The Diseases You Only Get If You Believe in Them

That is the exact opposite of the author's position. Perhaps you should actually read the article.

Either way, the same number probably have severe depression and end up with an episode of agoraphobia; but in the rest of the world, the agoraphobia tends to go away with constant doses of the exposure therapy known as "your family and friends dragging you outside."

EDIT: to clarify, the depression doesn't go away (if only life was that easy.) But exposure therapy (i.e. "facing your fear"—usually in a safe, low-stakes context, in short bursts) is how you treat phobias. Going outside is the "actual treatment for" agoraphobia. And in the rest of the world, people just automatically try to apply that treatment to agoraphobic people: they take them out (whether they like it or not—not usually through coercion per se, but through anxiety to conform to social etiquette.)

From speaking to a psychiatry-student friend who did a rotation in a Japanese hospital (not the best primary source, but it's what I've got), my understanding is that in Japan, mental illness is something covered up by family: if you decide to shut yourself in your room, your family will both actively prevent anyone from knowing you're doing this, and actively prevent anyone from trying to see you. Because, in seeing you, they'd find out about the shameful situation your family is dealing with. Which prevents the whole intuitive-exposure-therapy bit from happening.

Basically, if you have a small penis and gain weight (especially for already heavyset guys) everything around it grows while it doesn't get any bigger. This is otherwise known in the west via the not-unheard-of insult to overweight men: "You can't even see your own penis " In other words, they might imagine it shrinking into their body when their body is really just growing around it.

It continued for years and was fairly debilitating. I would get the sensation when running or when I was scared. It was a bit of a catch-22 because I would get scared of it happening, so the sensation would get stronger, and I would get more scared ...

If I was in a tight space, it would be worse. This was the sole reason I didn't go on roller-coasters or the like. Finally, when I was 19 or so, I stumbled upon a Wikipedia article detailing the "condition" and it's prevalence in other areas of the world. It was such a relief to know I wasn't the only person in the world to have experienced it; I honestly couldn't imagine anyone else experiencing it. I showed two of my brothers and we laughed about it. It felt good to tell someone else.

I don't experience it anymore.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/chronic-w...

Given that old people also have more random aches and pains, I wonder whether that's just an instance of confirmation bias (you're old, you ache, and you want to shut the windows, so you think it's the breeze making you ache) or whether it's actually something causal (e.g. decreasing oxygen quality has an analgesic effect on the sort of inflammatory joint pains you get as you age?)

(Are those stories of people with ADHD who are completely distracted by any arbitrary stimulus true? I've never heard of them closer than two or three degrees of separation from where I heard the story, and never a trustworthy source. Regardless, I don't mean those, hence "high-functioning")