Training | 2009.12.10
Normally neurotic | Rebecca Front
Claustrophobia isn\'t rare. So why was my only way out of an airport to run up the down escalator?
"You\'re not the only one," said the kindly airport worker as she drove me across the tarmac, blood pouring from my knee, humiliating apologies flowing from my mouth. We had flown in to Stansted at around 10pm, following signs to arrivals. Escalators took us down to the platform for a shuttle back to the terminal.
So far, so efficient. But the shuttle is underground. I, like the character I play in The Thick of It , am badly claustrophobic . I had used it on the way out because a) I didn\'t know it was going to go underground, and b) it was empty. But now the carriage was full. I stood back with my husband and family, and suggested we wait for the next one. It, too, was almost full. Suddenly this was not just an underground train, but one at the height of rush hour. Anyone who has suffered from a phobia or anxiety attack will know what I mean: I simply couldn\'t get on it. Even after years of fairly successful and certainly pricey cognitive therapy, nothing was going to get me on that train. My husband and kids were happy to use it, but I decided to return to the upper floor, reasoning that there must be another route. After all, claustrophobia\'s quite common, so surely the airport would have a plan for the more neurotic customer.
There were no staff members to advise me – and no way out without using a lift. By now, I was in the grip of a full-blown panic. I was trapped on a tube platform and the only way out was to get on the tube. This is the stuff of anxiety dreams – trust me, I have them regularly.
I weighed up my options. Emergency exit: possibly alarmed, airport security, guns – not a good idea. Get on the tube and risk my panic attack worsening in front of crowds of strangers? No. I did the only thing I could – I ran full pelt up a down escalator like a wild-eyed, straw-haired, designer-jacketed loon. Just as I was congratulating myself on making it to the top, I tripped, skidded downwards on my knees, clambered to my feet, fell again, and eventually hauled myself off the top of the escalator in ripped jeans, blood streaming from my leg. In my desperate attempt to avoid an irrational danger I had put myself in the way of a real one. And there was still no alternative route. I found an emergency phone, and began grovelling.
I should point out that Stansted is not the only environment hostile to claustrophobics. I have bitter memories of a hotel in Amsterdam where the only way I could either enter or leave my room was to have a member of staff with a security pass escort me on the stairs. It seems no one had considered the possibility that some guests might not want to use a lift. And my amicable relationship with an Oscar-winning director almost came to an ugly conclusion at a TV studio when he gallantly offered to escort me down the fire escape stairs and an hour later we were hopelessly lost in the building\'s concrete bowels.
Having a phobia puts you in a strange netherworld somewhere between disability and "normal". Because there is no physical impairment, society at large is bewildered by this apparently wilful inability to do what is expected. You have been provided with a sealed metal box inside a concrete tube to take you where you need to go; what\'s not to like?
In The Thick of It, we\'ve used my character\'s claustrophobia for comic effect, because laughing at its absurdity is the only reliable way I know of dealing with it. As I sat shaking in the airport car with the orange "crazy woman on board" light flashing, I realised that the best metaphor for being a phobic is going up an escalator the wrong way – it\'s feasible, it gets you where you want to go, but you risk leaving your dignity in a heap at the bottom, trampled by the feet of all the "normal" people waiting to use the lift.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]obia-airport-transport-therapy
