Feeling like a prisoner inside your house? I’m like a bear during winter, I hibernate inside. I don’t like going outside, it’s out of my comfort zone (the house). Anything passed that door is scary. Afraid of going out (agoraphobia) started about four years ago.
I’ve been slowly working my way back to halfway normal, whatever normal is. What constitutes normal to me could mean something totally different for you. That’s why I don’t like to use the word “normal” too much. Anyway, I’ve been stepping out of my comfort zone more lately. It was scary at first, but well worth the rewards.
I feel like my freedom is back. My fear to go outside stopped me from living my life. But now, I feel invigorated. I’m starting to return to my old life that I missed so much. And I know you can do it too. It only takes a little bit of courage.
Anxiety about going out in public was part of my life, which just grew from my insecurities of myself. I thought other people would see my flaws, and they would shy away from me. The social anxiety was getting to me. One look was one look, and I wanted to disappear like a magic trick. I was never good with people when I was growing up. My first grade teacher made sure of that. So, it took me years to get to the point where I was not afraid of judgment from others.
As my illnesses progressed (especially the anxiety), I found myself withdrawing more. Anxiety when going out in public became second nature. Then I started to get sick of it. So, I let my shields down ever so slowly. I felt vulnerable, but it was for a good cause. Eventually, my confidence kept building up, and now I go out in public within certain limitations.
Feeling Like a Prisoner Inside Your House? A fear of going outside can be triggered by various factors, including: previous panic attacks in public places, traumatic experiences like abuse or assault, stressful life events like job loss or bereavement. Also, feeling trapped or helpless in crowds, open spaces, or public transportation, concerns about being unable to escape a situation, and a history of anxiety disorders. So, essentially, any situation where a person feels vulnerable and unable to cope with potential anxiety or panic attacks.
- Panic attacks: Having experienced a panic attack in a public place can lead to associating that location with intense fear, causing avoidance behavior.
- Crowds: Feeling overwhelmed or trapped in large crowds can trigger anxiety and desire to escape.
- Open spaces: Wide open areas like parking lots or fields can induce feelings of vulnerability and panic in some people.
- Public transportation: Using buses, trains, or subways can be triggering due to the feeling of being enclosed and unable to easily leave.
- Being alone: Some people may feel particularly anxious when venturing outside without a companion.
- Unfamiliar environments: Going to new places or areas with limited familiarity can heighten anxiety.
- Physical symptoms: Physical sensations like dizziness, nausea, or rapid heartbeat can further exacerbate fear and anxiety in these situations.
Past trauma: A history of traumatic events, especially those related to public spaces, can contribute to a fear of going outside.
Negative thoughts and beliefs: Catastrophizing thoughts about what could happen in public can fuel anxiety and avoidance behavior.
Social isolation: Avoiding social situations due to fear can further worsen anxiety and perpetuate the fear of going outside.
Being scared of going outside can be triggered by many things. Mine was to avoid social situations. If I didn’t have to talk to anyone, that was fine by me. But then, I became lonely and craving communication. I needed that interaction. So, I started communicating more with my family and going to public places. Also, I actually miss work, talking to coworkers. I crave connection.
#1. Become Aware of Your Anxious Thoughts
When your anxiety is the result of a learned reaction, looking for logical explanations for this type of anxiety isn’t likely to help. On the contrary, it can worsen the anxiety.
The anxious reaction could be the result of an emotional memory of a time when you had a negative experience in a similar situation in the past.
Recognize that your mind is misreading the situation and is sounding a false alarm. Awareness that the situation is not dangerous might not always remedy the situation and stop the overwhelming response, but it is a key first step.
#2. Calm the Anxiety Response (Fight – Flight – Freeze)
Feeling Like a Prisoner Inside Your House? When in danger, our brain initiates the emergency arousal system: the fight, flight, or freeze response, providing us with extra strength and alertness.
This response is extremely helpful in a dangerous situation.
But when there’s no actual danger. This response limits our ability to think and respond to the anxiety reaction in a logical way. This increases our anxiety response further, and we can become stuck in a negative feedback loop.
The following exercises can help both, the aggressive fight-or-flight response, and the freeze response to anxiety:
i) Calming Fight or Flight Response
Deep Breathing
By taking deep breaths you can direct your body to switch from the sympathetic system’s stress response to the parasympathetic system’s relax response.
- Take a deep breath through your nose for two seconds and then breath out slowly through your mouth for 5-7 seconds.
