Read an Excerpt
Un-Agoraphobic
Overcome Anxiety, Panic Attacks, and Agoraphobia for Good A Step-by-Step Plan
By Hal Mathew Conari Press
Copyright © 2014 Hal Mathew
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60925-965-5
CHAPTER 1
GET DOWN TO BUSINESS
A WORKDAY PLAN
To make progress, you need a plan. In order to begin the day-to-day rigors of putting a plan into action, it helps to set some goals. There is so much to gain. To fully appreciate what's at stake here, it might help to take a moment and assess your present situation, and in particular what you have lost.
Living with continual fear and avoidance has taken a toll on your operating system, and it has no doubt left you bankrupt (or nearly so) in many aspects of your life. You may have missed jobs, money, adventures, romances, but most devastating to lose is access to some of the most fulfilling qualities in life: self-confidence and self-respect, courage, strength, insight, balanced mental health, and wisdom.
You have so much to regain:
• Self-confidence. When you fail repeatedly to accomplish even seemingly little things, your confidence in your ability to succeed begins to disappear. Rebuild self-confidence by saying affirmations, writing positive statements in your journal, developing your Recovery Program, and teaching yourself skills. And don't forget the adage "Walk like you have money." If you can fool others into thinking you are confident, perhaps you can even convince yourself, and then you will own it.
• Self-respect/self-esteem. You are basically a good person, and you like to be truthful, but you have had to make up stories, practice deceit, and sometimes lie outright because of the restrictions your agoraphobia places on you. Seeing disappointed looks from friends, family members, a partner, a boss, and coworkers when you can't participate with them can make you feel low and unworthy. You have probably lost friends because they think you no longer like them. Why else, they wonder, would you avoid being with them so often with lame-sounding excuses? In addition, agoraphobia can use up all your money, and being broke is humiliating. Finally, you feel embarrassed to have such a ridiculous condition in the first place. Regain self-respect through openness exercises, making amends by telling your story, and working hard on your Recovery Program. Practice affirmations and self-love daily. Oh, you beautiful you.
• Courage. I won't kid you—it is going to take a tremendous amount of courage for you to take your Very Big Trip. Panic attacks have scared you so many times that you have become fearful of making yourself vulnerable again. It will be easier for you to be courageous if you feel like you can win. What you are working on in this program is developing an attitude of winning, a knowing feeling. Just saying the word attitude gives me one. Try working the word into a mantra. Renew your courage by following through on activities outlined later in this chapter. Include visualization (see chapter 4, "Change Your Own Mind") in your daily routines and you will continue to gain exciting new insights from suggested readings and your own intuitive meanderings.
• Strength. You will need spiritual and physical strength to totally overcome excess anxiety. Working hard every day on your Recovery Program will build emotional and spiritual strength and endurance. Meditation can give you a quiet invulnerability. Daily exercises and good nutrition will rebuild your physical core.
• Insight. At one time, you may have been good at knowing yourself and knowing what to do to make yourself feel better. Repeated panic attacks and agoraphobia change the rules, however. Now nothing you try seems to help because you quite literally are not yourself. Your daily readings, journaling, and visualizations will help you change some of your thought patterns so you can become once again a person who does not experience panic attacks or anxiety. Everyone but your adrenaline switch operator knows that a panic attack is appropriate only for something as dangerous as the original sabertoothed tiger that started this whole mess in the first place. Your visualization and messaging exercises are drifting into your subconscious so that, along with your research, you will end up with the insight necessary to solve the problem. Insight is not mystical or inborn; it is a skill you can develop through steady study and work—I know because that's how I developed it.
• Mental health. You not only are cursed with panic disorder and agoraphobia, which you will cure through the work you are doing, but you likely also suffer from depression. Most therapists would describe the depression that agoraphobic people experience as situational, meaning you are depressed because of your condition. Who wouldn't be? But take heart and remember, panic disorder with agoraphobia is one of the few major mental illnesses that can be completely cured. If you have developed attendant phobias like close places and heights, those will mostly disappear as well when you recover. Once you are over it and are leading a healthy life, you are over it. Mental health is yours to regain.
• Wisdom. I believe it is true that people who live through significant trauma, which you are doing, come out of the experience with a wisdom beyond their years. It may seem odd to even think this now, but you will benefit from this experience. There, I said it. You probably don't consider yourself wise at this point, because if you were, you would be able to think your way out of agoraphobia. Right? You are gaining wisdom, though, just by dealing every day with your condition. The accumulated knowledge that comes with day-to-day survival and with learning how to cope with and overcome agoraphobia is making you a very wise person; you won't fully realize that until some time after you recover. You are not yet wise enough to overcome your condition, but you will become wise by reading and working on your Recovery Program and developing the basic inner strength that will lead you to make the right decisions and follow the right course. Your wisdom will allow you to be panic-free the rest of your life.
