Angela’s panic attacks were now daily – but she was determined to hide it from everyone in her life.
“I have been very, very close to being inside those four walls and not coming out again”
“I couldn’t share it, I was embarrassed about it, I was ashamed of it… and so I was running my life feeling very isolated.”
“The very first person I ever actually told, because I just thought I must be going mad, was my GP.”
Angela’s doctor quickly diagnosed her with agoraphobia. His advice was to terminate her job in exchange for something local.
“I knew in my heart that that would just be about the worst thing I could do,” she says. “My world was already shrinking.”
Somehow, she continued working in London for another six years.
At 21, she got married to someone she had met at work, but the wedding “was a huge dread rather than a joy,” she admits.
“I just made sure that everything we did was local, including our honeymoon, which was to an Essex seaside town.”
Angela did everything she could to overcome her agoraphobia: she tried hypnotherapy and counselling; she saw psychologists, read books. She would repeat the mantra: “Feel the fear and do it anyway.”
“I just knew I had to challenge it at every point, even though those challenges were so great and so difficult,” she says.
“The more I challenged it, the more I could do. But each challenge was like climbing a mountain.”
“I have been very, very close to being inside those four walls and not coming out again,” she admits.