Overcoming Agoraphobia and Panic Disorder: Cope or Cure?

Are you often anxious of being in crowded places such as restaurants, supermarkets, or big shopping centres? Do you dread being in enclosed places or confined places such as bridges or tunnels? Maybe you struggle with being stuck at home all alone?

Well, agoraphobia could be the one to blame here; fear of open spaces. However, the underlying subconscious dread of agoraphobia is the fear of being stranded in a situation where escape might be difficult or where losing control might create an avalanche of shame and embarrassment.

Agoraphobia is often a protective outlet for panic attacks. This means that if you suffer from panic attacks, you are more likely to develop agoraphobia, especially if your panic disorder has been around for a while. You may start to avoid driving alone or driving too far away from home. You may start to avoid social gatherings, queuing or flying. In more severe situations, walking a few distance away from home might actually be very difficult.

They Are All Protecting Something!

As already mentioned, your agoraphobia is a protector. It’s role is to protect you from getting exposed to a situation that might triggers your panic attack or cause other emotional stress with the psyche.

Now, your panic attack itself is a protector, protecting your psyche from being exposed to more dangers within the subconscious. Your agoraphobia is protecting another protector (panic attack) that is also protecting you from potential subconscious hurts. But the big questions are the following:

• Why are they protecting you?
• How can they stop protecting you?
• If they are protecting you, why are they making your life a nightmare?
• How can you achieve total transformation?

These are big questions whose answers don’t really come-by so easily. The good news is that all of the above questions and more have been answered in my anxiety recovery programmes.

But first, let’s look the real root-cause and some of the available ways to manage and cope with your agoraphobia or panic disorder:

The Often Ignored Root Cause

Having help several anxiety patients over the years, in overcoming agoraphobia and panic disorder, the most effective treatment plan is deals intensively with repressed negative emotions (RNE). For a full-blown agoraphobia or panic disorder, total transformation is not possible without the release of the RNE locked in the subconscious.

Repressed negative emotions are store in the subconscious when we go through a traumatic or unpleasant experiences but unable to adequately process our emotions and properly resolve the situation within the psyche.

It is the accumulation of the RNEs that set the emotional brain and the whole nervous system into a survival mode where various protective measures and defence mechanisms have to erected.

How Do You Manage or Cope With Your Condition?

Therapeutic techniques: There are several therapeutic techniques that can help you manage or cope with your agoraphobia and panic disorders: such as relaxation techniques, exposure technique, panic control therapy, interoceptive desensitisation, or cognitive therapy.

Medications: Likewise, there are medications that can help you manage or cope. For more severe cases of agoraphobia or panic attacks, the SSRIs such as Celexa, Lexapro, Zoloft, or Cymbalta can be helpful. For less severe symptoms, low dozes of tranquillisers such as klonopin or Xanax may be helpful.

But What Is The Ultimate Solution?

While all of the above therapy techniques and medications might be helpful in coping or managing your agoraphobia or panic disorders, they are not designed to cure them. They only control them.

The only effective and long-lasting solution comes  through an intensive psychotherapy that focuses on identifying and transforming the repressed negative emotions which are being protected within the psyche by your panic or agoraphobia outlets.

Best regards,

Wale

P.S. For further details, you may download my Free eBook: The Essential Guide To Anxiety Panic Disorders. Or visit my MindBody Breakthrough recovery online programmes for various anxiety-related disorders. These programmes are intensively tailored to transform the root-source of your disorders to enable your own permanent transformation.