- Repeat another two or three times. Then try to breathe normally for about a minute and then repeat the exercise again.
Getting Present
This exercise is designed to bring you out of your thoughts and feelings back to the present moment:
- Sounds: Notice what sounds you can hear in the surrounding environment. Don’t strive to hear sounds, rather allow the sounds to come to you. Every time your attention wanders away, gently and with compassion, bring it back to the sounds.
- Objects: Notice up to three objects you can see in your surroundings in as much details as possible (their shape, color, texture etc.). Each time your attention wanders away from the objects, gently, bring it back to the object.
- Now try to engage in the present moment and pay attention to what is happening in your environment.
This exercise is particularly useful when you feel like you are losing control of your emotions. It will enable you to act more calmly and effectively.
- Pause for a moment. Breathe. Notice your breathing for 10 to 20 seconds.
- Notice what is going on inside your mind and body. What is happening in your body? What stories are you telling yourself? Observe your thoughts and emotions and look for some space.
ii) Calming The Freeze Response
Feeling Like a Prisoner Inside Your House? When the brain assesses that fighting or fleeing the situation is not an option, the limbic system can activate a state of freezing. This can save your life when you’re can’t put up a fight or run away. The person or animal attacking you might lose interest and leave you.
But just as with the fight-or-flight response, the freeze response can also be triggered in relatively safe situations.
Do Something Active
- Find something active you can do during the moment you feel frozen. Call someone on the phone or tidy up, the key is to do something that interrupts the freeze response. Often when people experience the freeze response, they become too anxious to do anything. They might avoid work or other commitments. By interrupting this response, you create some momentum that allows you to engage in activities that may have seemed overwhelming beforehand.
Managing Anxious Thoughts (ACT)
Our mind can interpret neutral or harmless sensory information (sights, sounds, smells, touch) as threatening and activate anxiety response.
For example, you might walk into a room and find someone looking at you and smirking. You wonder what he’s smirking at? Only to find out that he’s on the phone and isn’t even aware of your presence.
But the mind can also independently produce its own distressing thoughts without receiving sensory information. This is what happens when you worry about a future event.
Even though the anxiety is created by your own thoughts, it’s as strong as the anxiety you experience from a real situation or threat.
Although we are more consciously aware of this type of anxiety created by anxious thinking, interrupt it and change it. We often develop longstanding patterns of thinking and ingrained habits that make it difficult to notice these thoughts.
#4. Defuse Your Thoughts – Separate Yourself From Unhelpful Thoughts
Thinking is important. It allows us to learn from the past and plan for the future. But when unhelpful thought or stories dominate our mind, it can take up our full attention and start dictating our behavior.
“Fusion” is the act of getting caught up in our thoughts and considering them to be absolutely true.
By defusing and separating yourself from our unhelpful thoughts, we become aware that they are nothing more than thoughts that have little or no effect on us.
As an analogy, visualize yourself as a bus driver, and every thought you have is a passenger that gets on (and off) the bus. You can imagine yourself talking to them and arguing with them. Or you can allow them to chat, knowing that they can’t hurt you and focus on the road ahead.
#5. Expansion – Make Room For Your Emotions
Instead of distracting yourself from uncomfortable feelings and sensations or trying to get rid of them, we can learn to deal with them effectively using expansion.
Expansion is the ability to open up and make room for these feelings and sensations.
Accept that they are there and allow them to pass through without impacting your behavior. Don’t fight them, simply allow them to come and go in their own time.
#6. Engagement – Be Present Despite The Uncomfortable Feelings
The more you focus on your unhelpful thoughts and uncomfortable feelings, the more disconnect from the present moment you become.
Engagement is being present and actively involved in what you’re doing instead of being lost in your thoughts. It helps you focus on the present experience despite your unhelpful thoughts and uncomfortable feelings.
Engaging with a Neutral Activity – Pick up a task or activity you find neither pleasant nor unpleasant and engage with it fully. Focus on all the actions and physical sensations of the task at hand. If your mind wanders, bring your awareness back to the activity.
Engaging with a Pleasant Activity – Using the same principles as above, stay present when doing a pleasant activity (eating a nice lunch, walking your dog, reading a book, sitting in the sunshine, etc). Connect and engage with the task fully. If your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the task.
