Here is a warning, right from the start. There is no knitting content here. You might want to just skip it and come back tomorrow.
I have learned more about agoraphobia, about which I first wrote a week ago today.
“Agoraphobia” is defined in the dictionary as “fear of open places,” and that is true, but that is not how agoraphobia is diagnosed. A person who is only nervous about fields or phobic about a particular type of road has a specific phobia. Agoraphobia to the medical community is a complex, characterised primarily by avoidance.
Agoraphobics avoid a lot of things, mostly things associated with travel or specific spaces, food and drink, and social and business interactions. When I looked at the lists of stuff agoraphobes avoid, I was taken aback. These are not obviously related things. Making appointments, shopping for clothes, going places alone, driving on freeways, answering the phone — these are not things that seem to fall into a single category. But if you have a strong aversion to or fear of half a dozen of the things on these lists, you should consider that you might be agoraphobic. Apparently, agoraphobes do not typically develop aversions to particular animals, or numbers, or any of the other hundreds of possible things a person might hate or fear. Dr. Drew learned in his class that it is about leaving your comfort zone, and I have read that elsewhere, but I don’t really understand it. I have no problem singing solos in public — why should that be within my comfort zone, while calling my hairdresser for an appointment or answering my own telephone is not? Other descriptions claim that the connection among all the things that agoraphobes usually have trouble with is that they are all situations that are hard to escape from. An open place offers no shelter, an appointment means that you are trapped in a place, a freeway is hard to get off of once you are on it. I don’t know. It may be that all the things on the list really have in common is their connection with agoraphobia.
Agoraphobes avoid these things to an unreasonable degree, or if they cannot avoid them, they suffer over them to an unreasonable degree. They also usually have excuses for their aversions. So, for example, I have a list of aversions associated with driving. Of course, I don’t drive on scary roads. But I also dislike driving on freeways, because I am out of practice. And I hate driving in winter weather, because I grew up in California. And I don’t like to drive long distances, because I drive an old car. I don’t like to drive to unfamiliar places, because I get lost easily. I don’t like to drive at night, because I cannot see well in the dark any more. There may be others that I can’t think of right now. And, if I do nothing about this, there will undoubtedly be more developing over time. The result of this long — and growing — list of completely separate reasons to avoid different kinds of driving is that there are very few situations in which I can drive with comfort. Eventually, I suppose, I will not be able to drive at all.
Driving is an area in which I actually do feel fear. But most of the things on those lists that I recognize as issues for me are aversions, not fears. I am not afraid of making appointments. I do not fear my hairdresser, or even my doctor. But it is very hard for me to make appointments. I haven’t had my hair cut for six months. I don’t know why. I had never associated it with my agoraphobia. But it is actually a typical thing for agoraphobes. And, once it is pointed out, I have to acknowledge that it is a bit odd.
I assumed that my dislike of shopping (except in book stores and yarn shops) was because I work in a store. Naturally, I would not want to shop on my days off. But I work in a bookstore. You might think that, if I avoided shopping because I get tired of stores, it would be bookstores that I avoided. But in fact, I find it very easy and enjoyable to shop for books. I almost never shop for clothes. Even when I actually need clothes, I put it off for months and then do it online. In fact, although in the past year I have gone down several dress sizes, I have bought exactly three new pieces of clothing. I normally buy three books every week, yet I have only bought three pieces of clothing in a year, in spite of an obvious actual need for clothes. The average American woman buys an article of clothing every week — probably a lot more than she needs, but I have obviously gone too far the other direction. I can tell you my supposed reasons for this, but an examination of my reasons shows pretty clearly that they are not real.
And of course I have to shop for groceries, almost every week. But I dislike grocery stores very much. In a grocery store, or on other kinds of shopping trips that I cannot avoid (like back to school with the kids), I begin after a while to feel overwhelmed. I have sometimes thought that it is the fluorescent lights that cause this, or a confusing layout in a particular store, but I now am forced to realize that it is actually agoraphobia. No wonder I love the Schwann’s man.
Agoraphobia is often connected with panic attacks. I have only experienced panic attacks in driving on those scary roads I told you about, and driving in winter weather. Agorophobes who experience panic attacks unexpectedly and without warning may find that this becomes the center of their lives — when and where will the next attack come, and how can they avoid it? It seems very likely, when I am driving in snow, that I will die from sheer terror. I laugh about this — not at the time, of course — but I have to admit that worrying over it consumes a lot of my attention in the winter. As soon as snow is predicted, I begin worrying about having to drive in it. This is the only one of my aversions that I am really not able to avoid. It would be a very good thing if I could get over that fear.
