22 January 2009
Understand what is Agoraphobia and Why it Happens ?
An anxiety and panic attack caused due to fear of traveling is known as agoraphobia. This fear of travel can be something like fear of traveling by aircraft or it could be fear of traveling to a place which takes few hours from home or it could be simply being unable to just travel outside your home. There are many possibilities for agoraphobia. A person would get a panic attack as and when he tries to cross the limits of what he thinks as a safe and secure boundary.
The easiest way to treat agoraphobia is to cross the limits, which normally cause panic attacks. This is one of the reasons agoraphobia gets worse before a person starts to improve. For example, force a person to travel by air to overcome the fear of air travel. However this is not easy.
To overcome agoraphobia you will have to start with taking small baby steps. Try and plan your steps so that you can overcome the limits slowly. You will have to take the help of family and friends in this process. Your family can support you by providing you the assurance and safety that you require during these difficult times. If you take small steps then you may overcome panic attacks without even feeling the pain much
The exact reasons of panic attacks due to travel (agoraphobia) are not really known. It is believed that people who have motion sickness tend to develop these attacks. Also people who have general fear of traveling are more prone to agoraphobia.
People suffering from social anxiety have fear of being judged and hence they get panic attacks. Fear of crowded market place, grocery store or a place having large gathering of people can cause panic attacks. These situations can also lead to a person developing agoraphobia.
An Agoraphobia panic attack is very frustrating to the person suffering from these attacks. Since these attacks are less rational as compared to the normal panic attacks it becomes difficult to plan a treatment strategy.
However as per research and several other books on panic attacks the key to overcoming panic attacks to understand the patterns and sequence of events and activities that lead to an panic attack and then controlling the events and activities to overcome panic attacks.
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