CBT and graded exposure & challenging myself. It’s exhausting to push your boundaries all the time but it’s easier when broken up into graded steps.
Dr Claire Weekes also helped me.
Progressive Relaxation exercises - 20 minutes once or twice a day of progressive relaxation taught me to be able to fully relax my body which brings mental relaxation after a while. That happened within weeks. Being able to recognise the tension in individual muscles, and then fully relax all my body, made a huge difference. It was hard at first to discipline myself to do it - there was lots of ‘ fear of letting go’ but it passed quite quickly.’
Thinking: When challenging myself to drive a car again, I used graded exposure and I also stuck little post its on my dashboard reminding myself of reality.
For example I’d thinking something like “damn, a red light, I have to stop, okay now what if I freeze and can’t accelerate the car when light turns green and the people behind me get angry etc etc “ (there was a lot of catastrophic thinking)
Written on post it notes on the dashboard: “I probably won’t freeze as I never have before. But if I do, so what? The worst that can happen is that the people behind me get irritated, blow their horns etc.. they aren’t monsters, they are human like me, with problems of their own.”
One day when stuck at the lights I found myself not having to read the post it notes but instead, heard myself thinking ‘normally’, not catastrophic thoughts.
When you are beginning and taking your first step outside the front door it seems so overwhelming and like it is going to take forever to get back to any normal sort of lifestyle, but I found that within months I was able to do more than I could ever have imagined. From the day I started to push myself, it was 18 months and I was attending university. Something I’d wanted to do since leaving school.
I also met someone else with agoraphobia and we started to meet each other for coffee and a walk once a week. (I don’t know if groups still exist but we met through a group for anxiety sufferers) It was tough, but great practice for being around other people. We both knew how the other was feeling and the agreement was we’d stick each meeting out with the provisio if it got too bad for one of us we could leave. Neither of us ever did leave early. For years we cheered each other on in our individual endeavours - it was brilliant. We were very different people but we had that one thing in common and totally understood how the other one felt.
Last but not least; saying to myself ‘feel the fear and do it anyway. Fear is not going to kill me (although it may feel like it) , the worst fear can do is make me feel bad.”