I have had agoraphobia now for 4 years, I did suffer from panic attacks for a long time before I became housebound, but still managed to get around. The seemed in context with stressful events in my life, and they didn't bother me.

I first started to get panic attacks when I was 18 during an extremely stressful period. They would occur at work, at home and especially on public transport on in cars. It felt out of control, but the lessened in intensity as time wore on.

Four years later they began to return, from nowhere. Because I was healthy and happy and crisis seemed behind me, I started to become a little alarmed, and began to fear them. Going up the long staircase to get to my work became a major ordeal for me, and I would find myself waiting for someone else to come along to walk up the stair with company. I’d breathe a huge sigh of relief once up the stairs and functioned as normal.

Then came a panic attack so severe that it began the pattern of avoidance which leads to Agoraphobia. I was travelling on a train when suddenly my heart started to pound, my breath shortened and I started to feel faint. I felt sudden extreme alarm as Adrenelin shot through my system and made my body and my mind panic. All I could think of was escape, I jumped from my seat and ran to the door, panting, panicking, terrified, wanting the train to stop so that I could flee ( flight or fight complex) and escape. The next station, I jumped off the train, and rang some family from a phone box in tears, terrified and exhausted.

So much had this attack scared me, that I began to avoid trains convinced that if I didn’t catch the train any more then I would never have to experience that again. I was too frightened to return to the situation where the panic had occurred.

As the time wore on, I began to suffer these extreme panics in different places and of course as they happened, so did the list of places which I would avoid…beaches, buses, casinos, elevators, large parks or ovals and so on…. I started to experience extreme difficulty meeting daily commitments and lied or made excuses to get out of things which caused me distress.

My scope began to shrink, I began to go out less and less and would avoid going out with friends etc. Then one day, I was driving with a friend to check out a house. It was teeming down with rain, visibility was nil, I began to feel really weak, really faint and panic started to overwhelm me. Tears started to come to my eyes, and I tried very hard to maintain my composure. Suddenly my friend pulled the car over and turned to me and said "Becki what is wrong", I had thought that I had hidden all of my problems very well, but she and others had observed for quite some time, how weakened I had become. I burst into tears, made another rubbish excuse about being premenstrual and overtired and teary and that was all. I was willing to admit to ANYTHING, rather than the fact that I felt as though I was losing my mind.

After that incident I became very angry at myself that I was becoming weak and loopy. I started to pick on myself and drive myself really hard in an effort to "knock it out of me" and " pull myself together. That was the worst thing that I could have done. I tortured myself like I never would another. I began a business, deciding that if I was having trouble working, that I would make my own. I worked out to excess, I wrote very very long lists of what I was going to do with every moment of my day. I became overly superstitious, deciding that certain clothing was "unlucky" and having certain routines becoming almost obsessions, convinced that if I didn’t do them right, that panic attacks would ensue.

The first major collapse happened at 12:45 on Wednesday the 18th of September. Walking to the local shop I experience a very severe panic attack. I hyperventilated, wanted to cry and scream, thought I was going to faint, wet myself, die. In my head I was screaming help, the world was spinning, I was in near hysterics. I tried to run, I felt I was in extreme danger, and I had to flee. I was terrified beyond comprehension and thought I had gone mad, I was unable to think rationally. I wanted to knock on peoples doors and ask them to help, I was going to get into a strangers car and beg them to get me home, to save me.

I managed through tears and panic to get home (see YOU STILL ARE IN CONTROL EVEN THOUGH YOU THINK YOU AREN'T) and from that very moment, could not leave my home.

I was housebound. I had difficulty getting down the stairs, checking the mailbox and putting rubbish out became an ordeal which I would dread all week. Despite the fact my life had changed considerably, I still did not learn my lessons. I did not know what was wrong with me. When a social worker came out to see me and suggested that I had agoraphobia I thought "what an idiot woman, agoraphobics hide in the dark with their curtains drawn" I still was not listening. Family were bringing me books on agoraphobia, I didn’t read them. When in fact I finally did, I poo-pooed them saying that it was some kind of virus and would go. I really did believe that I would just wake up and everything would be normal again, that I would feel no fear.

Still my obsessions carried on and I became harder and harder on myself. My list became comical, I had a pile of exercise books which I carried everywhere with me, filled with lists, in perfect neat writing. Everything I had to do was itemised and I would tick them off as I went along, and add 10 for each I ticked off. They would read. Have shower, wash hair, condition hair, rinse hair, dry, brush hair, dry hair, style hair. Apply foundation, apply powder, put on lipstick, put on mascara, etc . Lots of different catagories which would double up the tasks, daily lists, weekly lists, monthly lists, bill lists, financial lists, housework lists. Each task would appear several times on different lists. I was trying to get a grasp on my senses which were out of control, when in fact I was becoming obsessive, hard and superstitious. All in a desperate attempt to "get my act together" and be the strong independent driven person I was before.

Then finally came the major crisis. The hardest moment in my life. I have experienced many horrific times in my life, but none of that will ever touch on this. December the 18th 1996. I ignored family and friends warnings when a large group of family members said that they were coming to stay with me for 2 weeks over Christmas ( hehe, you can see what’s coming cant you) I have a very small unit, and the family consisted on 2 adults and 3 children, all very emotionally draining and demanding, I do love them though. I desperately didn’t want them to come, but once again, I bullied myself with "pull yourself together" and "get a grip". Suddenly everything was out of control, my lists were now officially insane, dictating to me every hour of my day, how many impossible tasks were to be done within a certain time period. For example, making shortbread, 90 mins, checking letterbox 5 mins, dusting 5 mins. My lists were cross referenced, my non rational mind believed that so long as I kept on writing all these things down in order would keep things ok.

