Early stages of agoraphobia? Please help!

[alvaa]

I am posting here because I was diagnosed years ago with anxiety disorder and depression.
About 4 years ago I got divorced, lost my house through foreclosure, and lost my job. I made it through without heavy depression or anxiety. Once everything got back to somewhat normal in my life, that's when the anxiety attacks hit. I was told that I held it together and once life was back to being normal, that was when it all hit.
Now, 2012 is here. I am living with and taking care of my elderly mother, and I have been for about 2 years. My therapist said that she is the source of my anxiety and depression, but right now I cannot do anything about it. She is negative and always picking at me. At work, I am a programmer and we just rolled out our new software package and we are having to go through that. We are flooded with calls and problems and my boss is very high strung and he makes me anxious. By the end of the day I am drained, having tachycardia, arrhythmia's, and stomach issues. It gets worse on my way home. Traffic gets me anxious and the thought of going home to mother gets me anxious. I get settled in my apartment next to mother's house (sort of attached), and I get back to being just fine. However, for the past 3 weeks going to the store makes me anxious, I was going to go to church with my mom this morning and I had a panic attack. I went to get my daughter yesterday and had a panic attack. I tried to go to the mall the other day and turned around due to a panic attack.

Any help with this?

[alvaa]

Thank you for the response. I am back at work today, hoping I can make it through. I will look into the cognitive behavioral therapy.

[vienna_h]

Its normal to start wanting to avoid places where you get anxious. In college, I had a really bad panic attack in the middle of a lecture, there were over 200 students in the room, I was sitting just a couple rows from the prof, right smack in the middle, I created quite a scene trying to collect my things and run out of the class in front of everyone. It happened a couple more times, soon I stopped going to class, then to school, then leaving my appartment, out of fear of having more attacks in public. But the only way to get out of it is.... facing your fear. I had to force myself out of my room, onto crowded buses, and even back to class. First i'd only sit at the back next to the door, but slowly and surely I pushed my limit and made it back towards the middle, towards the front.

When you have anxiety, you need to always be pushing your limits. Anxiety is in your brain, it puts irrational thoughts and irrational fears in your mind. You need to challenge those thoughts, and challenge yourelf, prove to your own mind that its wrong, that you can go out and everything will be ok.

I recommend looking into cognitive behavioural therapy if you haven't already. Its very simple and over time, very effective. I went from not being able to leave my bedroom to backpacking South America all by myself!

Good luck!