There is not going to follow a series of posts on an agoraphobic's guide to travelling by train- unfortunately from my point of view. Very quickly I have moved from step one to step two but I expected that. I actually got here yesterday and with some distress got here again today. Both times waiting 60 seconds was as much as I could muster before scuttling off.
Hey, its a train! Now to get on it. Well not for a good while yet. I think even repeating this step is going to take some doing if I am honest and may have to give it a break over the weekends because I am finding that because I am pushing harder than I ever have been able to on the walks during the week I am heavily fatigued. My body is almost in shutdown. My hope was that in pushing way beyond what I ever have before my body would eventually get used to it and after a time the fatigue would ease and I'd find travelling greater distances not so tiring. Not so. The opposite in fact. It just seems to accumulate and snowball and every new day I think I feel more fatigued than I ever have in my whole life and definitely more than the day before. It got so bad today that I had to postpone my exposure at the usual time because as I tried to make my way out the door I felt I could hardly take another step. Really struggling.
So it may be I have to ease off with the distances I am doing. They are no big by anyone's standards but big for me. Last year I managed to maintain a level for a few months which was the biggest distance over a week for 4 years. This year I suddenly found myself managing 50% more than that which is a big jump but when I realised I was doing that every week for nearly 6 months and sometime before the weekend had nothing so therefore taking it easy after I decided to increase it 100%- from the year before. This is week 4 of that and as I said the fatigue just seems to be getting heavier and heavier.
I did though get down to step 2 for a second day in a row and even watched the train coming in. Staying just a minute was hard and really staying for just a minute was pointless because that is not enough time for anxiety to drop- and it didn't. Why couldn't I wait longer? What is so difficult about staying in one place?
That is the eternal question and probably the root of my agoraphobia. In all things I have to do that I don't want to do or don't like doing but am capable of doing I try to get it over with as soon as possible. I cannot wait. If It needs to be done then I have to get it done as soon as possible. A few posts ago I wrote about the time I had the 2 week course in London and was dreading the flight back so much I paid £50 to get on it an hour earlier just to get it overwith. That was in fact my first, and last, flight since 1999 or 2000 when my now wife and I went went on our first holiday to Mallorca and I remember on the last few days of the holiday starting to think about the flight home and getting really anxious and wanting it just over and done with to the point that I just wanted the holiday over and done with there and then to get it over with. It did spoil those final days. It wasn't always like that.
All of this noting though does no good unless it leads to a solution. The first step to that would be identifying the real problem. That is simple. Some may say its impatience but its not really. The real problem is apprehension- anticipatory anxiety. As you can imagine the long the period of this the harder it is to stand and so its natural to want it over with quickly. That is what it is. And getting back to this exposure that is what it is here too and now that I have identified the real cause of my inability to wait its something I need to work on.
Why I am apprehensive about waiting? Its because I fear the further I am from home the more impossible I will find it to get home if I panic. Like if I am standing down near the train tracks there and already on the verge of panic. I feel the longer I stay there the more likely I am to panic and the further away from home I will be and the harder it will be to get home. In my head I will end up on the ground struggling for breath looking up at faces and hearing the approaching sirens in the background. Its never happened yet but I cannot find the belief within me that it won't happen. That is why I am impatient if you will to leave, apprehensive to stay and eager to just get back home again.
Writing it I see it looks stupid. Panic is internal so it matters not where you are located really. There is no magic anti-panic device at home. Of course its not as simple as that. What we think affects how we feel and how we feel effects how her body responds. If we see or hear something sad it may make us cry. I we hear or see something wrong it may make us angry. What is external to us affects the internal. But only through interpretation. Its subective. Panic is subjective. The sight of a crowd may bring elation in some, fear in others. So its about changing the interpretation and therefore the reaction to it. If all 5 senses were cut off, experimentally and temporarily, would it really matter where we were?
I guess what I am trying to say in a round about way is what the CBT says so simply: catch our thoughts, challenge the truth of them and change them with the truth. And that is not what I am doing. That is what I need to learn to do. That is why I cannot wait. Until I can start dealing with these mis-interpretations I cannot wait. So now at least I am sure where I have to concentrate my efforts.
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