Over the past week, as I have read more about agoraphobia and discovered that all these odd things (yes, I was aware that I was a little odd about the telephone) are characteristic of agoraphobia, I have come to the conclusion that I ought to do something about this. Very few agoraphobes seek treatment, which should not be surprising since that would require making an appointment, probably over the phone, and then driving somewhere. And we usually only perceive our disorder as a problem when we are unsuccessful at avoiding something we have an aversion to — like me with winter driving. And, frankly, I have always felt that the problem was in having to drive in winter weather, not in being unreasonably scared of it. Now that I am aware that this is an actual disorder, will I do something about it? Will I be able to?
I’ll let you know.
(I do not feel bad about showing you all these terrifying pictures, because I know that only 1% of the population will be scared by them, so probably no one out there is suffering.)
How odd. I have absoltuely no problem with open spaces, but I have all the other aversions you mentioned except driving on freeways. And it’s gotten much worse in the last few years. Hmmm…
OMG I knew I wasn’t the only one out there! As I was reading I was thinking I’ll have to send dh over here to read! We had a big fight the other week because I did not want to get out of the van and go into Krispy Kreme and pick the doughnuts. Then last week we had another fight because he invited the neighbors to go to Olive Garden with us. I have this huge fear of eating with people I don’t know. So the lady from next door comes over and we’re chatting and shes telling me about the eyebrow wax and makeup job she just had, and I’m trying to be interested, but she’s talking to a mother of five that hasn’t worn makeup in 7 years and I’m lucky if I get time to slow down and brush my hair and put it in a ponytail for the day! 😛 Fear fear fear! I’m not normal, I don’t shop, I don’t go get my hair and makeup done every month, I hate talking on the phone. And yeah, the last time I got new clothes was about a year and a half ago, and the only reason I did was because my other clothes were wearing very very thin! *sigh* I even buy mens clothing because it lasts soooo much longer!
Aahh, you’ve given me a sence of normalcy today. Although I do realize I have these fears and it’s probably not normal.
I guess as long as you don’t have angoraphobia, you’ll be OK 😉
Just a very quick note, more of a warning than anything. One of the first things that psych students are told when they start to do an abnormal psych paper is ‘Don’t worry if you find in yourself some or all of the symptoms you read in the book. It is normal for everyone to have these symptoms at some time.”
In other words, it is abnormal to be anxiety-free. By definition a phobia (a clinical or pathological fear) is diagnosed ONLY if the fear is forcing you to change your lifestyle and you don’t like those changes. If this is not the case, you do not have a problem.
Sorry folks, anxiety lives with all of us, no amount of categorising or couselling will make it go away. The trick is to be able to recognise when it does become pathological and then seek good help – which does not necessarily mean finding the most expensive therapist around and visiting her/him every week for the next 20 years of your life. 🙂
‘Petrified with fear’ would probably translate to ‘a clinical problem’.
After the slide I had on the snow in the car I had to continue driving into town which probably stopped the development of a phobia about slippery roads (I had immediate disconfirming instances of the notion “slippery road = scary near crash”) but I still feel my stomach muscles tensing when I notice water or ice on the road and I haven’t managed to get rid of that yet after 5 years.
I love wide open spaces but I’m not keen on being among largeish groups of people so I think I have a mild form of one of the claustophobias. Have no problem with enclosed spaces however (just as well ‘cos in my first job I had to crawl around in small spaces under floors to lay cables).
Actually, “ferrets” is short for “fighting ferrets,” which is the name of are intremurial volleyball team. Although, if i had thought of it, waffles might have been a quite good name also…maybe even the fighting waffles.
Extra note: I’m not totally convinced that agorophobia is the correct term. In DSM-IV it usually described as a fear of doing something publicly embarassing so the person ends up as a prisoner in their own house. Yours is a much more specific phobia than this. The rest of the symptoms described in your post and in the comments following are more likely to be generalised anxiety (of a phone – bad news can arrive that way).
Clinicians are far more likely to give specific labels to anxiety problems than are non-clinicians – their livelihood of the former depends upon delivering treatments for categorised ‘disorders’ .
Just to clarifiy. I am attemptng to mount an attack on your grammaticly pristine little Xanga that will include anyone I can convince to participate. The singular purpose of this excapade will be to misspell things badly and at random to be certain you will not complain about Chatterboxers again.
Blaphemous.
This is truly interesting, and informative. Thanks for posting it.
Suzette