Heidegger argued that people do not exist apart from, but are unavoidably intimately immersed, in the world. There is an ‘undissolvable unity’ between people and world. This situation which is never escapable is what Heidegger called Dasein, or being-in-the-world. It is impossible to ask whether a person makes the world or if the world makes the person because both exist always together and can only be correctly interpreted in terms of this holistic relationship, being-in-the-world. In some extreme situations the existence of a person in the world does not operate in harmony. To be human is to be fixed, embedded and immersed in the physical, literal, tangible day to day world.
Fear and avoidance of social spaces can be conceptualised in terms of a ‘crisis’ in the boundaries of the embodied self. This disorder radically problematises the distinction individuals ‘normally’ experience between ‘inner’ self and ‘outer’ space, initiating a profound sense of exposure and insecurity in the face of many social situations. In response, the body retreats from the social sphere to the seclusion of the interior space whose walls reinforce weakened and fragile boundaries.
Confusion is experienced in the boundaries of the body experienced as an intolerable and unsustainable confusion of internal and external space. Losing the ability to put a protective boundary around oneself. As a result the body is assaulted by external space, crumbling inwards under its pressure. This sensation indicates a lack of containment; the crack that permits the dispersion of self into the outer surroundings.