Namely, my own.

Last Monday, I mentioned a few things about my readings in Overcoming Agoraphobia by Doctor Barry Goldstein, and said there would be more on that subject later. Well, it’s later now (though it won’t be now later…) and time to tackle the issue.

As I said on Monday, the book is not without its problems. It is written with housewives primarily in mind, which is quite bizarre because the book came out in 1987. When I first started reading it, I assumed it was from the late sixties to early seventies at the latest, because the focus and style seemed so old-fashioned. But then I got curious, and looked at the frontispiece. And yup, there it is. Published in 1987. Where the hell did Doctor Barry Goldstein spend the preceding fifteen years? Tupperware?

I suspect he took a long time writing the book, and only published it after he retired. Just a theory, but it does fit all the known facts.

Anyhow, its charmingly antique point of view aside, I am finding the book to be quite helpful and insightful. It gives me a good feeling just reading the words of someone who seems to understand what I am going through far better than anyone else ever has. Doctor Barry Goldstein seems to really get what it is like to be an agoraphobic like myself, and that is a good thing, because as he correctly observes, we agoraphobes tend to have extremely poor self-esteem and we need all the understand we can get.

He also correctly notes that we tend to carry around a great deal of self-loathing and guilt and regret. That certainly applies to me. The biggest burden to my recovery, in my opinion, is this vast reserve of self-loathing I have regarding having more or less spent my entire adult life (and I am almost 38) depressed, scared, hiding, and doing absolutely nothing with my life.

Intellectually^[1], I know that this was not by choice. I have been very sick for all that time, and for the first half of it, I didn’t even know it. I had no conception that I was mentally ill. I just thought I was a pathetic loser. Being diagnosed was a great step towards getting things together.

But not the only step. I am still stuck with the problems inherent in being too sick to do the things I need to do to get well, sometimes. I need some sort of badass advocate who will kick my ass when needed and pester me to remember to do things that my mind conveniently ‘forgets’ because dong them is scary or hard.

I need Samuel Jackson with a bullhorn and stompin’ boots.

Reading Overcoming Agoraphobia has also given me a clear idea of why all the group therapy I got did not help me very much. I felt just as neglected, ignored, and unimportant in group as I do in life. I would do my best to be a good group member, and getting me to play amateur therapist for others is ridiculously easy, but the truth is, I spend most of the time feeling bored and ignored and like nobody really cared.

I don’t quite fit the model in the book, though. Like for instance, while I have had panics outdoors, and thought I was going crazy or going to faint, my disease does not seem to include becoming scared to go certain places or do certain things based on a panic. The ladies discussed in the book go through a progression, where they have a panic say at the bank, and then avoid the bank… then the next one is at the supermarket, and they stop going there, and so on. I have never experienced that.

Why? Because I think my agoraphobia was first triggered when I was attacked by bullies on my way to elementary school, when I was too young to be very accustomed to going places on my own anyhow, and so I generalized my fear to “not being inside/home” very early in life.

All through my childhood, I hated walking to and fro school every day, and the reason, looking back, was my agoraphobia. I felt exposed and alone and in danger for the whole trip. I felt better when I got to school, because then I was indoors, in a familiar confined space. Classic agoraphobia.

A ride to school and back would have done wonders for my mood and confidence in school.

Bigger than this, though, is the discrepancy between Goldstein’s model of the origins of agoraphobia and my own life history. His patients tend towards a history of overprotective and/or overcritical and/or overdependent parents, and none of that applies to me. If anything, my parents were underprotective, uncritical, and had no use for me whatsoever.

I pretty much didn’t exist.

So I guess you can become agoraphobic via neglect as well.