I was able to go out again
Hi! Over the past year I read this Reddit on and off while having pretty severe agoraphobia. My agoraphobia (which is still mildly present) probably started like 5 years ago when I had my first panic attack under the influence of cannabis and (what I thought was) LSD. I didn't even know what a panic attack was and naturally thought I was about to die. After that I started reading about it and started exercising, didn't do drugs anymore, or even alcohol. But I had flashbacks of this traumatic event and started developing a fear of actually having a panic attack in a public setting, or while driving. To make the story short, fear began to dictate my decisions and my life became smaller and smaller, until I couldn't drive my car or leave my mom's house. I don't want to make this too personal as what I want is to share what helped me to overcome this and eventually, not just go out, but to even move out and be able to drive again.
This is what I tried that didn't work out:
- Avoiding the difficult situations
- Tried 3 different therapists (1 hour sessions are too short to deal with this problem imo and I didn't have much $$ at the time)
- Prescribed anxiolytics (Fixes the symptoms but actually makes it worse because your nervous system "learns" that the way to deal with a panic attack is to take the pill.
- Being too greedy with the expositions. If you end up getting up to a 9 or 10 on a panic attack scale, that unfortunately does more harm than good. I needed to take things slowly. Baby steps, but always pushing just a little more.
This is what worked for me:
- Using AI (ChatGPT) as a means to 1) vomit all my thoughts and get somewhat objective feedback and 2) receive some actually useful tips.
- Understanding that I, perhaps without knowing, trained my nervous system to fire up at anything. And that I needed to re-train it, like a muscle.
- Doing controlled expositions even if it was extremely hard. And I mean extremely hard at first. Slowly and very methodically, I started to go out on small walks or just getting into the car without turning it on. The idea is to periodically increase the weight.
- Understanding that what you will feel is an adrenaline rush and that just like a wave, it will pass.
- Exercising before going out. Burn out some of the excess energy that the nervous system uses for the panic attacks.
- SLEEP WELL before going out. This is huge. I noticed that the most difficult expositions happened at times where my sleep wasn't great.
- So basically exercise + good sleep + eating healthily BEFORE the expositions made it so much easier.
- I tried to not to punish myself when I wasn't able to do something. When you say "I HAVE to do this" it makes things harder. Just doing what I could at the moment, even if it was just tiny bit more than the last time, was good enough.
- Understanding that I needed to live a life more in accordance with my values (this meant I needed to move out from my mom's house).
And then I slowly was able to leave the house and drive again. There were milestones or as I would call it "Boss fights". One of those was the time I was about to meet my current landlord. My mind going to a thousand places. "Am I going to make a scene?" "What's everyone going to think if I suddenly leave the meeting" etc, stuff like that. I'm happy I was able to brute force my way into that.
Currently living a pretty peaceful life, and I've been living in this place for 2 months now. I wouldn't say I am "cured" because still, when I don't sleep well, or I don't exercise for many days, I get anxious. I do get it. It just doesn't dictate my actions for now. Hopefully this can be of help to someone as some other great posts on this Reddit were helpful to me. Cheers!