Things were not ok, and on that fateful December 18th night during "Blue Heelers" I had a very very extreme panic attack, which rolled on for weeks. The family had well arrived and my home was insane, I rang my sister, sitting on the kitchen floor, begging her to come and take everyone out for the day to give me a break. Only the night before they arrived, other family members were trying to get my visitors to stay with them instead of me, offering to pay for hotels and insisting that I don’t let them stay. But I didn’t listen, I wanted to be stoic. The world started to whorl and I started to panic, badly, this time I didn’t have my home to run home to, it was happening in my home, I didn’t have anywhere to hide.

I started to run out of my house, my mind slipped, I was terrified beyond all sense, I kept saying to my friend, I am going to scream, I am going to scream, please don’t let me scream or that will be the end of my mind. At one point she physically gagged me, hand over my mouth as we paced up and down the streets of Norwood together (suddenly I wanted to go far away, run away. Take flight), My sister was frantically driving across town to get to me. I was hysterical and sure that I was going to spend the night in an institution……you know remembering this never gets any easier, I’m crying while writing this…I don’t remember a lot else, I do remember the terror which cannot be put into words, cannot be understood unless you have experienced it for yourself. I do remember taking a VERY large quantity of a high dose sedative in the hopes of knocking myself out to save myself, I was desperate and terrified beyond my senses.

My sister arrived, finally, I nearly fainted with relief when she arrived, all I thought was, she can take control, I cant take control of anything myself, she can tell my body, my mind and circumstance what to do. She will save me. She can be me for me.

My sister took charged, made arrangements for the visiting family to stay elsewhere the next morning, my guilt on any confusion that my beloved young cousins may of felt that night will never leave me.

She made a room for just me and her to sleep in with privacy, and nursed me through the night, my dreams and reality kept being confused and she kept me calm through that horrible long night. I needed assistance to stand at all, totally drugged out, but it didn’t help my poor senses at all.

In the morning, my mother arrived to take over my care so my sister could go to work. This day was so long and so hard. Waking that morning with the reality that was before me was overwhelming and I was no more rational, and my mother was nearly force feeding me. I kept slipping back into panic and listened to my brain warp and leave. My senses slipping. Feelings of insanity and unreality taking me over. I did not know the physicalities of adrenalin that was making me feel that way, thus I had no control. I had hit the bottom. Still crisis followed crisis, my mother was hospitilised, my father nearly died with a heart attack, we were all dropping like flies. I was too terrified to be alone, and family were with me in my home with me every second of the day. When it came time for them to go to the toilet or shower, I would suffer, shivering, slipping, waiting desperately for them to come back into the room.

Ok now, that’s all the bad stuff, heres where it starts to get better.. You see, no matter how bad things are…things DO get better when you discover what is wrong with you and how to correctly deal with it I promise!!!!! I began to learn lessons, I started to make myself eat regularly, I began desensitation exercises. I learnt how to deal with the agoraphobia, I read the books, I contacted organisations, I found a good doctor, I got in touch with other Agoraphobics and discovered I wasn’t insane after all. I even destroyed my many list books and made myself take things as they came.

I still was terrified to be alone at all, I still couldn’t make it to my own letterbox, but I could begin to see clearer, accept that I had agoraphobia. I still had untold amount of phobias, but started to understand how they could be alleviated, how I could diminish them to free myself of them again.

Everything I did over the next year was in baby steps, I learnt NOT to bully myself and decide to go and do everything in one day ( and keep putting that day off) if would freeze me all the more.

I set myself small tasks. I practised imagining going to my letterbox, then I would sit and look at my letterbox until the world stopped spinning whenever I looked at it, and the distance to it, then I would chose small landmarks on the way to it to reach. For example, a geranium bush, practise going to the bush, touched it and would turn around. Doing this over and over again over days or weeks until I began to be comfortable and it was easier for me. Then I would extend my limits.

Sounds so slow and mundane and it is at first, but it is a sure fire, kind and successful way to alleviate agoraphobia, Practising small targets over and over again until you are comfortable with them again,
And of course this builds quickly with regular practise until you are suddenly laughing at your previous limits. Confidence builds, Control returns. I learnt that I could control my own panic attacks, I could control my own life again and be free and independent again.

I reached a fantastic level of recovery, i was catching buses again, going far from home free from fear every day. It felt wonderful and I never took it for granted, I was happy and re-entering "life" again. Socialising again, meeting people for lunch, looking for some part-time work, going to the beach. All was going well.

But alas, seems that some lessons I still hadn't learned. I got greedy, and after 4 years of patiently practising graded exposure I decided to allow myself to push. I started to flood myself in an effort to "speed up" the process. Push hard and often. Suffered many severe panics while flooding and just exhausted and terrified myself.

I ended up housebound again at Christmas last year. A dreadful time, but had the knowledge and understanding of agoraphobia this time to not be too frightened. I immediately set to work on baby steps and have been working hard all year to regain some lost territory.

Its quicker this time. Im more relaxed about it this time around and im enjoying it more. If I have to do this, then I want it to be fun, and i reward myself well for my efforts.

I am better at handling panic while out now, which i know is going to be a huge hurdle to overcome, but I'm getting there. I also am doing it this time minus medication, and with a strong understanding of what panic is, and how this disorder works.

I am not terrorised by the thought of relapse now.....I have been there and I survived it. Its amazing to me, how once you have that understanding of agoraphobia how much easier it can be.

So, I'm really proud of myself, I know I have the energy and will to work towards recovery again. Stronger and more sustained eachtime until one day i might consider panic just an annoyance in my life, and not the ruler of it. Aggies really are wonderful people, and I think I'm rather wonderful too.

Love
Becki
April 2000
Updated November 2001