Agoraphobia Quotes

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope.

People with mental illnesses aren't wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can't be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward.

I lay on my floor crying again… shaking. Searching for inner strength and coming up empty. My eyes burned and my mouth was dry as I sucked on air that seemed to keep getting thicker and harder to breathe. I tried to leave again, but ended up leaning my forehead against the door, feeling defeated and wishing the Grim Reaper would come for me in all his silky, black glory.

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not -- they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life.

What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again.

Many empaths are diagnosed with chronic illnesses such as fibromyalgia, CFS, lupus, and various autoimmune diseases, as well as psychological disorders such as agoraphobia, social anxiety, ADHD, depression, sensory processing disorder, among many others.

Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real?

Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy.

Most people believe it is only by constraint they can get any good out of themselves, and so they live in a state of psychological distortion. It is his own self that each of them is most afraid of resembling. Each of them sets up a pattern and imitates it; he doesn't even choose the pattern he imitates: he accepts a pattern that has been chosen for him. And yet I verily believe there are other things to be read in man. But people don't dare to - they don't dare to turn the page. Laws of imitation! Laws of fear, I call them. The fear of finding oneself alone - that is what they suffer from - and so they don't find themselves at all. I detest such moral agoraphobia - the most odious cowardice I call it. Why, one always has to be alone to invent anything - but they don't want to invent anything. The part in each of us that we feel is different from other people is just the part that is rare, the part that makes our special value - and that is the very thing people try to suppress. They go on imitating. And yet they think they love life.

Being stress and anxiety free is a human preset, I just show you how to 'flick the switch' to off. Permanent stress and anxiety recovery is possible quickly and simply despite what many are told.

I know nobody ever got over being afraid of the dark by never turning off the lights.

For me, boviscopophobia (=the morbid fear of being seen as bovine) is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port.

I was trapped. The day would be hell. I would suffer. I felt I might not survive. I needed a dark, quiet room, my videos, my bed, my pills. I hadn't been this far from home in many months. I was frightened.

As a doctor, I say that the sufferer seeks an environment she can control. Such is the clinical take. As a sufferer (and that is the word), I say that agoraphobia hasn’t ravaged my life so much as become it.

When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn’t have that reaction at all. It was what I sensed in Lovecraft’s works and what I learned about his myth as the “recluse of Providence” that made me think, “That’s for me!” I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small press magazines. I’m not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to aspire to. I don’t know what would have become of me if I hadn’t discovered Lovecraft.

I have tried to find ways to enjoy the ambiguities that fungi present, but it's not always easy to be comfortable in the space created by open questions. Agoraphobia can set in. It's tempting to hide in small rooms built from quick answers. I have done my best to hold back. page 14

panic disorder with agoraphobia (DSM-V code 300.22): the condition, as Hippocrates described it, “usually attacks abroad, if a person is travelling a lonely road somewhere, and fear seizes him.

...a totally dried noose for one is to another an integrated text adept at the cards that ruin whimsy...

I’m in a caregiver's relationship with my body, a perpetual internal gauging of wellness. My spine is Hogarth’s thermometer. I ascend and descend its rungs a hundred times a day, reading the mercury level. The same dis-ease speaks many languages. If you block one mouth, another will speak. The symptoms represent differently, and as I get older, my translation changes. The prescription changes. Must be vigilant. Must be my best nurse.

Sanitized, cleaned, my house was a mausoleum and the ghost it housed was me.

You are a living, breathing vision board and can change it daily with your thoughts to create the life you desire.

With agoraphobia you feel safe only when you are in certain environments. Your anxiety increases every time your ’safe place’ is unavailable, blocked, or becomes more distant.

The Twelve Most Common Phobias   1. Arachnophobia: the fear of spiders   2. Ophidiophobia: the fear of snakes   3. Acrophobia: the fear of heights   4. Agoraphobia: the fear of open or crowded spaces   5. Cynophobia: the fear of dogs   6. Astraphobia: the fear of thunder or lightning   7. Claustrophobia: the fear of small spaces like elevators, cramped rooms, and other enclosed places   8. Mysophobia: the fear of germs   9. Aerophobia: the fear of flying 10. Trypophobia: the fear of holes 11. Carcinophobia: the fear of cancer 12. Thanatophobia: the fear of death

As a doctor, I say that the sufferer seeks an environment she can control. Such is the clinical take. As a sufferer (and that is the word), I say that agoraphobia hasn’t ravaged my life so much as become

A realistic fear, like the fear of death, cannot be tranquilized away by its psychodynamic interpretation; on the other hand, a neurotic fear, such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by philosophical understanding.

I like it that way. I suffer from agoraphobia and xenophobia. "I have to be drugged to be put on a spaceship because I can't take all that empty space, even if I'm protected from it by a steel shell." A look of revulsion came over his face. "And I can't stand aliens!

Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you let me know how that works for you. Bacause I'm gessing it'll never be enough.

When long-term convicts were first released they often experienced a form of agoraphobia—a fear of open spaces. The prison counselors had a special name for this type of agoraphobia when they attributed it to convicts—the fear of life. Freedom gave a man choices and choices could be terrifying. Every choice was a potential failure.

After all, the larger the space you find yourself alone in, the more isolated you feel. And being aware of how lonely you are (dry laugh) can make anywhere feel more empty.

Something similar often happens to people who develop an anxiety disorder, such as agoraphobia. People with agoraphobia can become so overwhelmed with fear that they will no longer leave their homes. Agoraphobia is the consequence of a positive feedback loop. The first event that precipitates the disorder is often a panic attack. The sufferer is typically a middle-aged woman who has been too dependent on other people. Perhaps she went immediately from over-reliance on her father to a relationship with an older and comparatively dominant boyfriend or husband, with little or no break for independent existence. In the weeks leading up to the emergence of her agoraphobia, such a woman typically experiences something unexpected and anomalous.

And if, indeed, there is nothing beyond the corner? Who can affirm if beyond so-called ‘reality’ anything exists at all? Beyond a reality that I have probably created? As long as I’m steeped in this reality up to my neck, as long as it is sufficient for me—everything is tolerable. But what would happen if I wanted one day to lean out of my safe environment and glance beyond its borders?

An evolutionary perspective also contributes to explain the higher female prevalence of panic disorder and agoraphobia. On average, women are more physically vulnerable than men and less able to defend themselves against attacks. Accordingly, it is adaptive for them to be more sensitive to potential cues of vulnerability and entrapment, and display a lower threshold for the activation of escape behaviors.

Unfettered spaces scare me. I’m not used to scenes that aren’t in a frame. Looking at a picture inside a border always calms me down, whether it’s an ultravista or the real thing. It’s probably from all the TV.

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him—the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse.

on the other hand, a neurotic fear, such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by philosophical understanding. However, logotherapy has developed a special technique to handle such cases, too. To understand what is going on whenever this technique is used, we take as a starting point a condition which is frequently observed in neurotic individuals, namely, anticipatory anxiety. It is characteristic of this fear that it produces precisely that of which the patient is afraid. An individual, for example, who is afraid of blushing when he enters a large room and faces many

The agoraphobic patient imposes a restriction on his ego so as to escape a certain instinctual danger—namely, the danger of giving way to his erotic desires. [...] The symptomatology of agoraphobia is complicated by the fact that the ego does not confine itself to making a renunciation. In order to rob the situation of danger it does more: it usually effects a temporal regression1 to infancy (in extreme cases, to a time when the subject was in his mother's womb and protected against the dangers which threaten him in the present). Such a regression now becomes a condition whose fulfilment exempts the ego from making its renunciation.

Another fact to be borne in mind in connection with criminals is that if we increase the punishments, so far from frightening the individual criminal, we merely help to increase his belief that he is a hero. We must not forget that the criminal lives in a self-centered world, a world in which one will never find true courage, self-confidence, communal sense, or understanding of common values. It is not possible for such persons to join a society. Neurotics seldom start a club, and it is an impossible feat for persons suffering from agoraphobia or for insane persons. Problem children or persons who commit suicide never make friends, a fact for which the reason is never given. There is a reason, however: they never make friends because their early life took a self-centered direction. Their prototypes were oriented towards false goals and followed lines of direction on the useless side of life.

The appropriation of terms from psychology to discredit political opponents is part of the modern therapeutic culture that the sociologist Christopher Lasch criticized. Along with the concept of the authoritarian personality, the term “-phobe” for political opponents has been added to the arsenal of obloquy deployed by technocratic neoliberals against those who disagree with them. The coinage of the term “homophobia” by the psychologist George Weinberg in the 1970s has been followed by a proliferation of pseudoclinical terms in which those who hold viewpoints at variance with the left-libertarian social consensus of the transatlantic ruling class are understood to suffer from “phobias” of various kinds similar to the psychological disorders of agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), ornithophobia (fear of birds), and pentheraphobia (fear of one’s mother-in-law). The most famous use of this rhetorical strategy can be found in then-candidate Hillary Clinton’s leaked confidential remarks to an audience of donors at a fund-raiser in New York in 2016: “You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? They’re racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.” A disturbed young man who is driven by internal compulsions to harass and assault gay men is obviously different from a learned Orthodox Jewish rabbi who is kind to lesbians and gay men as individuals but opposes homosexuality, along with adultery, premarital sex, and masturbation, on theological grounds—but both are "homophobes.” A racist who opposes large-scale immigration because of its threat to the supposed ethnic purity of the national majority is obviously different from a non-racist trade unionist who thinks that immigrant numbers should be reduced to create tighter labor markets to the benefit of workers—but both are “xenophobes.” A Christian fundamentalist who believes that Muslims are infidels who will go to hell is obviously different from an atheist who believes that all religion is false—but both are “Islamophobes.” This blurring of important distinctions is not an accident. The purpose of describing political adversaries as “-phobes” is to medicalize politics and treat differing viewpoints as evidence of mental and emotional disorders. In the latter years of the Soviet Union, political dissidents were often diagnosed with “sluggish schizophrenia” and then confined to psychiatric hospitals and drugged. According to the regime, anyone who criticized communism literally had to be insane. If those in today’s West who oppose the dominant consensus of technocratic neoliberalism are in fact emotionally and mentally disturbed, to the point that their maladjustment makes it unsafe to allow them to vote, then to be consistent, neoliberals should support the involuntary confinement, hospitalization, and medication of Trump voters and Brexit voters and other populist voters for their own good, as well as the good of society.

