More on Agoraphobia
I don’t know if I ever posted this on my site before, but it’s in my gallery so I must have at some point (or maybe I posted it in Live Journal). This is a list my shrink made me write out in regards to my agoraphobia. All images can be clicked to enlarge.
A normal person doesn’t have a list like this. A normal person can do all of the things on this list. And this list is just the tip of a very large iceberg but it was getting long and I didn’t want to overwhelm my shrink with too many details.
Anyway, I found this in my gallery when I was uploading my sunrise picture so I thought I’d share. Again.
6 Comments
The comments for this entry can be syndicated via RSS.
holy crap, I didnt know it was this bad.
What I’ve got to ask is….if you you recognize how kind of silly these insecurities are, or at least write down specifically what they are, and you know other people don’t feel there, or at least only feel them with 1/10 the magnitude that you feel – are you at all about to convince yourself to not worry about them?
I’ve always wondered that about a phobia, if you can recognize the phobia and can recognize that 99% of the population does not seemingly have the same apprehension towards all of these things, is it something you are incapable of overcoming?
I’m not saying that to be mean whatsoever, if you can articulately write about agoraphobia, it definitely shows your intelligence and a sense of rationale about the whole thing, but does the above concerns constantly overpower your free will to say and recognize that this is just some chemical imbalance in my brain and I can overcome it and nobody is watching me and this paranoia is not real?
-Mike
Hi Wowee,
Well, first of all, agoraphobia – or any phobia – isn’t a chemical imbalance. It’s a learned behaviour/response. And if it were a chemical imbalance, you can’t overcome that with willpower or rationale, you need drugs to correct it.
Intellectualizing agoraphobia just makes it worse for me, which is why I don’t like writing about it in detail. I made that list because my shrink made me so she could see the best course of action to take with the immersion therapy. She was unsuccessful in helping me, obviously, as was the caseworker I was seeing last spring. (Although the caseworker was more helpful than my shrink in that regard.)
And the thing is, there is a basis for this paranoia and it’s very real. When I was doing panties for Scratching Post, people would come up to me while I was doing groceries because they recognized me. When I started my site/camming, people have also recognized me “out in the wild” and have come up to me to say so and on several occasions strangers would e-mail me after the fact to say that they saw me at such & such a place at such & such a time doing such & such a thing, but that they were too shy to come up to me and say anything. I know that’s where a lot of this started.
So, when I feel like I’m being stared at or if someone IS staring at me, I wonder why they’re doing so and how much do they know. I realize that I’ve put myself in this position by being so damn awesome, but there’s an unfairness in it all in that so many people know extremely intimate details about me, yet I know nothing about any of them. And they may be literally watching me. If someone’s looking at me in a public place, the odds of them doing so because they recognize me is realistically pretty low, but the chance is still there and the feeling is completely unnerving. And then it’s made worse because what if I have a panic attack in front of this person? Or what if I’m wearing sweatpants and no makeup? Or what if I’m eating a bag of chips, which is the last person a 130 lb woman should be eating and they’re judging me for it? I mean, those fears go for anyone, but they increase tenfold by the notion that this person could be someone who knows who I am.
Now I’m babbling because I haven’t examined this in a while…why does it matter if they know who I am? Why does that make it worse? I have no idea. I’ll be the first to admit that this line of thinking is more than a little narcissistic, but the fact still remains that this all stems from very real occurrences.
Then it compounds by the fear of driving, which is a whole other long story, but it’s really more of the same, it stems from something real that happened. And then the whole ball o’ wax stems from being falsely blamed and accused of things and psychologically tortured for most of my formative years. It’s all shit upon shit upon shit. rather than wade from the shit, I avoid it all and stay home. I’ve been fighting to survive my whole life and right now I just need a rest.
Oh Sunny, I understand your list way more than I want to. I could write a similar list, not the exact same details of course, but I could write one about my issues that interfere with me doing normal things, that length, or longer. I also understand the needing to put down the sword & shield from time to time & step off of the battlefield for a while. It is hard to fight for self preservation your whole life, I understand that all too well too…
Peace & <3 to you.
*hugs*
That list was very abbreviated, but I wanted to save my shrink some aggravation and just give her the basics since most of the other things have similar reasons behind them.
But yeah, I kinda feel like right now I’m in a cocoon and one day I’ll emerge as a butterfly.
The butterfly analogy is SO true. It sounds sappy, & is of little comfort during dark times, but, every single time in my life where I have felt defeated & about done in, when I come through the other side I shine! I’ve seen it happen for others as well.
Sending vibes that that time happens for you soon, & that it sticks around a good while…
Thanks lady *hugs*