Hi Switch,

Normally I don't post (due to being anxious, ironically enough), but felt compelled to do so in this case, and hopefully you will find my experience helpful. I can never exactly pinpoint when my Agoraphobia started, but by the time I really began to realize that I had a problem it was too late and I had been shut in my house for almost two months. This episode lasted almost six months... I could not get the mail or take out the trashcans to the curb. I was 17 and about to graduate high school (luckily my school let me graduate, since I technically missed more days than I was allowed but my GPA was high) and my aunt had purchased plane tickets for me to go to Disneyland as a surprise gift, and I had to beg and plead not to go, the thought of going there was too terrifying to even imagine. Not to mention the guilt and shame that followed that incident; my parents told me I was ungrateful for not accepting the tickets.

That was 2 years ago. Since then I have been to various doctors and therapists and treatment centers. Unfortunately, there is no "cure," or even a real long-term treatment for anxiety. Medications like Ativan, Klonopin, and Xanax are helpful in the short term but do not alleviate the fears themselves. SSRIs are said to be more helpful for long-term anxiety but I cannot take SSRIs because I have bad reactions to them. The real treatment that is usually implemented is something called "Exposure Therapy." That is, essentially, doing all those horrible things that you are afraid of in small, "easier to manage" steps and building up experience from there. For example, I have had therapists accompany me to public places. You will also learn various distress tolerance skills like deep breathing, muscle relaxation, and visualization to manage anxiety.

I suppose I am somewhat "well versed" in anxiety disorders and have been diagnosed with several of them simultaneously: Panic/Agoraphobia, Social Anxiety, and GAD. And I would still not say that I am anywhere close to finding a "cure" to anxiety, I still struggle immensely with it even with treatment. But the only way to go out is to go out, despite the anxiety. The more you avoid something the more feared it becomes; anxiety is cyclical in nature. So your goal must be changed from "How can I avoid anxiety?" to "How can I function even with anxiety?" Eventually (this is what doctors and therapists claim, though I am not personally at this stage yet), the more you do things that are anxiety-provoking, the less anxious you will feel and the easier functioning in everyday life will become.