A phobia is an excessive or unreasonable fear of an object, situation or place. Phobias are quite common and often take root in childhood for no apparent reason. Other times they spring from traumatic events or develop from an attempt to make sense of unexpected and intense feelings of anxiety or panic. Simple phobias are fears of specific things such as insects, infections, or even flying. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in places where one feels trapped or unable to get help, such as in crowds, on a bus or in a car, or standing in a line. It is basically an anxiety that ignites from being in places or situations from which escape might be difficult (or embarrassing). A social phobia is a marked fear of social or performance situations. When the phobic person actually encounters, or even anticipates, being in the presence of the feared object or situation, immediate anxiety can be triggered. The physical symptoms of anxiety may include shortness of breath, sweating, a racing heart, chest or abdominal discomfort, trembling, and similar reactions. The emotional component involves an intense fear and may include feelings of losing control, embarrassing oneself, or passing out. Most people who experience phobias try to escape or avoid the feared situation wherever possible. This may be fairly easy if the feared object is rarely encountered (such as snakes) and avoidance will not greatly restrict the person’s life. At other times, avoiding the feared situation (in the case of agoraphobia, social phobia) is not easily done. After all, we live in a world filled with people and places. Having a fear of such things can limit anyone’s life significantly, and trying to escape or avoid a feared object or situation because of feelings of fear about that object or situation can escalate and make the feelings of dread and terror even more pronounced. In some situations of phobias, the person may have specific thoughts that contribute some threat to the feared situation. This is particularly true for social phobia, in which there is often a fear of being negatively evaluated by others, and for agoraphobia, in which there may be a fear of passing out or dying with no one around to help, and of having a panic attack where one fears making a fool of oneself in the presence of other people. Upon recognizing their problem for what it is, men should take heart in knowing that eighty percent of people who seek help can experience improvement of symptoms or, in male-speak, the illness can be “fixed.

Agoraphobia

The people on the agoraphobia board had been right when they’d claimed that the fear of panic is what really hurts you. If you can just manage to ride it out, you will find yourself on the other side.

Agoraphobia is about being afraid of fear itself in a way Franklin Roosevelt probably never comprehended. It’s the all-consuming dread of having a full-fledged panic attack in any location where there’s no escape route, no shelter, no protection. For someone with this preoccupation, the very logical, rational thing to do is to stay in the sanctuary where he knows he can survive, without the risk of public embarrassment, should fear catch him off guard. Our

They do that for offworlders. Helps with the agoraphobia.

Survivors have trouble communicating and may experience social anxiety and agoraphobia, the fear of open space and crowded places. The feeling of isolation stemming from the days of a relationship persists and people who dealt with a narcissist feel too vulnerable to expose themselves to the outer world, which is often followed by a state of paranoia and beliefs that people are evil and want to cause us harm. It is like a constant state of fight or flight.

Look at almost any form of chronic psychological distress and dysfunction: addiction, agoraphobia, anorexia, anxious avoidance, bulimia, depression, obesity, paranoia, obsession, compulsion, and even schizophrenia. All can be viewed as costly and painful solutions. They tend to be short-term solutions to problems of pain and meaning. The solution becomes a pattern – a well entrenched pattern – and immediate benefits are offset by long-range costs.

Agoraphobia was now a survival trait.

Developing agoraphobia is a fairly common side effect of coming off benzodiazepines – only one of a plethora of distressing psychological symptoms which may be brought on by withdrawal, as I was soon to see for myself.

