I'm afraid to leave my house

What this looks like

You used to move around a normal-sized world. Somewhere along the way you had a panic attack in a public place and you avoided that place after. The next place where something similar happened, you avoided that one too. You order groceries online now. You decline events. You cancel last-minute. You only travel with someone who feels safe. Your safe zone is your house, sometimes only specific rooms.

You’ve shrunk the world to the places that haven’t yet hurt you. The shrinking has its own momentum.

What you’ve already tried

• Forced yourself out, only to leave early or panic
• Gradual exposure: the trip to the corner shop, the short walk that took weeks to build up to
• Carrying water, gum, a paper bag, a phone
• A “safe person” who has to be with you
• Benzos before going out
• Online ordering and delivery for everything
• Telling yourself you’re being ridiculous

Some of it got you to the corner. None of it gave you back the world.

What kind of anxiety do you experience?

Why avoidance is the trap

You very likely came out of a stretch of your life where panic became something to dread. You may have grown up in a household where you absorbed the lesson that the world was unsafe. You may have lived through one bad panic attack in a public place and decided you’d never let that happen to you again. You may have started avoiding the obvious triggers and discovered that avoidance produced relief, and once you had the relief you kept reaching for it.

You avoid a place and you feel relief. You teach yourself that the place was dangerous and the avoidance kept you safe. The next place where panic almost arrived, you avoid sooner. You bring a safe person and they become a requirement. You force yourself out and panic again, which adds another scary memory to the pile. Either direction trains the agoraphobia further.

You’re using the avoidance to manage the fear. The avoidance is what keeps the fear large.

How we work with it

Strategic therapy retires the avoidance from its current job, because the avoidance is what’s been teaching you the world is dangerous. We change what you do at the second the urge to back out arrives, so the relief stops getting paid out and the next round stops being trained. The safe zone starts expanding from your end without exposure homework that floods you.

The world gets bigger again because the trap stops working.