Agoraphobia

I have accepted recently that I am literally scared of going outside. Not just that I don't want to but I get an uncomfortable anxious feeling when I manage to bring myself out there. I already had pre-existing anxiety, depression, and paranoia so I guess it wasn't hard for this to happen. I guess the question now is what is the best way to go about ending this problem if anyone else has had this type of issue.

>>33998 there's always exposure therapy

What exaclty are you afraid of? Is it people or huge open spaces or something more specific? I dont think you can or should be cooked up indoors forever, might well take small steps out there.

In my experience, exposure therapy is hell. For me, it was keeping things clean, so I did the radical opposite, and now I can function in really dirty environments, but I still really hate it. And here's the kicker: that dread goes unnoticed, but affects the mind. Basically, I think what happened was I'd get exposure, and it'd obviously suck, but the suck didn't really decrease over time, only the obviousness of the suck. Eventually I got to the point where everything I did would just fail. Eventually I snapped, and decided to go on a cleaning spree, which was a lot of effort because I was out of practice, so I didn't actually accomplish much cleaning. Now, I've been returning to at least halfway decent hygiene practices, and there's less dread, and I'm more aware of the dread, but old habits---or the lack there of, in this case---die hard. My point is, exposure therapy isn't necessarily all that great---even if it seems to be working properly. It's like cracking my neck instead of seeing a chiropractor. If you do decide to do it, consult a mental health professional---which you should do anyway---first.

i think thats a real shame because going for a walk really early in the morning is the one thing that can really motivate me to be productive. i love seeing the bustling city, everyone getting up really early and having to go to a work they probably dont enjoy. it makes me thankful for being a NEET and makes me not want to waste the day. and something as simple as smiling at a person or saying good morning can really make me feel good. social isolation is really harmful and i would try to overcome that if i were you. theres a reason they put prisoners into isolation, its psychological torture.

>>34005 Exposure therapy is supposedly the cream of the crop when it comes to treating anxiety and phobias, and it's always recommended because it seems like "common sense". But upon further investigation, if you take a look at how these empirical studies actually measure improvement, it's strictly through self-report questionnaires. The more people are exposed to the anxiety, the more they get used to it, but really what's being changed is one's awareness of the problem, not the problem itself. After continual exposure to situations that automatically provoke anxiety, the only logical thing a person can do is learn to dissociate from their actual feelings and turn it into background noise, hence when asked about their subjective level of anxiety, it really does go down. And behaviorally, they're actually engaging in the desired behavior, so problem is fixed from psychotherapy's point of view. I think these kind of brute-force techniques simply leads to temporary change on surface, masking the problem, rather than actually fixing it.

>>34001 People. I actually love open spaces with barely anyone around. I know I am away from what I don't want to be around while enjoying what I do love. Nature. Yet it is hard to get out there because I have to get in my car and share the road with other people driving which makes me an overly cautious driver.