What is Agoraphobia? Doctor Explains and Introduces Solutions

We're talking about agoraphobia and social anxiety. And so the first thing I want to start with is just to explain the difference between social anxiety and agoraphobia. Social anxiety. The main thing with social anxiety is that it's a fear that we're going to be perceived negatively. Oftentimes, social anxiety starts around our 20s, late teens, and it's more that we are afraid that someone's going to judge us or think badly about us or there will be some sort of a negative social consequence. An example of this may be you're walking through the grocery store and you're just minding your own business, you're picking up your groceries and you feel like people are looking at you, and you feel like people are judging you. That is an example of social anxiety. Another example of social anxiety may be if you go to an event where there's people there that you may or may not know, and you're afraid of what they're going to think of you, what they're going to think of, how you look, what you say, what you're doing, your job, all of those things that can be an example of social anxiety. Social anxiety's main thing is the worry that people are going to perceive you negatively. And so agoraphobia, on the other hand, is more about getting trapped in a situation where you feel like you can't escape. And so oftentimes, people mistake agoraphobia for claustrophobia. They sound similar, right? They have the phobia on the end. But agoraphobia is more when we are afraid of getting trapped in a situation where we can't escape and we can't be taken care of or take care of ourselves. And interestingly, agoraphobia is. Can happen in really small, crowded places, or it could actually happen in a really big environment with tons of open space. So an example of agoraphobia, it may be if you get in a car and you're driving cross country and there's wide open spaces and you don't see anybody, and you may experience fear that something's going to happen to you and you may need support or an emergency vehicle, and you don't know how to get there. You don't know how to get into a place of safety. So that's an example of agoraphobia. Another example of agoraphobia is if you go to, like, a sporting event or a concert venue and there's crowds of people everywhere and you're looking around and you can't see an easy route for escape. So that's an example of agoraphobia. So both agoraphobia and social anxiety can be really distressing, and they can involve people, but as you see, they're just a little bit different. And so today I want to really focus more on what agoraphobia is like and what we can do about it and what causes agoraphobia. Because it's really frustrating, right? When you want to go places, you want to do things, but then you have all sorts of anxiety about doing that, about getting out and living your life. So what can cause agoraphobia? So there's a few causes that we want to pay attention to, and the knowing the cause is important because then it can help us create solutions that are actually treating the cause. While CBT and medications are the mainstays for agoraphobia, there is a lot more that we can do that works really well. And I want to start by telling you a story. I have a story of a client of mine that I used to work with years and years ago. She actually lived in the uk and she had really intense agoraphobia. And so she would have to get in her car and she'd have to drive to her school in London, and every single morning she would wake up with a ton of anxiety. And she was so afraid of getting caught in traffic and then not being able to get off of the highway and have a panic attack in privacy or get to emergency vehicles or get to safety. So she had a lot of anxiety. And so we were doing work and we were talking about the anxiety. And the biggest thing for her is that she knew that logically there wasn't a reason to be afraid, but she still felt that way. Have you ever felt that way before? Where logically, it's super frustrating for you because you know that there's no reason to be scared, that you can get away or that you are safe or that nothing is going to happen, but you still have those feelings of anxiety or stress. This can happen in agoraphobia. And so this client, she had that anxiety every single time before she was about to get in the car. And so you are not alone if you feel this way. And. And her story has a super happy ending. So the work that we ended up doing is we did the cognitive behavioral pieces. We talked about the logic, we talked about the safety, we talked about a plan. She was able to be really intentional, to create an environment in a situation where she knew she was safe. But then there was still that hangover, that physical Anxiety that didn't care about logic. And so then we wanted to look at her biological cast of characters. And, and so we found that she was already generally more amplified. She was more heightened on the stress scale. She was a student, right? And so she was taking a ton of classes. She was doing a lot of overnights, doing homework and writing papers and driving to and fro. So her elevation of stress was already more amplified. And so what that causes biologically is more of a fight flight freeze response. So if she gets a little bit more stressed out, like if she sees a traffic jam ahead, or if she has to go into like a crowded room in her school, that already elevated response just blows the top, and then she has a panic attack. Right? So if you've been there, you know that that's incredibly frustrating. And the impulse is to either simply just not go to the places you want to go where you might feel anxious, or it's to run away when you feel anxious. So we want to work on the biological cast of characters. We want to figure out what's happening with your nervous system so we can bring it down overall, bring down that nervous system response. And then we want to actually deal with the experience in the moment. So we want to deal with overall, what is your nervous system activation and then what do we do in the moment. So first of all, overall nervous system activation, these are your biological characters. This is your nervous system. Is it more in that fight flight free freeze, or do you feel generally relaxed and then you get activated? So you want to put into place what I call the force field strategies. And I have a blog about force field strategies. We talk about it quite a lot in the anxiety breakthrough program. These are things that you do every single day that helps your nervous system feel calm on command. And so those things would be eating nutritious food, using your body for exercise in healthy ways. It would be strong stretching, it would be meditation, it would be yoga. It would be limiting caffeine and sugar and alcohol. It would be having time to decompress at the end of every day, getting sleep, like all sorts of different