People who experience the intense fears that are
characteristic of agoraphobia strive to organize their
lives in such a way as to minimize exposure to the fear
arousing stimuli. The following account by a professor
described a phobia that almost completely confined him
to the campus where he taught. The account was published
48 years after his agoraphobia had begun. Only
his closest relatives and friends knew of his problem,
and he continued as a professor of English at the University
of Wisconsin during this time.
Let me assume that I am walking down University
Drive by the lake. I am a normal man for the first
quarter of a mile; for the next hundred yards I am.
in a mild state of dread controllable and controlled;
for the next twenty yards in an acute state of dread
yet controlled; for the next ten in an anguish of
terror that hasn't reached the crisis of explosion; and
in a half-dozen steps more I am in as fierce a panic
of isolation from help and home and of immediate
death as a man overboard in mid-Atlantic or on a
window-ledge far up in a skyscraper with flames
lapping his shoulders. The reader who can't
understand why I have not merely whistled or
laughed or ordered the phobias off my psychic
premises or who thinks that I must be grossly
exaggerating a mere normal discomfort like the
initial dread in the dentists chair is not the reader
for whom I am writing one line of this book. He
belongs among the fools of whom in my phobic career
I have met a goodly number already. I would leave
him alone. Let him leave me alone. . . . It is as
scientific a fact as any I know that my phobic seizures
at their worst approach any limits of terror that the
human mind if capable of in the actual presence of
death in its most horrible for me. That I have never
fainted away or died under them is due to two
factors: first my physical vitality and second my skill
in devising escapes-psychic surrogates deflections of
attention or actual retreat to safety-before the
exhausting surge has torn me to pieces. But more
than once the escape has been at all but the last
moment. The fools say nothing ever happened from
one of these seizures-so why worry. Nothing ever
happened? Well here is what happens always. First
the seizure happens-as well say nothing happens if a
red-hot iron is run down the throat) even though it
should miraculously leave no after effects. The seizure
happens; the acutest agony of the conscious brain
happens. Second the seizure leaves me always far
more exposed to phobic seizures for weeks or months;
increases my fear of the Fear; and robs me of a goodly
part of what little freedom of movement on street and
hillside I have. Nothing ever happened. This means
simply that to date I’ve lived through seizures and
continued for fifteen years to teach school write books
and make jokes at the University Club across the
street.- (Leonard, pg. 321-323)
characteristic of agoraphobia strive to organize their
lives in such a way as to minimize exposure to the fear
arousing stimuli. The following account by a professor
described a phobia that almost completely confined him
to the campus where he taught. The account was published
48 years after his agoraphobia had begun. Only
his closest relatives and friends knew of his problem,
and he continued as a professor of English at the University
of Wisconsin during this time.
Let me assume that I am walking down University
Drive by the lake. I am a normal man for the first
quarter of a mile; for the next hundred yards I am.
in a mild state of dread controllable and controlled;
for the next twenty yards in an acute state of dread
yet controlled; for the next ten in an anguish of
terror that hasn't reached the crisis of explosion; and
in a half-dozen steps more I am in as fierce a panic
of isolation from help and home and of immediate
death as a man overboard in mid-Atlantic or on a
window-ledge far up in a skyscraper with flames
lapping his shoulders. The reader who can't
understand why I have not merely whistled or
laughed or ordered the phobias off my psychic
premises or who thinks that I must be grossly
exaggerating a mere normal discomfort like the
initial dread in the dentists chair is not the reader
for whom I am writing one line of this book. He
belongs among the fools of whom in my phobic career
I have met a goodly number already. I would leave
him alone. Let him leave me alone. . . . It is as
scientific a fact as any I know that my phobic seizures
at their worst approach any limits of terror that the
human mind if capable of in the actual presence of
death in its most horrible for me. That I have never
fainted away or died under them is due to two
factors: first my physical vitality and second my skill
in devising escapes-psychic surrogates deflections of
attention or actual retreat to safety-before the
exhausting surge has torn me to pieces. But more
than once the escape has been at all but the last
moment. The fools say nothing ever happened from
one of these seizures-so why worry. Nothing ever
happened? Well here is what happens always. First
the seizure happens-as well say nothing happens if a
red-hot iron is run down the throat) even though it
should miraculously leave no after effects. The seizure
happens; the acutest agony of the conscious brain
happens. Second the seizure leaves me always far
more exposed to phobic seizures for weeks or months;
increases my fear of the Fear; and robs me of a goodly
part of what little freedom of movement on street and
hillside I have. Nothing ever happened. This means
simply that to date I’ve lived through seizures and
continued for fifteen years to teach school write books
and make jokes at the University Club across the
street.- (Leonard, pg. 321-323)
People who suffer from Agoraphobia may also experience sex addiction in forms that distance them from reality. Porn addiction can be very common for men with Agoraphobia because of the fantasy nature of porn along with the absence of real human contact.
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For the therapy method I recommend clicking here:
http://social-anxiety-treatment-cure.weebly.com/