Agoraphobia

by Loren Parks

Agoraphobia is a severely debilitating psychological condition that arises from the subconscious. In other words, one does it to himself, unconsciously. I have long observed that the subconscious just loves to scare the dickens out of its owner, and I have created frightening situations quite easily in some experimental subjects.

If you have agoraphobia, just imagine you are going outside alone and walking down a busy street and see how you feel. You are frightened, right? Why should you feel fright when you're sitting safely inside your home? Your mind brought out the fear because you used your imagination to put you into a scary situation.

We are talking Pavlov, from Psychology 101. You have had one or a series of scary or embarrassing experiences and using your imagination brought the feelings up. Where do the feelings come from? The inner or subconscious mind. You don't reason feeling states. You don't reason yourself to love someone or to be happy because you have lots of money. There are numerous stimuli which tend to cause us to be happy, sad, fearful, nauseated, etc. In the case of agoraphobia the fears simply take over and you give in to the fear and run for safety. All phobias are that way, and agoraphobia is no different. Harder to deal with perhaps, but nevertheless a phobia like fear of spiders, snakes, thunder, airplane rides, and a host of others.

The fear can be overpowering. But it is fixable, at least to a considerable extent with minimal therapeutic intervention provided that certain conditions are met.

1. You have to want to get over it. If there is a payoff of some kind for having the condition, forget about therapy. That payoff may be that you get special attention, that your lover won't leave you, that you get disability payments, and numerous other things depending on your circumstances.

2. You have to be willing to do some testing, fully realizing the fear will come up to some extent. You have to start getting in control of your own mind.

3. You must find a therapist who will do something besides drug you. You will not get out of this condition by reasoning or talking. Your subconscious mind must be reprogrammed, getting out the stuff causing you to be so fearful. The best way is hypnoanalysis. You may have to be off the drug to respond to therapy. By no means am I advising you to get off any prescribed medication. I am not qualified to do that.

4. Realize that it is very unlikely you will get an instantaneous cure, as happens with some phobias properly treated. You will most likely make headway against your problem over a few sessions with a competent therapist. Consider that if you DON'T get to a competent therapist you are destined to be on drugs the rest of your life or be housebound, neither of which is a good option.

What I have to offer you: Three things. First is insight into the cause of your problem, which I've already done. Second is some help with automated therapy that likely addresses some of the sources of your problem thru my automated therapy hotline shown on my home page. And third is personal help which is offered free by telephone. That means I have to talk with you to ferret out possible causes of your problem which you most likely would not recognize as being a possible contributor to your problem. Not only must I help you find them but I need to take the emotion out of those experiences. This latter part is easy. It's finding them that takes the time.

Where the sources may be:

First we must determine what type of fear you have. Is it of dying, being embarrassed, being attacked, getting a disease, being tempted to do something you think you shouldn't, just what is your fear?

For most it is a fear of dying or being injured. Therefore I look for frightening incidents, like scary movies, operations, auto accidents, airplane rides, carnival rides, being attacked by people or animals and whatever else our conversation leads to. I always look at death scenes like funerals, death of animals, accidents witnessed.

What I'm saying here it is too complicated to do by automated therapy other than to get started. To the best of my knowledge, I am the first to do automated therapy via the internet. I started in January of 1996 with call-ins. Prior to that I did therapy by radio and television. Some respond quite well, but if the problem has multiple causes it can only go so far.

So give it some thought, try the streaming audio or the telephone call in. I can send voicemail for specific fears. We just have to try various things. Therapy you do to yourself is, for most including myself, ineffective. You need another person or another voice.

This is a hobby with me. I like to succeed where others fail, and I've done a lot of that. I sure don't win 'em all, but I usually help. If you are living in a very stressful situation or are on a drug, don't expect much.

About the Author

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