What is Agoraphobia?
There are facts and case histories of agoraphobia available online plus personal accounts. However, I will share what I know from my own experience and what others have shared with me.
At the start of what I now know to be agoraphobia I had spent a number of years working at a rather stressful job, and for a number of reasons experienced sleep deprivation. During the months leading up to what appears to be a breakdown I had suffered from a number of medical problems. First was a virus for which I was prescribed penicillin which at the time did not know I was allergic to, this made the illness worse shortly after this I had a severe case of food poisoning. Then various others things seem to go wrong from a medical aspect which was strange as I wasn't normally a person to suffer from these illnesses.
Things reached a point where to be honest I found it difficult knowing one day from another. During my working day there were many stressful things that needed dealing with . Everything started to become a blur around that time, until one day I found myself having to check something at a particular place which was even more stressful than all the other situations I then found myself making excuses about returning to that point afterwards.
It was shortly after this I was in a shop and found myself feeling what I could only describe as terrified, and running out of the shop. After this there were a number of other times when this fear came apon me for no apparent reason. There was a period where I tried to cope but things only got worse. Around this time a pattern had started to develop and in fact I was becoming agoraphobic there were periods during this time that I had blanked out, and even now it is difficult for me to remember some of those periods .
From the day I started making excuses about going to certain places my world became smaller and smaller ,and till one day I found it differcult to leave my bedroom this lasted for a number of years ,and even then it was a couple of more years before I could get out of the house . During that time I became addicted to the Valium that I was being perscribed for the anxiety panic attacks ,and then to discover that one of the withdrawal symptoms was to suffer from agoraphobia .