From the article: Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia
Some people with panic disorder develop a condition called agoraphobia. The main symptom of agoraphobia is intense fear (panic response) of being in certain situations in which escape is difficult or potentially embarrassing, or where help is not readily available. More specifically, the focus is on the fear of having a panic attack in such situations. The fear associated with agoraphobia is so intense that the person will usually go to great lengths to avoid the feared situations.
If you could tell people about what it's like to have panic disorder and agoraphobia, what would you say?
Panic Comes With No Warning
- For me panic attacks have no warning sign. I could be anywhere, eating lunch with a friend, in a movie theater. And suddenly I feel like I've been thrown out an airplane without a parachute, or the freight train is coming and I am tied to the railroad tracks.
- —Guest Marcia
Train Wreck Analogy
- You are driving alone in your car and it stalls on a railroad track. The door locks are automatically shut down. You are trapped. You hear the sound of an oncoming train. You watch it come closer and closer and you know you will die. How would YOU feel? That's how a panic attack feels.
- —Guest misslanny
Fear of Leaving Home
- When I first got Panic Attacks, I got agoraphobia too. Until the medication started working, I could not leave my house. I could not make myself walk out the door.
- —Guest Sandi
Crippling
- During a panic attack, it's like being unable to react or feeling like you are rooted to the ground helplessly.
- —catysuzgirl2000
Lonely
- I have a fear of being trapped in a situation - physically or otherwise. It's worse with people I care about because I want them to think well of me. I often act abruptly or rudely in order to get myself away as quickly as possible. It is painful to keep pushing people away out of fear. It is even more painful to not be able to maintain close relationships. I just want to hide in my house where it's safer.
- —Guest adrea
Agoraphobia is a Private Hell
- The one thing I would say about this disorder is that even though it is so crippling, when you are in it, there seems no alternatives when gripped by the horror of being among other human beings. Everyone is so afraid of being judged, and so, it is with great relief that I retreat behind my closed and locked doors and draw my blinds so as to be shielded from the world's cruelty.
- —Guest anangel60
An Illness Like Any Other
- I have an illness. You would not belittle or think less of a person who has cancer if they chose not to go to certain places. Why do you feel it's OK to make rude or hurtful remarks to me when I don't want to go places? Don't you realize that your hurtful remarks only add to the pain I'm already suffering?
- —Guest Roberta
SOS
- Having panic disorder is like taking a ski lift to the top of a mountain and being left up there alone.
- —itspat
Lost Freedom
- Imagine what it would be like if your freedom was suddenly taken away for what seemed like no reason. You could no longer walk out of your home (sometimes even into the next room in your home). You couldn't go shopping or just drive or walk down the street. Everything looks unreal and you feel unreal. That is just a small description of what it is like to live with a panic disorder w/agoraphobia. Your freedoms, as the outside world knows them, are gone without rhyme or reason. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.
- —mistychild
Fight or Flight
- Panic attacks are one of the most frightening experiences in life. Your body reacts like you have to "fight or run." The panic reaction is unconscious and you loose control. You feel you are going to die, you heart is pounding like crazy, you feel short of breath, and sometimes you have fatigue, nausea and diarrhea.
- —Guest Veronica1
Shunning Abounds in Our World
- It is a lonely existence filled with sadness and shame. Family thinks you are crazy and sometimes they avoid including you in activities. You often find no relief for physical ailments when ill because the medical community assumes you are not physically ill, just anxious. . They refuse to take you seriously. It is impossible to establish friends or relationships as you seldom leave your comfort zone -- home. I think the worst is the isolation you feel having to endure an attack without understanding or empathy.Who is going to come in a true health crisis? No one. They may as well respond, "Take a chill pill!" It is neither normal nor healthy to live with little to no social interaction, and yet thousands of us are. I am an educated 59-year-old woman living alone, and I find this all very sad.
- —sharonleem50
Pick and Choose
- It's very hard for friends and family to understand why I can go some places or be in some situations and not others. My fears are, because of my way of thinking, pretty specific.
- —Guest Rosemary Hobbs
Being in A Snowglobe Looking Out
- Agoraphobia is like being in this protective bubble watching the world go by. When you DO attempt to go out, the anxiety has you constantly at war within yourself, stopping and evaluating each and every body symptom as a soldier would every noise or moving shadow he encountered. You can't just relax and enjoy yourself because you never know when or where the enemy will strike next, and you always have to be prepared for the next battle. It becomes so tiring that you just end up returning to the only place you can get some relief--your "safe place".
- —TerriLW
Being on a Crashing Plane
- Your body reacts as if you're on a crashing airliner. You're in a terrifying freefall, with no one at the controls. This feeling can come on you out of nowhere, at any time.
- —mmgideon01
Takes Away Your Life Little by Little...
- Panic disorder and agoraphobia are like being on a rollercoaster ride that won't stop. A panic attack is like having one major earthquake inside your body with minor quakes that seem to last for hours on end. Slowly your safe space is becomes severely limited. Your world becomes like a box growing smaller with each "attack." You lose jobs, friends and in many cases "a life". It is lonely place.
- —Derrick000531
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