“Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder characterized by symptoms of anxiety in situations where the person perceives their environment to be unsafe with no way to escape. These situations can include public transit, shopping centers, crowds and queues, or simply being outside their home on their own.”
I often feel as though I’m at risk of developing agoraphobia. I’m always aware of every person, car, moving object, sound, light source, and so on. I often come home exhausted from tracking all of this, and sometimes return home earlier than intended because too many innocuous things are making me nervous.
Does the experience described above echo your own? Was there a memorable point in time when you decided that you would commit to a lifestyle that would avoid these triggers, or did you come to a realisation one day that you hadn’t gone out in a very long time?
I did experience that. But the lockdown was the major trigger for me that generalized the anxiety. Guess I just never left the lockdown.
Lockdown was the first time in decades with agoraphobia that I felt like I fit in with society. For once people weren’t expecting me to leave the house. You got free stuff for staying home. Grocery delivery and telemedicine took off and became normal. Society praised me and everyone was doing it.
Since I was already staying home covid to me was actually an improvement in quality of life.