Yesterday was quite a good day for me. I managed to get out for a couple of hours despite feeling absolutely shattered and it was relatively panic free.
I got up and got organised as I had the occupational therapist coming out to see me. I started occupational therapy almost 2 years ago and had weekly sessions up until about March/April this year. It was my fault that the sessions came to an end - to be completely honest, it got too hard and I panicked. I felt that absolutely everything and everyone in my life were associated with agoraphobia, which may sound strange considering my life is hugely restricted by it but it just started feeling really suffocating and I needed a break, and I felt things were going to fast and that I had no control. I had also read a book by Rhonda Byrne called 'The Secret' and she basically advises you to live your life as if you had what you want and it will happen. So my mind processed this as - 'if I wasn't agoraphobic, I wouldn't be receiving treatment for it' - silly I know but it did kind of work for the first 6 weeks!
After speaking with a welfare rights officer last week she advised me that my best hope in overcoming agoraphobia was to go back to the occupational therapist. I believe in occupational therapy 100% and it is really effective, some of the things I have achieved through it have been amazing but it is hard and it requires you to put 100% in. It's not a quick fix and it will take time and that's where I have a problem. I lose interest in things and become disheartened when things don't happen overnight but this is something I need to work to work on accepting. When I have a bad day I just need to get on with it and not pick up the phone and cancel the session. Avoidance is not the answer! - ha.
Honestly, if you are recently diagnosed with agoraphobia I would say this would be the best route to go down, obviously i'm not a doctor but I would base this on experience, I believe that had I been referred to OT when I first became agoraphobic I wouldn't be in this position. It took 5 years, 3 psychologists and a counsellor before I was referred and it was only down to the last psychologist I saw, not my doctor, the psychologist decided that there was nothing they could do for me, even though my doctor kept referring me back to them, and she referred me to OT.
Even if like me you've been agoraphobic for a while I definitely think it's still effective, it just takes a bit longer and after years off those fearful thoughts it may be a bit harder. So if you haven't heard of this definitely see doctor and see what options are available. I don't have a clue why I wasn't offered this to begin with.
I drifted off a bit there! So basically I've decided that I want to work with the OT to get back to work. I kind of feel that I'm stuck in a rut and don't know what I'm capable of. I don't have any friends any more, they tend to drift away when you don't got out lol, and the only person I go out with is my mum and I find that ok most of the time. I often wonder if I had friends to go out with, if I would go out or even just want to go out more. So with the OT's help we've came up with a plan to see about me doing some voluntary work or part time work to see how I cope. She'll work on finding me placements and obviously explain to potential employers about my 'condition'.
I am aware that this may seem crazy, maybe it is, after all I can't go out my house on my own so how the hell am I going to be able to hold down a job? I don't know how either but I won't know how I'll cope in a situation until I try. As I said in the previous post, I don't have anything to lose any more and the worst thing that can happen is I leave the job (if I'm lucky enough to get one) and pull my goals back a bit. That's the bonus of working with the OT, they support me so that I don't push myself too far and have a set back.
If you continue to read my blog you can probably expect crazy ideas. I have a tendency to do things on a whim or with the hope that 'by that time I'll be better' and put myself situations that are difficult and provoke a lot of anxiety but I'm still here to tell the tale!
So appointment with OT is on Monday morning and I have to go there on my own...lovely :)
After all that I had a to go for some shopping. My mum takes me to a shop that isn't that busy and you can park outside it. This makes me less anxious, I hate walking outside and need to park as close to the building as I can get. So the shop wasn't busy and I spent about 40 mins inside it which was great, this was definitely a 'good day'. I have days when I can go to this shop and the situation is exactly the same and yet I still have to leave. In fact today was so good I even suggested we went to another shop which we did but only spent 10 mins inside, but this was nothing to do with anxiety :D
After getting everything I needed we went to visit family which again I was fine with and we stayed there for an hour. This is when the anxiety kicked in. I started to become really aware of the sensations in my body and my 'anxious head' came to life. I'm not sure what triggered it at all, we were just talking and I seemed to become aware of it happening. I did manage to keep it under control and nobody noticed that I was becoming anxious. I did have a strong urge to leave but I didn't. I stayed for about 20 mins after I first felt anxious but the anxiety didn't go away. The positive thing to focus on though is I DIDN'T LEAVE!!
Overall this was a pretty eventful day for me (lol) but I was absolutely exhausted when I got home and had a splitting sore head. It's amazing how a short period of tension can have such an effect on your body.
