All About Agoraphobia & Social Phobias

• Tweet

• Tweet

Imagine standing in line at the bank, riding up an elevator, or driving over a bridge and suddenly experiencing mortal terror, as if the sky were about to fall and collapse on you. Soon, your panic spreads so that any situation in which you feel escape is difficult or where there’s no one there to protect you elicits terror.

Fearing the shaking, the thumping heart, the knot in the gut, and the dread that overcomes you, you live in chronic anxiety, waiting for the next attack. The only time you seem to feel safe is when accompanied by someone close to you, who can guard you, or when near to or inside your home.

The more the terror escalates in public places and the more helpless you feel to control it, the more you cope by locking yourself inside the safe four walls of home. Such is the fate of the agoraphobic.

Agoraphobia & Social Phobias:

Agoraphobia, the most common phobia, means fear of open places. One in twenty people, eighty percent of whom are women, suffer it to some degree: The only other disorder more prevalent in this country is alcoholism.

Agoraphobics commonly avoid:

• Being in a crowd or standing in a line, such as supermarkets, department stores, restaurants
• Traveling in a bus, train, car, subway, plane
• Being in enclosed or confined places such as tunnels, bridges, elevators
• Being at home alone

The good news is that it is quite treatable. Social phobias, a somewhat different syndrome that can also keep you somewhat housebound, are also often successfully overcome.

Allergic to People: Social Phobias

• Do you fear that you blush easily in public?
• Do you feel apprehensive about taking tests or examinations?
• Do you avoid crowded places?
• Do you worry about choking on, dropping or spilling food while eating in a restaurant?
• Do you shun using public toilets to the point of discomfort?
• Do you feel panicky when speaking or performing in front of an audience?

Many people will answer yes to one of the above, most of which are routine concerns. But if your fear of making a fool of yourself is strong enough for you to stay home rather than chance any public mishap, you may have a social phobia—a persistent irrational fear of doing or saying something inappropriate in the presence of others that will embarrass and even humiliate you.

Topping the list of social fears is public speaking. It crosses gender lines, social class, race and popularity, as it strikes performers, speakers, and students alike. Nor does it care how much the public adores you: Barbra Streisand and Carly Simon are among a surprising list of entertainers who temporarily gave up performing for years because of stage fright.

If you are shy, you are more vulnerable to social phobia, and especially so if you possess poor social skills. You may compensate just fine if you have an understanding spouse or person with whom to share your life, especially if this person is more outgoing. But if not, an otherwise stable person can become socially phobic.

Norman, a quiet man, was quite content until his wife died of cancer. Feeling awkward about going out and dating, he felt lost and alone and became a recluse.

If you are social phobic, there’s a good chance you’ve been this way since adolescence. There’s an equally good chance that this is not your only symptom, that you also have a specific phobia or that you’ve experienced panic attacks or chronic anxiety.

It’s important to not blame yourself. You may have been born fear-prone.

Twenty-three-year-old Alicia was an aspiring interior designer. But the only interior that she saw for two months was that of her parent’s house, where she had been living.

Case Studies of Agoraphobia:

For three weeks, she didn’t leave the house at all. As soon as she stepped out the door, terror erupted in her body. Alicia is agoraphobic.

“There’s nothing to fear but fear itself,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Franklin Roosevelt wasn’t referring to agoraphobia, but he may as well have been.

Agoraphobia, the most common phobia, is the fear of an impending panic attack in a public place that makes a person retreat closer and closer to their safe home, venturing out only when accompanied by a safe person. It is the fear of fear.

In this article, I will talk about what makes someone psychologically housebound and how to unshackle the chains that keep them locked inside their psychological, as well as their real, house.

When You Don’t Feel Safe Leaving Your Home

Two weeks after her boyfriend left her, Alicia experienced her first panic attack. It happened the day her boss called her into his office. Terrified of this harsh, cold man who reminded her of her foreboding father, Alicia crept toward his office with trepidation.

He was on the phone and, with a sober look on his face, signaled for her to sit down. As she waited for him to get off the phone, she felt her stomach sinking as thoughts raced through her mind of what she could have done wrong.

Suddenly, the room began to seem strange, almost surreal. The bright overhead lighting appeared dull. Her vision seemed blurred and she couldn’t focus on her boss’s face. He seemed far away, as did her own body, as if not a part of her. Her head was spinning and she felt she might faint. She tried to catch her breath as waves of terror surged through her body.

Shaking, sweaty and unsteady, she knew she had to get out of there, but didn’t feel the power to command her arms and legs to move. She felt literally paralyzed with fear.

Unsteady, she managed to get up. She went to move her lips, but there were no sounds. She stared for a moment at her boss, frozen. Then she managed to blurt, “excuse me,” and darted for the bathroom. There, she turned on the faucet and threw cold water on her face and leaned against the wall to steady herself.

In a few moments, the terror passed, but she felt shaky, exhausted, confused, and embarrassed. Feigning the flu, she went home.

Over the next few days, Alicia obsessed over what had happened to her. Why had it happened? What triggered the attack? Would it happen again? She was all right for a week, but she then had a panic attack in line at the supermarket and another sitting on a bus.

She began to feel petrified for no reason. Slipping steadily downhill, the attacks increased as the weeks went by and spread to any place where she felt that escape would be difficult.

Feeling the Fear of Social Settings:

Everywhere she went, she sensed impending disaster. She was afraid to go back to work. What if she had another attack? She couldn’t fake another case of the flu. She called, said she had hepatitis and needed a medical leave of absence. She then packed her bags and moved her things to her parent’s house.

One night, she got high on marijuana with her friends, hoping it might relax her. Instead, she had the most frightening experience of all. She felt estranged from everyone around her, as if they were far away and she was a mere observer, cut off from her own body. This strange loss of self was more intense than in previous attacks and seemed to go on for hours.

Terrified, she was convinced she was losing her self. Afraid to leave the house, she lay most of the day in her mother’s arms. When her mother wasn’t home, she stayed in her bed under the covers and hugging her pillow – the phone within reach.

With each breath she exhaled, she felt this horrifying, sinking feeling in her stomach that wouldn’t go away, and that made her feel as if she were filled with inner demons.

She wanted to die. Not knowing what to do, she drank wine to drown herself into a stupor that would allow her to sleep. But she would awaken with nightmares: of having murdered someone; of lying on a table, broken in pieces; of falling down steep rows in a theatre and feeling her body crash as she hit each row.

One night, she lay in bed watching The Snake Pit, an old movie about a woman in an insane asylum. She trembled with dread, convinced that she, too, was going crazy.