Angela\u2019s panic attacks were now daily – but she was determined to hide it from everyone in her life.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI have been very, very close to being inside those four walls and not coming out again”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
\u201cI couldn’t share it, I was embarrassed about it, I was ashamed of it\u2026 and so I was running my life feeling very isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe very first person I ever actually told, because I just thought I must be going mad, was my GP.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angela\u2019s doctor quickly diagnosed her with agoraphobia. His advice was to terminate her job in exchange for something local.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew in my heart that that would just be about the worst thing I could do,\u201d she says. \u201cMy world was already shrinking.\u201d<\/p>\n
Somehow, she continued working in London for another six years.<\/p>\n
At 21, she got married to someone she had met at work, but the wedding “was a huge dread rather than a joy,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just made sure that everything we did was local, including our honeymoon, which was to an Essex seaside town.\u201d<\/p>\n
Angela did everything she could to overcome her agoraphobia: she tried hypnotherapy and counselling; she saw psychologists, read books. She would repeat the mantra: \u201cFeel the fear and do it anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI just knew I had to challenge it at every point, even though those challenges were so great and so difficult,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more I challenged it, the more I could do. But each challenge was like climbing a mountain.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have been very, very close to being inside those four walls and not coming out again,\u201d she admits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Angela\u2019s panic attacks were now daily – but she was determined to hide it from everyone in her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4317],"tags":[105,218,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-143627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114595831716908192","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}