I needed this!
This needs to be scribed down while it’s fresh in my memory. I can’t believe no actual healthcare professionals have ever thought of this before or suggested it. However, a very good friend of mine recently gave a thought provoking suggestion as to why I suffer from agoraphobia.
Many years ago now I was unceremoniously made homeless. That’s a whole other story of course, but I spent three months / ninety days on the streets. Not the most pleasant of times in my life. Sadly not the worst either! Or so I thought.
Looking back on my time scrambling from one shelter to another and feeding on scraps and wandering the streets aimlessly, I genuinely don’t feel any sorrow over it. All such a long time ago now and I’m well passed all that.
However, as mentioned, a really good friend of mine suggested something which I’d never considered and certainly no healthcare pro had thought of. We were discussing my varying degrees of mental health nonsense I go through each day; anxiety, panic, depression and agoraphobia.
“Hang on. Do you think you fear going out because of your time homeless?”
I stopped in my tracks and thought “oh, erm, fuck me”.
Sorry, but that was indeed my thought process. I had never put those pieces together before. My whole adult life I’ve been struggling with some anxiety or another but the first memory I have of an agoraphobic-type moment was about 2002 which was about four years after the whole homelessness incident. Since then I’ve had some form of agoraphobia. This is not always just a simple case of not being able to leave the house. Simply put, agoraphobia is a fear of open spaces. For me, this manifested itself in being unable or struggling to cross the road. Healthcare people and people in general always focused on the ‘are you scared of cars hitting you?’. Well no, because even without cars on the road, the fear remained.
The same could be said if I was, for example, walking along the street. If I was not next to the wall while walking, I felt unsafe. I always needed that safety net.
Aside from those, yes, the agoraphobia has also manifested itself within the traditional not being able to leave the house. Between 2004-2005 I spent one whole year locked away in my third floor flat, unable to get downstairs and outside. I was even in the local newspaper! That was my dad’s doing admittedly, in a vain bid to get me re-homed. Didn’t work, but hey i was famous in a few columns of the paper!
Now, some twenty years later, life has come full circle and I am struggling to leave the house at all again. I do find it easier as it’s a ground floor flat so I manage a little to get out. If I make it 10 yards it’s a good day, 20 yards even better. I’ve been known to get to the end of the street on occasion so that’s a bonus.
But, again, I had never put two and two together. Has my time homeless subconsciously caused these issues years later?
