Definitely different definitions

Claustrophobia: The feeling you get when you try on a top or sweater one size too small. The panic begins when you find yourself stuck in a bind, with one sleeve on and the other sleeve off and your head stuck in the neckline. As you gasp for breath and cry for release, you can see your past life flash by.

You forgive your enemies and hope that the sight of you smothered by an item of clothing will not be the final image people have of you.

Just as you think you will die of suffocation, a saviour enters the room and hears you wheezing "I can't beethe, I can't beethe".

Funnily enough, the person who saves you from certain death is someone who knows you well enough to be able to interpret any sound you make, however unintelligible. He or she is astute enough to know that you are not debating the conundrum of existence a la Hamlet.

Confidence: The emotion one feels after completing an exam paper, convinced that one has got all the answers right. Then the other examinees start pouring out of the exam hall, heads close together as they confer on what seems to be the ordeal they have just emerged from. A few stray words such as 'difficult' and 'tricky' are overheard. One's heart stops as one's assessment of the exam just taken is the exact opposite.

Did they write the same paper as you? Has one missed some vital information? Did one miss a question here and there in one's eagerness to get it over and done with? Perhaps one shouldn't have been in such a hurry to leave the hall. But then you think - how could you of all people have possibly missed anything! Relief surges through your being once again as you castigate yourself for being such a doubting Thomas. As the friends approach, with a smile on your lips you say with easy confidence, "That was a breeze, wasn't it?"

Pessimism: That gut feeling that an event or outcome one is dreading will pan out exactly as one had thought it would. Even as one's wild imagination sows seeds of reprieve, lulling one into a false sense of security, there is a sense of impending doom that no amount of self-deception can dispel. As moments turn into hours then days, one knows nothing can stop the juggernaut of that horrible sequence of events.

If one is naïve enough to confide their fears to a friend, one gets told that nothing is as bad as it seems, that the worst that could happen ... This is when you stop them right there. Saying it just might make it happen sooner rather than later. And, when the moment of reckoning arrives and one's worst fears are confirmed - the strangely reassuring thing is the fact that it was as bad as you imagined it to be. One's powers of prediction are unimpaired!

Hypochondria: The peculiar joy one derives from exploiting illness, revelling in the worst symptoms and direst of diseases, convinced one suffers from them all. Social gatherings are particularly joyful occasions. Of course, there is always the danger that one might not be given the opportunity to air one's illnesses. So, the most innocuous question is pounced upon and made a springboard for launching into vivid descriptions of symptoms. No medical textbook or Home Health Manual can compete with your knowledge of how many things can go wrong in how many different ways with one's body.

The pity, of course, is that people don't seem to want to learn from you, they would rather revel in their ignorance. And doctors, unfortunately, feel so threatened by your expertise that they revert to an inane 'I'm sure it's nothing, let's leave it for another few weeks' than accept your expert diagnoses.