They say that fear is free and each person is afraid of different things. This could also explain those phobias that are not understood from the outside and that are suffered from the inside to the point of limiting the lives of many people. This time, in our dictionary of phobias we treat agoraphobia, a type of anxiety disorder that goes far beyond being afraid to go out.
What is agoraphobia?
To fully understand what exactly agoraphobia consists of, we first have to break down this word. ‘Agora’ comes from the Greek and means ‘public square’ or ‘place of meeting and discussion’. On the other hand, ‘Phobia’ also comes from the Greek, in this case from the word ‘Photos’ which means fear or irrational and obsessive fear.
Following its etymology, agoraphobia has been thought to be the fear of open spaces. This would explain why the person suffering from agoraphobia cannot leave the house, go to the street, much less be in a park or even enjoy a day by the sea. But, the worst of all is that the thing does not stop here.
Because what this definition of agoraphobia as a fear of open spaces does not explain is why people who suffer from it cannot go to the theater, which is an enclosed space, or feel an uncontrollable fear in the supermarket or when getting on a bus or a train, for example. The places and situations that cause agoraphobia are so varied that they can even include the inability to sit with your family in a restaurant for a family celebration.
This indicates that agoraphobia is more than just the fear of open spaces. In reality, the fear is of being in a place or situation where you can’t call for help quickly or from which you can’t immediately escape. Imagine that you are at the cinema and you start to have an, how do you get out of there? This is what agoraphobia is based on.
Causes of agoraphobia or the fear of going outside
All phobias go hand in hand with anxiety disorders and that is where their origin is found in most cases. This is more evident in the case of agoraphobia, where the fear of having an anxiety attack or a panic attack is the trigger for a whole series of avoidances that can lead someone not to want to leave the house.
In some cases, agoraphobia could originate from the parents of the person who suffers from it. Very overprotective parents or parents who do not provide enough affection may end up raising a future agoraphobic child.
In other types of phobias, an origin is also sought by conditioning, that is, by having lived through a traumatic experience, but, in this case, we can limit ourselves to anxiety problems and the consequences that they entail to find the cause of agoraphobia. If you’ve ever had a panic attack, you may have realized that it’s an experience you don’t want to go through again. And this is how any situation can seem dangerous to you.
How does a person with agoraphobia behave? Most frequent attitudes
Answering this question is not easy since, in relation to this disorder, a wide variety of factors come into play, most of the time, unpredictable.
What is certain is that agoraphobic people are usually characterized by a series of habitual or common behaviors. Here are some of them:
- People with agoraphobia tend to hide from their problem. It causes them great shame to admit it and most of the time it is very difficult for them to admit that they are suffering frogman. This at the same time generates more anxiety. In short, they enter an infinite loop of agoraphobia from which it is quite difficult to get out.
- People with agoraphobia tend to engage in avoidance behaviors. That is to say, if they have a fight, for example, with a friend and they know that this situation causes them anxiety, they directly prefer to avoid the arguments before facing them and learning to manage and manage them.
- People with agoraphobia experience their problem as a curse and not as something that can be solved. That is, they think that they cannot do anything to control what they feel. They believe that it is something inevitable that they have to assume and with which they have no choice but to live.
- People with agoraphobia are often very afraid of new experiences. They prefer to stay with the known rather than face unknown situations that are beyond their control.
- People with agoraphobia tend to be extremely introverted in their social relationships.
Symptoms of this type of fear
The person with agoraphobia experiences all the when they are exposed to a situation that they consider dangerous. Since it is very difficult to avoid going out, going to a party, stopping for a moment in the park or going to the mall, the symptoms appear gradually.
Agoraphobia begins with a feeling of restlessness and discomfort for being in that specific situation or in that place. Then comes disorientation or a feeling of unreality that is often accompanied by tingling. This produces hyperventilation, shortness of breath, and tachycardia. And that’s when that person needs to get out of there immediately.
Diagnosis
First of all, we want to emphasize the fact that this information is for guidance only and that to find out if you suffer from agoraphobia or not, the most appropriate thing to do is to see a specialist to confirm it.
