"I'm So Agoraphobic"

"I'm so agoraphobic these days."

"Huh?"

"I just really really really don't want to go out."

This is super offensive.

Agoraphobia is closer in mechanism to PTSD than traditional anxiety disorders. Would you say that to your uncle from the military who relives the worst day of his life every time a helicopter goes overhead?

I am an extravert. I love going out and socialising. This was, to a large extent, robbed from me, and it hurts pretty badly. Reducing that scar to "I really just can't be bothered with that stuff right now" is ignorance of a scale nearly unimaginable.

Having uncontrolled panic attacks caused by an environment you can't leave is biologically not too dissimilar from being waterboarded. It is torture; leaving me out in an open space would be at least as bad as traditional torture methods. If you have not experienced it, you have absolutely no clue. The calculus of going out is realistically closer to "I would absolutely love to do that, but I'm worried my body might randomly start waterboarding me if I do."

An agoraphobe isn't expressing a preference. They're doing a risk assessment.

"I'm not sure I can handle that" is not a case of "I'm not sure if I'll find that draining." It's "there is clearly a risk that I will be forced to go through a transcendentally fucked up experience if I do that, and I'm trying to weigh up the factors which might cause that to happen."

What you experienced at the end of lockdown probably wasn't agoraphobia either. It was almost certainly being habituated to staying at home, which is structurally and experientially a completely different experience. "It's been a long time since I've left the house, I'm not used to it anymore, and it's a bit scary" is completely unrelated to "my nervous system might actually give me a near-death experience if I go out."

Stop using words you don't know the meaning of.

Checkin

Written: 2026-03-29

Written on: 7.5mg olanzapine since 2025-11-25

Cognitive capacity: very poor - estimate 15% brain