Going to Work—Your New Job
Research shows that we can change our brains. Neural pathways are constructed through regular and vigorous firing of synapses, and new pathways can supplant old ones. Repetitive processes will let the brain know you're going to be doing a lot of work on this highway to freedom; there will be a lot of traffic on a daily basis. To make that possible, you need to establish an "office space" or a "recovery room," a place devoted to this work where you can easily begin your tasks each day.
This space will become a sanctuary for you—a safe place you look forward to being in. Go out of your way to make it feel inviting and comfortable, like a den. It might be just part of a room, but make it feel like a separate space. Outfit it with a table or desk with a table lamp for journal writing and various projects as you choose them. Procure a comfortable chair, preferably one with arms for your exercises, which we'll go over soon. Ideally, you will have a computer and television in this area. If you don't have Internet access, you'll have to rely on the library, a café, or a friend's place for your research. You can do everything else here in your office/recovery room.
I have broken up a typical workday span into hourly blocks as a suggested guide for how you might structure a full day, but you obviously have to do what you can with the life you have. You may only have time to devote a half hour to each area of recovery activity, but do as much as you can in each area each day. This is a job—the-most-important-job-you've-ever-had job. Seriously, brothers and sisters, this is the start of something very big.
Hour One—Return of the Endorphins
Agoraphobes are the tightrope walkers in this circus we call life. Yours is a grim task way up there, walking that fine line, fearing you will lose your balance and fall into the abyss if you don't employ all your defenses all of the time. You are dead serious in your day-to-day activities; there is no place for mirth or levity when you are on the high wire trying to keep your pole level. You, my friend, are in a chronic un-endorphined state and must change your ways posthaste. But can a person go from playing such a serious role to becoming a clown? You can and you must, for at least an hour a day.
You will also benefit by learning to be funny if you aren't already. It's probably hard to see much humor from your vantage point, but think of your behavior from an alien's point of view. Imagine an alien has been secretly studying human brain activity and behavior, and finally comes to you. "What the ... ?" the alien might wonder. "What is this weird person up to? And why?" Track your thoughts and movements from the point of view of an alien scientist on a mission, and you might be pretty funny.
The first hour of each new day should be fun, shouldn't it? If you were healthy, you'd be excited most days on waking up because of projects you have going as well as the banquet of opportunities and possibilities that is set before you. Instead, you often wake up with a sense of dread that can easily lead to panic. You wake up not wanting another day, wishing this new day hadn't arrived because you'll have no more control over it than the days before. You get up every morning feeling like you will be ruled by the strong-arm tactics of anxiety all day long.
Luckily, you now have the beginning of a plan that structures the day and will soon put these horrible experiences behind you. You deserve and need a breakfast of laughs and merriment, and YouTube is your kitchen. Comedy is endorphin therapy. Explore old and new comics in their stand-up routines. Check out funny and cute babies and kittens and puppies, watch movies or old TV shows you know will be funny. There are endless hours of endorphin-producing materials online and in the video section of the library, so have a ball. For this first hour of each day, before breakfast, you are required to laugh out loud if it kills you.
There is so much brain science on the health benefits of laughter and merriment, one wonders why we aren't as a society devoting more time to making life hilarious: such as having fun at work. What would be wrong with that? If you'd like to learn more about mental health and positive psychology, go to the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor website (www.aath.org) where there is a list of nearly one hundred books and articles on the subject.
Hour Two—Pass It Along
This second hour of your day is about finding the ways and means to pass on some of the endorphin-producing joy you've discovered. Start by compiling a list of people who might benefit from a regular cheery call or visit. Your local senior citizen center or nursing home probably employs social workers who can show you how to help connect with a few "shut-ins" who would love someone to chat with for a few minutes every once in a while. A church may also help you contact some people. Get a list of inspirational quotes, jokes, stories, and other such day brighteners that you can share with an elderly or handicapped person. Doing these phone calls will help you get out of your own head and feel like you are contributing to someone's well-being, which you will be. If you're not able to do this kind of work right away, prepare for it now by organizing and gathering what you'll need, and then add it to your routine as soon as possible. You can start by making phone calls until you feel ready to travel and volunteer or do other kinds of outreach. This will benefit you as much as it will others.