things. So what we want to do is we want to use the force field strategies to help bring down your nervous system. And I have hundreds of hours of content on that, which you can find by clicking in the link in the bio. There's a link, and it's all our free resources where you can just learn all about that. But we want to make sure that before you go into that situation where agoraphobia may pop up is we want to get your nervous system dialed down. We want to help reduce your overall overwhelm and stress. And so the next thing is, what do we do in the moment? So let's say that you're on the highway and a traffic jam is coming, or you're in a really crowded place and you feel like you can't get out, the impulse is to run. So your brain, when we think of neuroscience, your brain has been wired for days and days and days on how to respond to certain events. And so if in the past, agoraphobia has kicked in and you've run away and you've escaped and you've gotten out of that situation, that's the way that your brain is patterning. But your objective in healing agoraphobia, which you can do, is to re pattern and rewire that brain. And so I think you know where I'm going with this, and I want to make sure that you know is that your anxiety cannot hurt you. Anxiety isn't dangerous. I know it feels really dangerous. That's because we're biologically wired to believe anxiety is dangerous. But when you have agoraphobia, your anxiety is going to start telling you that you're in danger and you have to get away. And one of the most powerful things that you can do is a pattern interrupt. And in that moment. So if you can resist the urge to run away and deal with the nervous system amplification in the moment. And so how do you do that? One of my favorite ways is to use the panic pack. If you haven't been on our page before and you haven't heard of the panic pack, I'm so excited that you're hearing about it. Now, the panic pack is something that I teach you, that you can make, that you can carry with you. So if you're going to go on a car ride or if you're going to go somewhere crowded, if you. You can hook up your little panic pack, I made mine in a really glittery fanny pack. You can put it in a little purse or a shoulder satchel, and you carry this with you. I also made you a guided meditation that you can listen to that walks you through using the panic pack. And I think it's really great. And all of these resources are free. So in the moment, we want to use the panic pack. And so the panic pack has essential oils that stimulate the brain stem that can make us feel. Feel really physically panicked and anxiety. We also have a little straw for helping with breathing because we know that the breath can Target your autonomic nervous system and help pull you out of the fight, flight, freeze. We also have cold chemical packs. And so you can break the pack and put cold on your face. And what that does is it evokes what's called a dive response, which brings you out of fight, flight freeze. And so what we basically want to do is we want to help you deal with the anxiety in those moment because the way that you wire it is the way your nervous system is going to fire it. So we're talking about the differences between social anxiety and agoraphobia. We talked about how social anxiety is really you being anxious or me being anxious about being negatively perceived about others. Agoraphobia, on the other hand, really centrals around feeling more like trapped, unable to get out, that powerless. And that can happen in big groups of people. So you've probably heard about people going to concert venues or sporting events and feeling really trapped and scared and they don't want to go out in public. So the next thing that we talked about is I shared with you a story of one of my clients who was able to be free from agoraphobia. And the two main things that she did is she dealt with her nervous system amplification before going out to these events so that her threshold was better, so that it wasn't as amplified when she got nervous, and to deal with the anxiety, the agoraphobia, the panic in the moment. And so we're talking about using force field strategies to bring down your nervous system to protect you. I have free resources on that. And then we talked about using a panic pack in the moment because if we cannot give into the anxiety, and I know it's so hard, my loves, I've had anxiety myself. I know what I'm asking you is really hard, but you can do it. And so the panic pack is a really great way to do that. And of course, some people use medications like Xanax or they use supplements like kava Kava. And if we can actually work with the nervous system and help the nervous system re equilibriate in those moments when it tends to get activated, then that will not happen every single time in the future and it will get better and better and better. We have tons of free content on the website and we've learned about a few things today. Number one is learning about force field strategies. Number two is learning about the panic pack. These resources are totally free. You can find them by clicking on the link in the bio and just start reading through all of our amazing stuff. I would also love it if you wanted to get to know us better and get in our world. Love this video. Like this video? Share this video if this has been helpful for you. If you and check out our group. I have an anxiety freedom group and so I get into other anxiety groups to support people and they're asking all these great questions and so we take those questions and I put them in anxiety group and I give you answers and they're totally free. So if you need support, we're in there all the time. It's a Facebook group and that link is also in the bio. So just go up here, click the little link in the bio, you can join our Facebook group and then of course, leave me a comment, leave me a message. And we are so happy to support you in as many ways as possible. We did this topic on agoraphobia and social anxiety at the request of one of our anxiety warriors. And so if there are topics that would be interesting to you, then just let us know and we'll definitely make sure to add them to the docket. So the summary is this is all about agoraphobia and social anxiety. You can get better. Four Psalm Strategies Panic pack. We have information for you, so definitely check them out. This has been. Dr. Nicole, you can learn more about the awesome stuff that we're doing. We have an anxiety Breakthrough program course that teaches about all of my tips and tricks. Like literally. You guys, this is amazing. And so if you haven't seen it, check it out. And I am here on Instagram Live every single Wednesday. I'm in the Facebook all the time. And so we would love to join you in your anxiety freedom journey. All right, thank you so much for being here for your support and for your love and I honor you and I will see you next time. Bye.