HISTORY: Agoraphobia

*I first mention Agoraphobia in a post I intended to devote only to medications.  This post is a continuation/clarification of that original post, which you can read here. 

Agoraphobia is more than just the fear of leaving your home.  It is more of a fear of being unable to get out of a situation or location.  This fear may be of being embarrassed or just not seeing a way out.  It is because of the perceived fear that some become unable to leave their own homes or safe areas.

I was able to leave my home but there were moments that I simply could not handle the thought.  This makes life very difficult when you have obligations outside of your home.  And I did.  Often I would work myself up into such a panic that I couldn't leave.  Sadly, this also created some permanent memories of bad experiences that I was unable to get past and prevented me from being present in some aspects of my life as well as the lives of my family members and close friends.

I still have issues from time to time but the anti-anxiety medications have helped immensely.  There have been very few incidents in the past three years that have actually forced me to stay home.  I feel like I've mostly conquered my agoraphobia, so much so that I no longer consider it to be part of my diagnosis.