Once your Recovery Program is well underway and you get some good ideas for sharing joy in this way, you can start offering helpful hints to folks on agoraphobia online forums. We all need helpful suggestions, so if you come up with something, share it. You could make someone's day. Start sharing yourself instead of hiding yourself.
Hour Three—AgoraGraduate School
You started your day with recess and outreach, so let's hope you are in a good to great mood to begin your classroom studies. This hour of your day will be devoted to a school of your own making—questions, research, reading, listening, and more questions. Spend this time each day exploring aspects of agoraphobia and panic disorder that are new to you. Your research could range from reading a study or discussions online to poring over obscure articles in medical journals. There are many free online university classes. You'll probably find free lectures in the realm of brain science at most of the big universities that have medical schools (Harvard, Stanford, etc.).
Also spend part of this class period reading entries in at least one agoraphobia support forum. Our www.unagoraphobic.com website and newsletter will have a forum for you and give you a place to ask questions as well as offer support. The sites www.MDjunction.com, www.supportgroups.com, and patient.co.uk have divisions for agoraphobics. Go to book sites and see what has been published, taking the time to browse through whatever pages are available online before you buy. You might be inspired to take a trip to the bookstore or library for more material. One of my favorite books on the subject of panic disorder and agoraphobia, and a good place to start, is Life Unlocked by Dr. Srinivasan Pillay.
As soon as you learn about the support sites, create projects to do during this time. You can create a rough schedule or even a more detailed curriculum to plan the days and weeks ahead. I recommend, for example, you spend one or two sessions studying each of the therapies recommended for agoraphobia in chapter 7, "Call in the Pros: Therapeutic and Legal Help." In fact, you can extend your online studies during this period to any of the topics brought up in this book, from visualization to nutrition and from spirituality to relationships.
As you explore new resources or topic threads online, jot down a few notes about each so you will know how and where to return. Keep study-like notes from your readings in your journal to make this time period feel as much like studying as you can. Even issue a quiz by challenging yourself to summarize an article or topic by recalling its four main ideas. Your job in AgoraGraduate School is to become expert enough in what is known about agoraphobia and panic disorder to understand what you need to change in your thinking processes. The more you know, the more likely you are to make the connection that frees you. This specific knowledge may also prove helpful in explaining yourself to others as the need arises.
As you gain knowledge of the whys and hows of agoraphobia, you can begin to study the wheres, namely the brain. Type brain science into your search engine and give yourself time to follow your whims. I am not listing any specific sites because there is so much available; I don't want to place limits on you. Learning how the brain functions helps you visualize your present subconscious behaviors and plan how to make necessary changes in thinking behaviors. After your basic course in neuron pathways, type in amygdala and anxiety. This will lead you to mysterious and wonderful websites that range from pure science to the occult.
You remember Indiana Jones? The great professor-explorer character in several adventure movies who stalked dark, scary, mysterious places with his bull-whip? Like him, we must prowl through our jungle of a brain to learn the secret passageway to the decision-making center, the amygdala. If we could just get in there, maybe we could crack the code that reveals how the amygdala decides, with occasional help from the hippocampus, to make one incident alarm worthy and a similar one not. (Now all you need is an ancient map with a big X and a good bullwhip.)
The most important part of this process is to put clear notes in your journal from all your studies. Over time, learn enough about basic brain science so that you could pass a college course. I think you'll find the knowledge adds to the speed with which you'll recover.
Hour Four—Get Physical
Agoraphobics have trouble with breathing so we resist doing exercises that make breathing even more difficult. Add to that being homebound—you may have walked no farther than the mailbox in a long while—and you probably yearn for some kind of exercise that won't take your precious breath away. I recommend starting slowly and getting fit without struggling. Once you begin, the benefits of physical fitness are immediate and ongoing.
All the following are relaxation and strengthening activities that you can mostly do while seated.
Tense and Release
This head-to-toe muscle-relaxation procedure is expanded in chapter 12. Starting with your feet and working up the body, tighten and release your muscles—first feet, then calves, thighs, etc.—breathing in as you tighten and breathing out as you release. Practice this routine on waking up and when you go to bed. I also do a muscle-relaxation routine before starting meditation. For anxious types, learning to meditate can be almost like learning a foreign language, and we need all the help we can get.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Un-Agoraphobic by Hal Mathew. Copyright © 2014 Hal Mathew. Excerpted by permission of Conari Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
