A New Year
My battle with panic disorder and agoraphobia started in June, 2022. I started to make a swift recovery, but was setback dramatically as a result of moving home which pushed me into the worst mental state I had ever been in. I was not sleeping, eating, functioning, or coping. I was ready to admit myself to a psychiatric hospital, even if it meant having as many panic attacks as it took to get there. Simple tasks like doing the laundry felt like they were too much, and just making breakfast would deplete my energy levels for the entire day. I had never truly understood the level of impact that mental health could have on one's energy levels up until that point.
Agoraphobia is incredibly hard to describe to people, because it's such a specific, selective condition. After a series of one or more panic attacks outside, a part of the mind starts to think that only home is safe, and so any time you venture outside, your mind starts screaming at you to get back home immediately because it thinks the supermarket is the most dangerous thing in the world. If I could describe the disorder in one word, it would be infantilising. It's characterised by intense feelings of anxiety that arise from: 1) being far from home, 2) being in environments that aren't easily escapable if a panic attack comes, such as public transport and elevators, and 3) being in environments with lots of people due to fear of embarrassment or shame if a panic attack comes. Recovering from agoraphobia feels like learning how to live again, starting from the ground up. The intensity goes down with repeated exposure to the outside world, but it can take up to 12 months on average to find normality again.
Early on in my recovery, I remember walking across main roads feeling "trapping" because I would feel "stuck" behind traffic lights and not be able to get home quickly. I remember the random, unexpected flashes of panic that would come on out of nowhere while I was roaming around. I remember not being able to go outside unless I was wearing loose clothes because wearing anything tighter made me feel like I was trapped in my own body. I remember not being able to go outside unless I had noise-cancelling headphones on. I remember being spoon-fed by my girlfriend because I had no energy left to even feed myself. It truly was a horrifically dark time, with no signs of hope in the beginning.
I spent the entirety of August and September just trying to walk farther distances from home. It took me almost two months just to to the point where I was somewhat able walk through Flagstaff Gardens and even that still felt hard on some days moving into October, but November and December were the months where things really started to pick up. In early November, I started taking steps towards taking the tram outside of the CBD, which ultimately led to a major goal — eat at a fine dining restaurant with my girlfriend. I had great amounts of anticipatory anxiety around this event, and I vividly remember telling her that I didn't feel confident that I could do it. Despite that, I did it, and although hard, I did it well. A few days later we then stayed at a nearby hotel, which involved an unexpected Uber trip, and later in the evening went to a sky bar. If you told me in August that I would be able to do that within three months, I probably would have been over the moon.
But as I sit here and write this, I would be lying if I said I'm truly happy with where I'm at right now, and some days are better than others. While I am certainly making leaps and bounds with my progress, I feel discouraged because some things are still harder than I expected them to be by this point. Yet at the same time, there's little moments where I surprise myself. Last week, after avoiding trains for months, I took a leap of faith and got on at Flagstaff Station headed towards Melbourne Central. I was trembling in fear and stood at the platform in a near panic, watching three trains pass before I mustered up the courage to get on. The anticipation was brutal, and I got close to nearly leaving the station and going home, but in my heart I wanted to be on that train more than I wanted to retreat from my feelings, because I knew that once I got on it would be another step closer to recovery. I had only planned to travel one stop on the train that day. The moment I stepped into the carriage and the doors closed, the fear sank in and I closed my eyes letting the adrenaline run through me and do its thing, but strangely, a sense of relief and calm washed over me, and 15 minutes later I found myself all the way at Jolimont Station, then came back with very little struggle. Dare say I actually enjoyed my time, because it felt like a really big step forward. It was 6 days ago since I did that, and while still hard, trains are getting a tad easier each time I take them.
While my mind is still really quite sensitised to certain physical sensations of anxiety, day-by-day I learn to manage these feelings a lot better than I previously was, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I have been putting a lot of practice towards mindfulness, which has been very helpful. I think simply put, just letting go of the struggle when anxiety surfaces is what I'm working towards most. It's been 8 years since my struggle with anxiety really began, and up until this point I had never really taken the time to learn proper techniques and ways to manage it. Even before I was struck by agoraphobia, my response to anxiety was always to either immediately take Valium, or in a "worst case" scenario, I would go as far as calling an ambulance. Now I do neither, and as I've learned to drop the struggle against anxiety, the intensity and duration of panic attacks have decreased.
While everything I've written here points to good signs and progress, I've had a pretty shit start to the new year because I wished I was farther along in my recovery by now. It's an endless cycle of constantly wanting more, which means that I'm never satisfied with my progress, but the silver lining is that I use that as motivation. I don't think I'll ever consider myself to be recovered or "in remission" until I'm on an airplane again.
Everything I've been through has given me a lot of space to be grateful for the simple things in life that weren't possible when I was essentially housebound. I don't ask for a life full of prosperity, just one where I can do the things I enjoy and make others happy. I hope that the world, and my mind, will be kinder to me in 2023.
