I suffer from agoraphobia. I am a 31 year old female who has had panic disorder since I was 13 years old, although I can remember being anxious even earlier in my childhood. The agoraphobia set in when I was around 18 by starting off with my fear of going into stores and riding in the car to certain places, mainly the interstate scared me. I could bore you with all the events leading up to my agoraphobia, but I won’t. Instead I am going to inform you on how it is to live with agoraphobia. I am happily married to my high school sweetheart who is, thankfully very understanding. We married at 20 years old and I can say that I was doing pretty well at this point in my life. I was working as a waitress and he was a laborer for our little city. I still drove during this time. I did not, however drive anywhere I felt uncomfortable due to an extreme panic attack at the age of 18 that put this fear into me. In fact, most of the time my husband would drive me to work. I worked, my husband worked, and on our days off we would hang out with our friends. We were pretty normal back then.

I started to notice around the age of 22 that I was becoming more anxious and also noticed that the panic attacks started coming more frequently and even more severe. I got to a point where I would not drive at all. At 23 I decided to quit my job because my fear had become so bad. I was scared to leave our home, scared to go into big stores, and scared to travel anywhere outside of my comfort zone. I would only leave the home if absolutely necessary, and I would be a nervous and shaky mess the entire time. My husband had to work, so he would take me to either his parents house, my parents house, or my grandmothers house while he did so. The doctors that I would see kept telling me that I had social phobia. I was prescribed an anti-depressant and sent home. It was never even suggested for me to seek counseling. This was a very dark time for me, but imagine how hard it was for my husband who was used to seeing me full of life and happiness. I became very depressed, but rarely showed it to anyone besides my husband.
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