Engaging with a Task You Have Been Avoiding – Practice engagement when doing an activity or task you have been avoiding. It could be something you have to do but have been putting it off for a while. Connect or engage with the task fully through the five senses. If your mind wanders, bring your attention back to the task.
Going Outside Challenge: Exposure Therapy
#7. Use Experience to Reduce Going Outside Anxiety
Feeling Like a Prisoner Inside Your House? Learning through experience can help reduce or eliminate unhelpful anxiety.
For example, if you want to change the mind’s anxiety response to talking to a stranger at a party, you’ll activate the memory circuits that relate to talking to strangers, and only then can new connections be made and the mind taught to respond differently.
By exposing ourselves to situations or objects that make us anxious, challenging the old association and realizing that nothing bad happens, we can develop new connections that eventually overpower the old ones that create fear and anxiety.
There are two kinds of exposure: gradual exposure and abrupt exposure.
1. Gradual Exposure
The gradual approach, also called Systematic Desensitization, involves experiencing feared situations or objects in a gradual manner. You may need to start with being in social gatherings and then gradually, as you get more comfortable, begin participating in the conversation.
2. Abrupt Exposure
The more abrupt approach of the exposure treatment is called Flooding, and while it is much more intense, it can provide relief much more quickly.
Instead of gradually building up to the fearful situation or object, the person is thrown straight into the most anxiety-inducing situation and asked to stay with it until the anxiety subsides.
Take action using small incremental steps. This will help you gain momentum, build your confidence and develop a growth mindset.
The plan should include the following steps:
1. Create an intention
2. Practice visualization
3. Simulate the physical symptoms
1. Create an Intention
Feeling Like a Prisoner Inside Your House? Intentions can shape our thoughts, feelings and behaviors.
Set an intention to change the way you think you are perceived in the chosen social situation. This will dramatically change the way other people see you.
- Write down what you believe is the first impression you currently make in your chosen situation. Think about how you normally show up in this situation, how you talk, what body language you use and what your expectations are of the situation. Then describe how does that cause other people to perceive you?
- Describe what you want your first impression to be and how you’d like to be other people.
- Write a short statement to describe what you project to others today and what you will project to others tomorrow.
For example, you might write “today that I am shy and timid, but tomorrow I will be more confident and engaging.”
2. Practice Visualization
Visualization is a mental rehearsal, or mental practice, during which you create or recreate an experience in the mind.
It is like playing a film in your mind of the social situation you intend to undertake. This is a useful tool to use before stepping out in the real world and apply exposure treatment.
If fact, MRI scans show that the brain doesn’t distinguish between an imagined or actual experience.Try to make the visualizations as real as possible. Practice visualizing each step of the exposure treatment at least three times.
This is especially important if physical symptoms of social anxiety are a particular problem for you.
3. Simulate the Physical Symptoms
Practice exercises that stimulate these symptoms before you do the exposure treatment. For example, do intense physical exercise to raise heart rate.
Feeling Like a Prisoner Inside Your House? For those afraid of going outside, I feel for you. I used to be in the same boat. I turned the corner because I didn’t want to be suffocating in the house anymore. The four walls were ever so slowly closing in on me.
I used exposure therapy to break out of my prison cell. That’s basically what it was or what I made it into unintentionally. I slowly became used to being outdoors again. During this summer, I would find a quiet place where I could lay out in the sun.
Then, I started going to the store and spent so much time in there just buying one or two things. I didn’t want to spend too much time in there for fear of a panic attack. So, that’s where I’m at now. Try one of these solutions, whatever feels right for you. I know you can do it! Peace and always love. Until next time…
Worries About Going Out (Agoraphobia)
“You are not weak. People like us, we’re brave. We’re the ones who get up and face our worst fears every day. We keep fighting.”-Jen Wilde, Author
“Slow breathing is like an anchor in the midst of an emotional storm: the anchor won’t make the storm go away, but it will hold you steady until it passes.” – Russ Harris
“I think the most important thing I’ve learned, however, is that being social is supposed to be fun. I tend to forget this when I’m curled up in a ball, alone in my room, avoiding everything”-Sarah Andersen, Sarah’s Scribbles
The Invisible Chains: Understanding What Causes Social Anxiety(Opens in a new browser tab)
What Are Silent Panic Attacks?(Opens in a new browser tab)
How to Calm a Panic Attack(Opens in a new browser tab)
Can an Anxiety Attack Last for Days?(Opens in a new browser tab)
What Is Glossophobia?(Opens in a new browser tab)
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