After Collapse, Phobic Look Closer to Home

Minn. Bridge Disaster Stokes Fears

After seeing the images over and over -- the crushed concrete, the mangled cars, the twisted girders -- there's just something about crossing a bridge that doesn't seem so appealing anymore.

Jay Fenton understands.

For 20 years, he was paralyzed by bridges. Upon approach, his breathing became shallow, his hands clammy with sweat. The feeling of imminent death would send pinpricks all over his head. He tried to ignore it all.

"But it's like pink elephants," said Fenton, 58, of Annapolis. "Someone tells you not to think of pink elephants, and the more you try not to, the more you can't think of anything but."

The best thing to do is not to avoid fear but to deal with it, he said.

As the shock of the Minneapolis bridge collapse sets in, so too will people's apprehension of bridges, experts believe.

For some travelers, that might simply mean a general unease on the daily commute. For a few who were a little afraid already, the incident could push their fears into a full-blown phobia.

"And for people already phobic, this could be like taking what's already there and lighting a match to it," said Jerilyn Ross, a District psychotherapist and president of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America.

What makes the Minneapolis disaster so frightening, experts say, is the unpredictability of it and the omnipresence of the horrific scenes. But most of all, the anxiety stems from the it-could-have-been-me factor.

"Everyone out there has at one point driven over a bridge," Ross said. "With this crash, there's no explanation yet, no way to rationalize why it happened there and why it couldn't happen elsewhere."

Experts, however, are quick to differentiate mere increased apprehension from outright phobia of bridges -- known as gephyrophobia.

"When we're talking about phobia, that's irrational fear," said Jean Ratner, who runs the Center for Travel Anxiety in Bethesda. After reading reports about the country's aging infrastructure, Ratner herself began questioning the general maintenance of bridges. "Unless our government repairs some of this infrastructure, it's not a completely irrational fear."