There are people who, at any given time, may suffer an episode of anxiety similar to those produced by agoraphobia, but that does not mean that they suffer from it. When diagnosing this type of disorder, it is essential that the person perceive it as something that limits their quality of life and, therefore, makes them unable to continue with their daily routine.
The daily life of a person with agoraphobia: a practical example
Inés leaves the house. She takes the subway to go to work. Suddenly he begins to feel a wave of fear. There is no reason to feel this way; everything is in order as always. But she can’t help it, that feeling gets out of her control. Her heart begins to beat so fast and hard that it seems that she is going to come out of her mouth. She is short of breath; she feels that it is very difficult for her to breathe. She starts to hurt her chest, she feels dizzy. She suddenly has a huge urge to vomit and she can’t stop shaking. She herself describes it as a death agony that never ends. She is having a panic attack.
Inés never wants to go through that experience again. For this reason, to prevent her from repeating herself, she never takes the subway again. She is very afraid that the situation will happen again. The possibility of another attack sends shivers down his spine. Inés begins to go to work by bus and begins to feel calmer. But that false tranquility only lasts a few days. The panic attack expands her limits; she generalizes and makes her appearance on the bus again. Later on the train. Later in the car. Then while she walks. History repeats itself over and over again to the point that Inés no longer has alternatives to go to work. She doesn’t want to leave the house.
Inés has become a person with agoraphobia and a fear of going out. And she has to put an end to her problem of her. She can end it.
Agoraphobia Treatment
Inés’s story is just one of the many stories that agoraphobic people experience every day. And although, at first glance, it may seem that it is a vicious circle from which you cannot get out, it is not. Agoraphobia, like many other phobias and many other anxiety disorders, has a treatment. You just need to recognize the problem and have the desire to face it.
The consequences of agoraphobia or the fear of going out, which can end up confining you at home, losing your job and social, family and partner relationships, can be easily understood. We are facing a very limiting and destructive phobia and psychological help is needed to overcome it.
The most effective therapy is Cognitive which has no side effects (as drugs can have by acting directly on the regulation of hormones and neurotransmitters) and whose benefits tend to last over time.
It is true that this type of therapy is slow and a lot of patience is needed to begin to notice the progress. What does it consist of exactly? The person with agoraphobia should be exposed gradually and always with the help of the guidelines and supervision of a professional to situations that cause anxiety or panic until they generate greater resistance to what is feared.
Cognitive-Behavioral therapy places special emphasis on the beliefs that the person has assimilated about their environment, their habits and their routine actions, so that little by little these beliefs are modified to the point that the person is no longer afraid of facing everything that scares you.
In many cases, to overcome agoraphobia it is also recommended to practice some relaxation that help train the ability to manage anxiety.
And in the most extreme cases, agoraphobia needs a pharmacological treatment that complements psychological help. This treatment usually consists of:
Anxiolytics: their great advantage is their effectiveness. They have an almost immediate effect when it comes to calm anxiety crises. However, anxiolytics also have many side effects that you should be very attentive to:
- Drowsiness and lack of concentration.
- It is Avery medicine. In fact, if it is withdrawn abruptly, it can cause withdrawal symptoms.
- Development of tolerance. This means that the person who takes anxiolytics has the need to consume increasingly higher doses to achieve the same effect.
- And their biggest disadvantage, although it may seem contradictory, is precisely that they work and the fact that they work makes the person forget that they have a problem and do not take other types of measures to tackle it radically.
Antidepressants: Antidepressants are another of the drugs most used to treat agoraphobia. There are three types specifically: serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SSNRIs), and tricyclic antidepressants. And does it really work to calm anxiety? And the answer is yes. Antidepressants can be used for both mood control and anxiety control. In addition, it is also possible for a person to develop depression from the feeling that agoraphobia causes of having a totally limited life. In this case, antidepressants would be doubly helpful. Of course, they always have to be controlled by a professional.