People who suffer with panic and anxiety attacks often end up becoming agoraphobic to some extent. This phobia of ‘the outside’, is a reaction in which the phobic retreats into a space that he or she feels comfortable in.
I’ve always used agoraphobic type behaviour as a coping mechanism. If things are too much for me I’ll often retreat, and stay indoors, or I’ll only do things that I feel safe doing.
The Secure Base (to use the title of the book by psychoanalyst Dr John Bowlby) doesn’t always have to be indoors. It can be where someone lives, or it can be as big as a town or whatever boundaries the agoraphobic individual places on themselves.
And there is the crux of the matter, the individual chooses those boundaries, and through re-enforcing behaviour becomes unable to go outside of them, for fear of panic attacks.
My own experience with agoraphobia is pretty severe, I once spent over a year unable to go outside the apartment building I lived in. I ‘recovered’ to an extent, but since then have often chosen to retreat to a space I feel secure in times of anxiety.
People who suffer with panic and anxiety attacks often end up becoming agoraphobic to some extent. This phobia of ‘the outside’, is a reaction in which the phobic retreats into a space that he or she feels comfortable in.
I’ve always used agoraphobic type behaviour as a coping mechanism. If things are too much for me I’ll often retreat, and stay indoors, or I’ll only do things that I feel safe doing.
The Secure Base (to use the title of the book by psychoanalyst Dr John Bowlby) doesn’t always have to be indoors. It can be where someone lives, or it can be as big as a town or whatever boundaries the agoraphobic individual places on themselves.
And there is the crux of the matter, the individual chooses those boundaries, and through re-enforcing behaviour becomes unable to go outside of them, for fear of panic attacks.
My own experience with agoraphobia is pretty severe, I once spent over a year unable to go outside the apartment building I lived in. I ‘recovered’ to an extent, but since then have often chosen to retreat to a space I feel secure in times of anxiety.