With this book Andrea Perry has made a superb contribution to our understanding of this complex and ill-understood condition, which we now know affects many millions of people. --Ben Timmis FRCR, Medical Director, London Upright MRI Centre

Andrea has written an accessible, insightful and above all simple and practical guide to the lived experience of claustrophobia. Journalists are not in the main enthusiastic readers of self-help or psychological manuals. But considering how much of the news involves emotional distress, this is the one book they would do well to examine. --Mark Brayne, Former BBC journalist and Director, Europe, DART Centre for Journalism and Trauma

Experiencing claustrophobia can be terrifying. Each person copes with their anxiety differently - some by trying to ignore it, and others by avoiding confined spaces, such as underground trains, lifts, tunnels, car-washes, MRI scans, crowds, or even wearing a crash-helmet. In this, the first book ever written on the subject, therapist and consultant Andrea Perry speaks honestly about her own experience of claustrophobia, and draws on the views of other people who have experienced similar anxiety, and overcome it. She explores how and why the phobia develops; how it imposes limitations on our lives, and can undermine our sense of freedom. Controversially, she presents claustrophobia not simply as an anxiety reaction, but also as a deeply human rejection of being controlled in the confined spaces of an increasingly technological world. Practical, compassionate and insightful, this book provides a wide choice of self-help strategies, and a review of appropriate treatments and therapies, so that you can truly find your own way out of claustrophobia. It will benefit people who experience claustrophobia themselves, and those who want to help them, and also be of interest to designers, architects, and anyone wanting to improve the quality and safety of our environment.

Andrea Perry is a psychotherapist and consultant and former Chair of the Bristish Dramatherapy Association.