i think i may be developing agoraphobia

[nataliejxx]

hello, i am new to the site and am interested to see if people feel the way i do!

i have always been quite a panicky person, but recently it has developed more when i'm outdoors.

i have started to associate my panic with places/times etc. for example, i had a panic attack after walking to the train station from work and now i associate all my panic with going to and on the train.

as soon as i step outdoors, i go lightheaded and just recently, i have felt extremely nauseus. this feeling is making me panic and i don't want to leave my house/go to certain places because of this feeling.

if i am out in a social place, e.g a pub, i immediately think my drink has been spiked and if i drink it, i will feel extremely weird.

i'm sure it's very common, but it's such a horrible feeling!

[harasgenster]

Hi
You sound just like me a few years ago. If you're panicking going outside (away from a safe place, like home) then that's agoraphobia. As far as I know, you don't need to literally be locked in your house to have it, it's classed as the fear of being away from home. Do you feel vulnerable when you are outside and when you panic do you try and think of how you might get back home in the quickest way possible?

This is how I felt and ended up not being able to get to the end of my road without having a massive panic attack!

I got over it in the space of a few months. I think I'm lucky in this respect but I caught it pretty early on.

You should use a technique called graded exposure where you have to go a little further every day and then come home. If the feeling gets really strong you can go back and have a rest until your heart has slowed down etc then try again and go a little further.

I used bus stops - i.e. I would go to the nearest bus stop and back (mine was right across the road though!) and then once I'd calm down I'd go to the bus stop and wait there for a bit, staying outside and not running home. Once I'd started to get used to that I walked to the next bus stop. Eventually I got on a bus and told myself I was allowed to get off at any stop and go home. Each time I got to the next stop I'd think, well I'm doing pretty well so I may as well go to the next stop. Eventually, I could make it the whole journey.

I also, like you, had it particularly strong in certain places, usually where I had previously had panic attacks. I basically used the same tool. I kept walking down the road I hated over and over again. Even if you start to feel panicky, try to remind yourself that nothing is going to happen to you and it's only an unpleasant sensation and keep walking. It does't matter if you can't do it straight away so long as you keep trying, it is quite hard at first. The point is to keep noticing how nothing happened, the feeling was just a feeling and nothing bad happened. If it works, this should eventually stop happening.

It doesn't feel very nice but you just have to remember that the feeling is a natural bodily response (if you haven't read about panic symptoms and what causes them, there's a really good article in the left-hand column called symptoms). Nothing's going to happen. If you feel light-headed you won't faint. I never have. If you feel like you can't breathe try to slow your breathing down, you ARE getting enough oxygen. It's just a matter of grinning and bearing it a little bit (though obviously I'm not just saying"chin up"!) Once you've learned to cope with the feeling it will go away.

It worked for me, although the feelings didn't go away for nearly a year despite being able to go back outside. I don't have any problems at all now though and the severity of the feelings lessened quite dramatically in the first few months.

I also have the thing about spiked drinks. I haven't sorted that one out yet but I suppose you just need to work out what the underlying anxiety is about and attack it at the root. :D

I hope some of this helped

[nataliejxx]

thank you, it definitely helped. i work quite a way from home and i definitely start to think 'quick! i need to get home NOW, how do i do that'
it's not so much the train for me, it's the outdoors. it's the walk to the train station/the walk to anywhere!
i have suffered with anxiety for a long time so i do have different methods to try and bring me round, but because this is a new feeling, i can't master it just yet and it's very uncomfortable.

thank you for your help :)

[doodah]

Hello natalie, I think harasgenster has given some excellent advice. I've been agoraphobic for about a hundred years :shades: (well, a very long time!) - I didn't know anything about fears and phobias back then. You said that you've started to associate panic with certain places/times etc. - I think this is what can feed a phobia - us telling ourselves that something awful is going to happen at a certain time of day, or at a specific place. I wonder if you can try turning those negative thoughts around? Almost training yourself to say "I'm going to the bus stop (or wherever) and I'm NOT going to feel panicky." It will take a while and it's easier said than done, but if you keep telling yourself, you'll eventually listen. If you think about it, that's exactly what we do to ourselves when we are planning on going somewhere - setting ourselves up for a panic or whatever.

I hope you start to improve really soon - it's good that you've identified what's going on and can work on it sooner rather than later.

Take care,

Wendy

[kjadam2009]

im so glad some one has mentioned about the drink, i'm the same! i am actually agraphbic, but i can go out someplaces, i hate drinking drinks of people because if i think its been spiked then i will panic an just want to go home, the best thing to do is jsut fight it & keep positive thoughts :) x