3 Things That Might Help Your Agoraphobia

If you haven't seen parts one and two, you can click on the numbers here:

One

Two

In part three, we're going to have a look at three things that you could try changing in your life in order to help your agoraphobia. If you know me then you know why I'm doing this: I'm hitting the ten year mark of being diagnosed with agoraphobia and hypochondria. I wanted to share some of the techniques and tiny things I've been doing in my life apart from taking my medication in order to make my life slightly, slightly, slightly better.

So, here's part three and we're going to have a look at three things that may make your experience slightly better and again, we're going to have a look at why. I'll go through how I discovered this method and what experience I have had with it. Some of it may seem a bit cliché to you and if you suffer from agoraphobia then you'll be thinking 'ugh, I've heard this before...' But I assure you, they are tried and tested methods by me, your friendly neighbourhood agoraphobe. If you are an agoraphobe then go ahead and contact me through the email address in my bio because I'd love to know others who have the same thing I have and we can share our tips directly.

If you know someone who has agoraphobia, it is important I tell you to go somewhere with them. They are not just afraid of going, they are afraid of going alone. Go with them, be with them and make them feel as if they're not being a burden. Maybe go for a walk in the park with them, you could go with them to the supermarket (god bless my mother for always doing that with me!) and you could go to the clothes shops with them and spend some time concentrating on clothing instead of their agoraphobia. Get their mind off being outside.

3 Small Things That Might Help Your Agoraphobia.

1. Sitting up straight

Slouching is possibly one of the strangest things of our age, causing severe back pain in people who are under 30 years' old. But sitting up straight doesn't just do wonders for your posture and back pain. It also does things to your psychological sensors, automatically making you feel a little bit more confident. If you stretch out your back and force yourself to sit up straight, you can feel slightly better in combatting your intrusive thoughts via the tiny amount of coping confidence that sitting up straight can give you.

My doctor told me this once and I automatically sat up straight, having been on medication for a while at this point, I wanted to try absolutely anything that would make my life better. After about five minutes of sitting up straight, I did feel ever so slightly better. I didn't feel sluggish and fatigued, I felt like I could actually cope. And as I've said before, half of the battle is believing that you can cope: and you can.

Coping capability is always a little, tiny, slight bit better when you sit up straight and fix that posture.

2. Stretch out your fingers

If you're at home and you're feeling a bit clenched up inside, maybe you've just come back from an unfamiliar place, maybe you've had to walk through a crowd or maybe you've just had a panic attack an blacked out, waking up some hours later. This trick can help you push your mind into a slight relaxation mode in order to create some amount of coping capability (you'll be hearing that phrase a lot!) and make you believe that you can become relaxed. Now, I know it is very difficult and seems almost impossible to relax (trust me, as someone who has been hospitalised many times for their panic disorder, I know that relaxation is almost impossible most of the time) but there are small things you can do that probably won't make you feel all the better but will do something. And something in this position, is better than nothing.

Stretch out those fingers. Make a fist first, clench it up and then stretch out your fingers as much as you can for about three seconds or so. Do this about three or four times and you'll feel slightly better I can assure you.

3. Close your eyes for five-ten seconds

You've probably heard about yoga breathing exercises and I can assure you that they don't work at all - tried and tested. I just use yoga as a way to stretch out in the morning. But throughout the day, you can't carry your yoga mat with you everywhere. Instead, you can take small cautionary movements in order to lower the amount of pressure in your head.

Fact: a lot of the pressure in your head is caused by lights. Lights from your phone, from the ceiling, a laptop and obviously, television. So, relieving pressure from the head needs darkness, but you can't just randomly switch a light off especially if you're in the room with another person.

So, for five to ten seconds maybe three times a day, shut your eyes. Just close them. No, you don't need to do any breathing exercises, but concentrating on lowering your heart rate may be a good idea. So, getting into a space of darkness for five or ten seconds can ease your mind ever so slightly. It can also let you focus on things that you can do to cope rather than focusing on everything around you. And if you're like me, you can focus on your sensory appreciation. As you know I am partially blind and seriously, focusing on how much I appreciate what sight I have left is one of the things I like to do. Being appreciative and grateful can really increase your mood. Even if it's slightly.

Conclusion

So I hope you've gathered something from this article, and I really hope you're going to at least try some of these tried and tested methods that I know work ever so slightly. Next time, we're going to have a look a little deeper into agoraphobia and address different issues, and I know this one was relatively the same as part one even though part one had longer and more situational pieces. So, goodbye for now and I hope to see you again with your head held that slight bit higher!