agoraphobia, life, or what's left of it.

[momumo]

Greets from me, the newbie, to the vets and fellow newbies of this forum.

Now my story, as dull as it may be.
i'd like to be able to pin my condition on a key event, indeed there is one which went a long way towards causing the onset. but no, i've never found the reason why i'm broken.
it was around highschool, second year when i started to stop going in on some days, randomly, without any real relation to classes or homework or whatever.
it never got to a crippling point back then, just something that was in my mind and easilly overcome, then 5 years ago while in canada, i had a cold, and stupidly went with the friend i was with, to their aunts, this in sub zero canadian winter temps, which landed me on the floor of a train struggling to breath, when the train hit the next station even though it was in the middle of nowhere, we got off and i crawled into the station where i lay in the center of the floor shivvering, my arms felt like dead weights and i was cold, everything was blurring and my lungs felt heavy, i woke up the next day, on christmas day, in hospital on life support (what a great christmas that was...), eventually got out and spent the next 3 months stuck inside watching tv, then eventually i went home, thankfully we got to the airport late and my seat was upgraded to first class, so i was able to get some broken sleep on the flight back to manchester, uk.

Now that said, it wasnt THAT bad then, i just didnt feel consident.. then at my fathers birthday party i just felt.. weird, like i'd been blowing up baloons constantly for an hour, breathless and tired, and unbeleivably scared.
Well it's been 4 years since then, i've been through 3 'therapists',. never tried any of the drugs but now i get to spend each day crawling slightly further than the day before, and nobody i know (wow i still have some friends?), realises how it feels, or why i can't just take off and go where i want.

sometimes it feels like im the only person here with this, though i know that surely it can't be true, right?.

And the worst part of it all, is i'm beginning to enjoy the predictable symptoms, i can go somewhere and laugh at them, even if they're still crippling to the point where i can't continue.

anyone else in this city on these forums who understands?

 

[momumo]

guess not

 

[corrinaelizabeth]

im in lincolnshire with agoraphobia but hey well done for and now i get to spend each day crawling slightly further than the day before.
If u ever wana chat about it pm me or im me ne time a friendly ear is w8in 4 u!!!lol :lol:

 

[Luckiecharm]

Canadian supremecy?

Hi there,

I'm not from Manchester and I'm more of a social anxiety girl than an agoraphobic (who am I kidding, I've got both!), but I had to reply to your message. Mainly because I also lived in Canada for about 4 years and that's where my panic attacks started! Coincidence? Maybe, but I'd rather be paranoid about it and assume a conspiracy theory. Is it that they hate foreigners? Is it an experiment? Did they put something in our water? Or is it just that damn cold weather?! I had to return home too, to Ireland that is, and it's been a long journey ever since. I'm always trying so hard to be positive about it all and put a brave face on it. I even wrote a book about it! I just wanted to do something to raise people's awareness of the issue. The statistics tell us that it is so common, yet when you try to tell someone about it they look at you as though you have two heads. Anyway, I just wanted to reply because I found your story refreshingly honest and freakishly similar to my own! I blame the Canadians! :lol:

 

[momumo]

well, a slight update i guess..
despite what i've been going through i took a step to change myself and started taking driving lessons.. the first few were okay, i was anxious but not really sick, as the lessons progressed i felt gradually worse (the more and more we would drive further from where i live each lesson), i managed to keep up the lessons from july 2007 until february this year, having failed the first test i took in january.
I actually passed my driving test in february and sorted out a car and everything.. i'm still ill though, i still feel horrible if i drive too far, especially when i go far and get out of the car, i'll be walking around a store and all that goes through my mind is "you're far from home, if you get sick here you wont be able to go home" which sometimes is bad enough to get me back in the car doing my best to get home whilst my legs shake like hell and im biting my nails at traffic lights..
Then of course theres the constant worry from what i've had this whole time, i'd say about 10 nights a month i'll be trying to sleep and just as im about to drift off my heart will feel fluttery, usually this causes me to jerk up in bed and feel scared, or gasp for breath.
However last night after spending a good 3 hours trying to sleep through them, i gave up and went and got a stephescope, held it to my heart and what happened scared the hell out of me.
my heart stops beating at the same time my chest feels fluttery, to be exact its like this :

ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum ba-dum-dum (no beat for 1 or 2 seconds) BA-DUM ba-dum ba-dum etc.

I don't feel any different from what i've always felt during these sensations so i guess my heart has been missing beats for a long time, im going to take it to my gp on monday and hopefully get him to arrange me a hospital appointment for a proper ecg, etc because i have absolutely no faith in those arm-band pulse tests, whenever i do them, i'm usually too paranoid for my heart to skip a beat!, so they never hear it skip a beat, and when i tell them it does they say its all in my head because i have agrophobia.. sounds more like theyre chalking it up to agrophobia out of lazyness, i fail to see how agrophobia will make my heart skip beats through the night when i (at least when i first try to sleep) feel comfortable, safe and tired.

Ah hell i hate having this.

 

[Wayne-InSane]

I sometimes have these dreams in which I am struggling to stab someone in the face and they get away - the scary part about it is that normally they actually do manage to make it out of the place alive. A good little trick I've found though is when you first choose your victim, now depending how big the fella' is if you shove a chugging chainsaw blade into his beer-belly he should deflate much like a rubber-dingy. It's a good idea to stalk your victim for 2 to 3 weeks forst before commiting the actual murder, it's more fun and you get to know their routine a little better, which in the long-run makes the whole operation flow smoothly...