Agoraphobia Treatment – How to Relax & Get Rid of Negative Thoughts

Agoraphobia is a serious and complicated disease that needs aggressive intervention in all of the four ways in which it manifests itself:

Physical: Strange bodily sensations during panic and on-going agitation or anxiety
Feelings: Uncomfortable fright, dread and free-floating anxiety
Thoughts: Catastrophic worries of the worst case scenario
Behavior: Avoidance of panic provoking situations

As you read about the different interventions available, keep in mind that it takes time and effort to break loose from agoraphobia’s chains and rarely can people do this on their own.

Generally, agoraphobics show the best progress with cognitive behavioral therapy.

Watch It!

Agoraphobics tend to be especially bothered by the bright lighting in supermarkets and malls and often feel forced to flee. Some avoid bright areas altogether. During a panic attack, lights often seem intensely bright or dull.

Treating Agoraphobia – Relaxing Your Body:

When you’re constantly anxious, you feel continually tense and keyed up. Since it takes little to put you over the edge, it’s hard to cope with day-to-day stresses, let alone panic attacks.

If you employ the self-help relaxation techniques, you will help better balance your nervous system and increase the likelihood of achieving longer periods of calm and alert. Getting off the junk food track and fueling your body with proper nutrition, as well as avoiding the caffeine buzz, will also further this goal.

Relaxation Training:

Diaphragmatic or belly breathing: This will train you to slow down your physiological overarousal before it gains momentum and you become overly anxious. In this way, you can learn to bypass a panic attack or, should one occur, minimize its intensity. If you hyperventilate, “breathing lessons” are crucial to your recovery.
Deep relaxation: With daily practice of progressive relaxation and, if possible, meditation, you can train your body to relax more easily. The affect is cumulative: Within a month or so, you begin to feel yourself more relaxed all the time.

Regular exercise:

Strenuous exercise helps metabolize excessive adrenaline, reduces muscle tension, and releases endorphins to increase your sense of well being. You can do whatever exercises you enjoy and will do consistently.

The ideal is a half-hour of aerobic exercise four to five times per week. In addition, regular practice of yoga, which combines diaphragmatic breathing along with stretching exercise, promotes greater vitality, relaxation, suppleness and serenity.

Secret Weapons

Running, which releases pain killing endorphins that make it a powerful anti-depressant, is an excellent exercise for agoraphobics, who are generally depressed as well as anxious. If you wear running clothes while going somewhere panic-provoking, like the mall, you can quickly flee should you become anxious.

Running will also help elease the excess adrenaline streaming through your bloodstream.

Don’t Fight Fear with Fear:

One reason why not all people who have a panic attack become agoraphobic is the refusal to avoid situations that induce panic. This is the key to working your way out of agoraphobia: by facing your fears. In this way, you learn that nothing dangerous will happen to you during a panic attack.

The sink or swim approach for long-standing fears is not recommended, because this can easily overwhelm someone who is prone to feeling anxious. Instead, think of confronting your demons one manageable step at a time. Your goal is to stay in these frightening situations for longer and longer periods of time.

Here’s how to get started:

Make a list of clearly defined goals in order of difficulty, which will vary according to the severity of your agoraphobia:

1. Stepping outside my door
2. Walking to the corner
3. Walking three blocks to the grocery store
4. Sitting in the park by myself
5. Driving four blocks to the post office
6. Taking a bus
7. Shopping on the first floor of a department store
8. Taking an elevator to the second floor of a department store
9. Driving my car in heavy traffic

Take the goals, one by one, and break them down into a series of specific steps that might look like this:

Going to the Park:

1. Walk (or run) to the park entrance, stand there for one minute and walk (run) back home.
2. Walk (or run) to the park, take a few steps into the park, stand there for one minute.
3. Walk (run) a block into the park, stand there for one minute and walk (run) back home.
4. Walk (run) a block into the park, stand there for five minutes and walk (run) back home.
5. Walk (run) into the park, sit on a bench for one minute, then walk (run) back home.
6. Walk (run) into the park, sit on a park bench for fifteen minutes doing something distracting.
7. Walk (run) into the park, sit on a park bench for a half hour engaged in an absorbing activity.

Before you actually take your first real step, run through each step you’ve outlined in your imagination. If you’ve been agoraphobic for a long time, even imagining taking an elevator may easily upset you. Have patience with yourself and go slowly, mastering the beginning goals first.
When you can visualize the final step of your particular goal in detail without feeling overwhelmed by anxiety, you are ready for a real life walk (run) through.
Practice daily to make progress. On days you don’t, you might slip back. If you become panicky, know it will pass and try to “float” through it.
If it’s easier, begin to practice each step several times with the help of a safe person. This can be anyone with whom you feel support and protection: boyfriend or girlfriend, spouse, parent, or friend. If anxiety starts to build, stop and step back until the fear passes. In this way, you don’t “overexpose” yourself and become too overwhelmed to continue.

Watch It!

Food allergies are common in agoraphobics and can trigger panic attacks. In one patient, oatmeal made her “spacey,” wheat “panicky” and corn “tired and irritable.”

If you were to eat foods on a daily basis to which you were allergic and get these reactions, he warns that you might always feel on the edge of panic and suffer anticipatory anxiety.

Agoraphobia Treatments – Getting Rid of Those Negative Thoughts:

Agoraphobics are famous worriers, anticipating the worst before it happens with self-defeating “What if” statements like “What if I have another panic attack?” “What if I lose control of myself while driving?”

To exorcise your inner demons, you must free yourself of these self-defeating negative thoughts, which feed into and perpetuate your panic attacks.

Here are some suggestions to get you started:

Write down your destructive thoughts in a notebook.
Replace them with constructive ones.
Go over the list several times.
Keep your notebook with you. When you catch yourself thinking destructively, refer to it and try to replace the thought with a positive, constructive one.

Destructive and Constructive Thoughts:

Destructive thought	Constructive thought
I’ll never get rid of these feelings.	I can fight these feelings.
I’ve got to get out of here.	I can get through this.
I’ll die if I have another attack.	I’ve survived them before and can again.
I’ll never be able to go shopping alone again.	I will go shopping and buy myself something I’ve always wanted.
What if someone sees me looking so terrified?	People are too involved in their own lives to worry about me.
My heart’s pounding so, I must be having a heart attack.	My heart has pounded like this when I’ve been in love too or run a mile.
Maybe I’ll never get better.	I will get better.

Cognitive-behavior therapy, which teaches you how to change negative thinking patterns, gives agoraphobics about an eighty-five percent chance for recovery.

If you can replace “scare talk” with constructive statements during a panic attack, you may be able to observe your bodily reactions, rather than react to them. In time, you may be able to avoid severe panic reactions altogether.