Scared Being To Far From Home?

[samtheman]

Anyone else get like this, If I go say 2 mile from home I get nervous, panicky etc, I can go to work fine but other than that, They say you have to face your fear in order to conquer it, but even the weekly 5 mile trip to my parents I make every weekend is a nightmare and I've been making that journey 5 years

[clickaway]

This fear is not merely about distance, its also about where you go to.

It may well be that going to parents may give you bad vibes (even if you do get on with them well). Your anxieties could be rooted in childhood or some other family thing which will make you more anxious when visiting them.

I usually get more tense speaking to a family member on the phone for this reason.

Could you consider not going to your parents one week and travel 5 miles the other way and see how you feel?

However, you should face your fear in order to recover.

[W.I.F.T.S.]

I'm just like this too. Sometimes it's hard to even leave my room and go downstairs (like today), let alone leave the house. My mum lives about 5 miles away and it's hard work for me to go and see her. It's good, really, that I manage a football team that play in the same town as my mum and so I'm forced to go there every week. I used to have a job that was a little further away and I used to absolutely dread going there. I started at 2 pm and I'd put it off and put it off everyday and always end up being late, which got me a bad reputation, which I didn't like.

It's really depressing because I used to live 200 miles away from here in London with no problem at all. Infact, I quite liked being independent. Now, I had to drive 15 miles last weekend and it was an absolute ordeal. I really wish that I had the freedom to go to London, Wales, the coast or wherever, like I used to have.

For as long as I can remember, the thought of long haul travel has always petrified me. There's no way that i could get on a plane and cross the Atlantic, however much I'd like to go to America. That's really upsetting because I feel so restricted in what I'm able to do....which really gets to me when I hear about other people talking about their travels and adventures.

I've got GAD (generalised anxiety disorder), which I've had severly for over 4 years. I wake up in the morning feeling very tense, anxious and depressed and I very, very rarely ever feel relaxed. When I first became poorly I was ok driving out of town, but as it's gone on and i've had panic attacks to do with bridges, motorways, hills (you name it), I've tended to avoid more and more things and my comfort zone has shrunk so much that I'm not far from being agoraphobic.

I work in a school and every year the kids of skiing in Italy, Austria or France and I just can't get my head around how they're not terrified of going so far away from home. I know deep down that it's my thinking that is faulty, but it's a really difficult thing for me to comprehend.

My mum had chronic agoraphobia for 4 years and would barely leave the house at all and now she goes on foreign holidays every year, so I guess it's a question of relaxing, accepting, being philosophical and facing the fear. My mum had never been abroad until she was in her forties and my stepdad was awarded quite a bit of money in compensation for an accident. He'd never been abroad either and he spent the large proportion of the money on a holiday. My mum was petrified, but she felt like she couldn't back out because they were normally very poor and not likely to be able to afford a holiday again and she didn't want my stepdad to waste his money. She was really, really brave and she's never looked back.

At the end of the day, exposure is the only way that anyone is going to overcome a phobia (as demonstrated by the panic room, bbc3 last night). I was a very nervous, anxious kid but I had the courage to leave home at 18 and go and live 200 miles away. My confidence did build and I became comfortable (and even excited) about travelling all over England, even driving to Amsterdam. I then had my breakdown and I feel like I've gone right back to the beginning again.

I've got to do it all over again. Some of it will be about doing it a little bit at a time and feeling more relaxed and confident generally and other parts of it I'll have to dive right in. That's the way it goes because I'm not just going to wake up one morning being cured of all my phobias and neuroses.

[samtheman]

I'm just like this too. Sometimes it's hard to even leave my room and go downstairs (like today), let alone leave the house. My mum lives about 5 miles away and it's hard work for me to go and see her. It's good, really, that I manage a football team that play in the same town as my mum and so I'm forced to go there every week. I used to have a job that was a little further away and I used to absolutely dread going there. I started at 2 pm and I'd put it off and put it off everyday and always end up being late, which got me a bad reputation, which I didn't like.

It's really depressing because I used to live 200 miles away from here in London with no problem at all. Infact, I quite liked being independent. Now, I had to drive 15 miles last weekend and it was an absolute ordeal. I really wish that I had the freedom to go to London, Wales, the coast or wherever, like I used to have.

For as long as I can remember, the thought of long haul travel has always petrified me. There's no way that i could get on a plane and cross the Atlantic, however much I'd like to go to America. That's really upsetting because I feel so restricted in what I'm able to do....which really gets to me when I hear about other people talking about their travels and adventures.

I've got GAD (generalised anxiety disorder), which I've had severly for over 4 years. I wake up in the morning feeling very tense, anxious and depressed and I very, very rarely ever feel relaxed. When I first became poorly I was ok driving out of town, but as it's gone on and i've had panic attacks to do with bridges, motorways, hills (you name it), I've tended to avoid more and more things and my comfort zone has shrunk so much that I'm not far from being agoraphobic.