He supposed he’d been a brave man, once. He’d seen things, survived things that most people didn’t even know could happen. Perhaps that was part of the cause of his agoraphobia: a gradual erosion of his psychological defences, a sort of inbuilt limit to the amount of revulsion and horror a person could suppress.

also suffer from a number of specific fears or phobias. To name a few: enclosed spaces (claustrophobia); heights (acrophobia); fainting (asthenophobia); being trapped far from home (a species of agoraphobia); germs (bacillophobia); cheese (turophobia); speaking in public (a subcategory of social phobia); flying (aerophobia); vomiting (emetophobia); and, naturally, vomiting on airplanes (aeronausiphobia).

People often use the word 'despite' in the context of mental illness. So-and-so did such-and-such despite having depression/anxiety/OCD/agoraphobia/whatever. But sometimes that 'despite' should be a 'because'. For instance, I write because of depression. I was not a writer before. The intensity needed - to explore things with relentless curiosity and energy - simply wasn't there.

The experience of agoraphobia can range from mild to severe restriction in lifestyle, and a severe case may result in the individual’s being completely housebound or unable to leave home unaccompanied. Avoided activities may include driving (locally or long distance); traveling over bridges; going to grocery stores, malls, theaters, churches, or temples; being in crowds; going to restaurants; using public transportation; going to the barber or hairdresser; or being in enclosed or being in wide-open spaces. It is not uncommon for patients with agoraphobia to define a ’safe zone’ around their homes, and to be unable to venture outside this radius.

Agoraphobia set in. That’s ridiculous, she thought, then thought better of it. Even paranoids have real enemies.

48. There is a fear for nearly everything. Sure, there is acrophobia (fear of high places), agoraphobia (fear of open spaces), claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces), as well as homophobia and xenophobia (both essentially meaning “being a bad person”, rather than some actual fear). However, did you know that George Washington suffered from taphephobia (fear of being buried alive)? Richard Nixon, on the other hand, had nosocomephobia (he was afraid of hospitals), while Napoleon Bonaparte suffered from ailurophobia (irrational fear of cats). Comedian Woody Allen might be the most peculiar of all – he suffers from panophobia, which is fear of virtually everything. Heights, bright colors, insects, elevators, closed spaces… you name it, mr. Allen is afraid of it – or at least was at one time. He is under psychoanalysis since 1970s. And since we're talking about psychoanalysis, none other than Sigmund Freud was supposedly afraid of ferns.

Unless it’s wanted and real anxiety because of the real physical danger you’re in, you’re as safe wherever you are at the moment the anxiety strikes as you would be in your own home. Plus, as I’ve noticed during the years I had actual agoraphobia, the anxiety will simply find you wherever you try to hide anyway. You cannot outrun it.

treatment, phobic avoidance worsens and becomes Agoraphobia.

In Separation (1973a), Bowlby puts forward a theory of agoraphobia based on the notion of anxious attachment. He sees agoraphobia, like school phobia, as an example of separation anxiety. He quotes evidence of the increased incidence of family discord in the childhoods of agoraphobics compared with controls, and suggests three possible patterns of interaction underlying the illness: role reversal between child and parent, so that the potential agoraphobic is recruited to alleviate parental separation anxiety; fears in the patient that something dreadful may happen to her mother while they are separated (often encouraged by parental threats of suicide or abandonment); and fear that something dreadful might happen to herself when away from parental protection.

If I had even the slightest idea of how this day would turn out, that I'd be ending up all roughed up and dead, totally, stupidly lifeless, I probably wouldn't be here right now. I say probably, because to be honest, is not like it's a party all day long. Life, I mean. In public places, I think that's when my anxiety and the worst part of my brain take over. Agoraphobia, a doctor told me. The fear of open spaces. I said no, that's not right. Nomophobia, the doctor said. The fear of being without a cellphone. Really? I asked him, is that even a thing? General panic disorder, and he started to write a prescription. That was the last time I went to visit a doc. You see, it's not me.

People are always surprised and disturbed by Emily Dickinson's 'reclusive' lifestyle and come up with all sorts of theories to explain her staying in her room, doing her gardening at night, and vanishing upstairs whenever visitors came to call: depression, a skin condition that wouldn't let her out in the sun, lupus, a love affair that ended badly and that she never got over, agoraphobia, epilepsy, etc. I, however, find her behavior completely understandable. She lived in Amherst, Massachusetts, for God's sake.

I experienced a deep depression, grappling with panic attacks and the onset of agoraphobia. In this phase of my condition, an indelible aspect was how my dearly held home of three years assumed a profoundly eerie character whenever my morale hit its lowest. The diminishing evening light, once a herald of autumn's charm, now enveloped me in a stifling darkness. It puzzled me how a place so filled with recollections of laughter, capability, and sighs could suddenly feel so unwelcoming and ominous. Though I wasn't alone in a physical sense, the isolation was palpable.

Call it the openness aversion. Cultural agoraphobia. We are systematically likely to undervalue the importance, viability, and productive power of open systems, open networks, and nonproprietary production.