Okay! So this is it. This is my mission statement, my business plan if you will. The whole reason for this blog and what exactly it is. Although this isn’t a business, just a place for me to get all of my thoughts and experiences out on.
I have agoraphobia and there’s really not a lot of information out there that explains what it is. You hear about people that have so much anxiety that they can’t leave their house and you think, “Wow, that really sucks,” and you move on. You don’t really hear about other types of agoraphobia or other stages. Technically, the definition is “a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic and make you feel trapped, helpless or embarrassed,” according to the Mayo Clinic. In other words, agoraphobia is avoiding things that could give you a panic attack. For some people they avoid driving on the freeway because they’re afraid of getting an upset stomach, not being able to get off the freeway, and then becoming ill in the car. Agoraphobia is a very broad term and whoever has it will have their own triggers and fears.
For me, I do fear leaving my house. I don’t like to be too far from my home because it’s my safe space. I know where everything is, I’m comfortable, and I can do whatever I want without anyone judging me. My agoraphobia seemed to have developed instantly. It may have been seeded long before the event that set everything into place, but it seemed like I was fine one second and the next I wasn’t. I was going to write about how it began, but it triggered me a lot so I will work on it another time. But when I was 15 I was at my lowest point, where I couldn’t leave the house. Being outside scared me; I couldn’t control things there–I couldn’t control who saw me or the weather and how it affected me. I could leave my room and venture out into the rest of the house, but just being on the porch gave me anxiety.
It’s been a few years and I’ve made my way quite far. I faced my biggest fear which was getting on a plane. I’m going to get on another plane in a few weeks to go see my boyfriend’s family, which is way out of my comfort zone. Then in December my boyfriend and I are planning on going to Germany with my school for a week.
But the thing is…the agoraphobia is still there. I still have anxiety and it always feels like I’m just waiting for it to spring up again. When I’m out somewhere, I always feel like it’s creeping up on me, or like I should be having anxiety. I guess I just got so used to it that it’s almost uncomfortable NOT to have anxiety,
In the beginning, I read this workbook about agoraphobia and it said that in order to overcome it you have to keep doing the things that scare you, consistently and without planning it. So that’s what I want to do with this blog. I want to document my life as I live it. The anxiety probably won’t ever go away entirely, but I want nothing more than to actually live my life. The only thing that’s ever held me back was myself. So I want to push myself as much as I can to not only overcome this as much as I can, but also to better myself and just live my life and do things.
When this first started happening to me I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know what was normal. I even went to the hospital because I didn’t know if I was sick or if it was all symptoms of agoraphobia. I was so scared and I didn’t have a lot of information to help me. That’s part of why I want to do this blog–to help people who don’t understand what’s happening to them. If at all possible, I would love to create a community of people that can help each other. Agoraphobia is lonely, and I would like to create a space that I would have needed when I first developed it.