I work in a school and every year the kids of skiing in Italy, Austria or France and I just can't get my head around how they're not terrified of going so far away from home. I know deep down that it's my thinking that is faulty, but it's a really difficult thing for me to comprehend.

My mum had chronic agoraphobia for 4 years and would barely leave the house at all and now she goes on foreign holidays every year, so I guess it's a question of relaxing, accepting, being philosophical and facing the fear. My mum had never been abroad until she was in her forties and my stepdad was awarded quite a bit of money in compensation for an accident. He'd never been abroad either and he spent the large proportion of the money on a holiday. My mum was petrified, but she felt like she couldn't back out because they were normally very poor and not likely to be able to afford a holiday again and she didn't want my stepdad to waste his money. She was really, really brave and she's never looked back.

At the end of the day, exposure is the only way that anyone is going to overcome a phobia (as demonstrated by the panic room, bbc3 last night). I was a very nervous, anxious kid but I had the courage to leave home at 18 and go and live 200 miles away. My confidence did build and I became comfortable (and even excited) about travelling all over England, even driving to Amsterdam. I then had my breakdown and I feel like I've gone right back to the beginning again.

I've got to do it all over again. Some of it will be about doing it a little bit at a time and feeling more relaxed and confident generally and other parts of it I'll have to dive right in. That's the way it goes because I'm not just going to wake up one morning being cured of all my phobias and neuroses.


You sound exactly like myself, I've always wanted to travel, I watch The Travel Channel and all these other channels dreaming about these places and longing to go but I can't. I wouldn't even attempt it, going on a plane is my worst nightmare, Until they invent a teleporter or something to teleport you to some far of land in less than 10 secs I won't be very far I reckon.

I can tell myself till i'm blue in that face that nothing is going to happen when I'm out and about but it makes no difference what so ever.

[yorkylover]

I get the same sort of thing.Its moving out of your safety zone.Im supposed to be going away to Devon in May and Im already starting to worry.When Im there I count the days until I come home.I tend to stay in areas I know.If I do go out its always with someone.The only place I can go alone is our local village which is 10 min down the road,and I have only recently started to go there on my own,usually I go with my mum.

[W.I.F.T.S.]

I do know exactly how you feel (have I said that already? lol)

I'd especially love to go to China, but it does seem impossible. Before my breakdown my idea was to become comfortable travelling around Europe and then to gradually branch a little further out and maybe to go to North Africa or Russia or something.

I really don't know if I could ever get on a plane for 8 hours or whatever to go to America. The thought of being over the middle of the Atlantic with no escape would really freak me out. I think that I'd have to be a different person than I am now to even contemplate that.

At the moment it's not worth me attempting anything like that because I'd feel so traumatised and get no pleasure out of it at all, that it would put me off for a long, long time. I flew to Amsterdam about 2 years ago and it really was horrendous. When I got to the other side I was going through my options for coming back and I felt really ill because they all terrified me. I decided that I might as well take the plane then because it would be the quickest.

I do still have ambitions to travel. I know it was really hard for me to go 15 miles to Lymm last weekend, but I also know that I'm capable of flying to Ibiza and driving to Amsterdam because I've done it before. I've just got to do my best to relax and to keep trying to push myself that little bit further. Sooner or later, I'll feel fine going to the next town along and then I'll be fine going into Manchester and very quickly my confidence will snowball and I'll have no problem going to London again.

I've been going through a breakdown for over 4 years and during that time I've driven to London atleast twice (although one of those times was at about 25 mph down the A roads and took something like 7 hours altogether!), I've been a passenger in a car on the way to London on the motorway (I was in the back with the childlock on so that I couldn't try and get out!) and I've been the passenger in a coach up to Sunderland.

Very often we do surprise ourselves. I can't say that I totally enjoyed any of those experiences, but they were a lot less traumatic than I thought they were going to be and, at this stage, it's just important to try and keep your comfort zone as wide as possible.

[honeybee]

i'd just like to give ya all a bit of hope...

i used to be like that and although i still haven't plucked up the courage to go abroad i can go all over the country without feeling anxious anymore..

i think it just got easier through going out and having fun again... i used to go out and feel really anxious but stuck with it and ended up having fun, i think my subconsious just ended up learning there's nothing to be scared of... i do still get a bit anxious in certain circumstances, for example, if i have to go out for food with lotsa people in a new place, but i think that's more to do with the situation rather than being away from home...

i think it just takes time, i know you said its still hard going to your parents after 5 years but maybe you need top practise going to other places, but make sure they're relaxing places, i started off by having a walk on a beach or around a castle, that way you're not in a busy or stressful envirioment... it does get easier and i LOVE going away now... just need to get on that flipping plane to go abroad...