Agoraphobia

I am going to talk about agoraphobia in two different ways, first I will give you the perfectly good medical description of agoraphobia according to Wikipedia and then I will tell you what I’ve learned in the last 6 years of my life in my journey through agoraphobia.

According to wikipedia: Agoraphobia is a condition where the sufferer becomes anxious in environments that are unfamiliar or where he or she perceives that they have little control. Triggers for this anxiety may include wide open spaces, crowds, or traveling (even short distances). This anxiety is often compounded by a fear of social embarrassment, as the agoraphobic fears the onset of a panic attack and appearing distraught in public.

I suffer agoraphobia. Everything started 8 years ago one morning when I thought I was dying and in fact I was having a panic attack. Nothings has ever being the same. I am not the same since that awful morning. It was really scary and slowly I went into some kind of anxiety disorder. I didn’t have agoraphobia straight away, it all started 2 years later when I was living next to my parents and we started to have serious problems with them. The panic attacks came back strong, and slowly I got more and more scared of those panic attacks and I started avoiding all the situations of stress, going out on my own, driving… It’s all a big nightmare. All of a sudden you lose your life, you lose your ability to do anything normal on your own and I found myself cleaning onto my husband 24 hours a day. He used to say to me that I was confining him in prison, because I didn’t want to go out and couldn’t be left on my own either. We changed houses and things got better and better. I have two children now and go out on my own around town. 

It’s not easy winning over the fears of agoraphobia, but is not impossible. Don’t just sit back waiting to be gone by itself, put up a good fight and you will win.

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