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Agoraphobia treatment and therapy
Agoraphobia treatment & therapy - overcome your agoraphobia & replace your phobic behaviour & thinking with logic. Through agoraphobia counselling we can help your phobia become a thing of the past.
What is agoraphobia?
Whilst agoraphobia is often thought to be a fear of open spaces, it’s much more complex than that. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in situations where escape is deemed to be difficult, or help wouldn’t be available if things were to go wrong.
A person with agoraphobia may be scared of things like travelling on public transport, visiting a shopping centre or even just leaving their home. This is a phobia that can appear at any point in a person’s life and the causes are many and varied.
It can often come as a result of other anxiety-related disorders. If for example, a panic attack occurred at the shopping centre, this is the fuel that can go onto become agoraphobia; where the shopping centre and the panic attack go hand in hand. In addition, bereavement and genetics are also known causes, amongst many others.
Through specialist agoraphobic therapy, treatment and counselling, this phobia can be treated and the path to this will be dependent on the individual. However, some changes towards a healthy lifestyle are a good starting point, as well as some self-help and therapy.
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Understanding the different types of phobia
Phobias can be split into three main categories.
● Agoraphobia – the fear of being alone in a public place or a fear of open or public places.
● Specific phobias – where the specific individual has a specific phobia that relates to a specific object or situation; for example the fear of dogs, spiders, or flying.
● Social phobias – these are phobias relating to an excessive or unreasonable fear of social situations such as fear of public speaking or social anxiety.
What are phobias? Taking a closer look.
Phobias are an extreme or irrational fear of an object or situation and can cause a lot of distress. They can restrict day-to-day life and, in severe cases, an individual may organise their life around avoiding the thing they’re afraid of. If the phobia can’t be avoided entirely, intense anxiety will result.
Around ten million people in the UK are affected by phobias. Phobias don’t care about your age, sex or social background. Anyone can be impacted.
Phobias are often developed in early childhood, teenage years, or even as late as early twenties. Within those early years, negative experiences can snowball in a child’s mind and lead to a very specific phobia.
It’s easy to see how a phobia might develop; for example being stuck in a lift for a few hours as a child can later manifest itself as claustrophobia. Similarly, the impact of a parent or sibling’s fear can have a knock on effect too. This is quite often found with phobias of dogs or spiders for example; where the child has watched the behaviours of their family members, and their behaviours go on to mirror that person.
"The temptation is often to avoid the things that make us fearful. However, this often compounds our anxieties. Our therapies help you to find constructive and supportive ways to confront your phobias one step at a time; meaning that you find a pace which is appropriate to your individual situation and which allows your brain to develop a new outlook to those situations or triggers."
Therapist, coaching psychologist and founder of Pinnacle Wellbeing, Richard Reid.
Our approach to treating agoraphobia
The key is to replace phobic behaviour and thinking with logic. This is the tricky bit, but with expert help it is one hundred percent possible. If you, or someone you care about is suffering from a phobic disorder, then you are most certainly not alone, and rest assured, we can help your phobia become a thing of the past.
Therapist, coaching psychologist and founder of Pinnacle Wellbeing, Richard Reid, is a specialist in phobia treatment psychology and has helped many clients overcome their phobias.
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Agoraphobia therapy and treatments
We believe that therapy is an effective way to treat phobias. The use of therapy can help you overcome your agoraphobia as well as its symptoms and triggers. We can then build a tailor-made programme that works for you.
One of the most effective treatments is a form of psychotherapy called exposure therapy. Here, understanding the cause of a phobia is actually less important than focusing on how to treat the avoidance behaviour that has developed over time.
As you learn how to better manage and relate to your reactions, thoughts and feelings, you’ll find that your anxiety and fear are reduced and no longer in control of your life. Treatment is usually directed at one specific phobia at a time, whilst your main phobia may fall under agoraphobia we can also help you overcome any secondary phobias or anxieties you may be experiencing.
We know that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and that each client has their own set of unique needs and circumstances. As well as exposure therapy we typically use a combination of therapies to treat phobias; these include Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), and hypnotherapy alongside talking therapies such as counselling and psychotherapy.
Using cognitive behavioural therapy for agoraphobia
For agoraphobia we find the use of cognitive behavioural therapy particularly helpful. CBT is about looking at the relationship between your thoughts and feelings, and how they make you ‘default’ to certain behaviours. It’s seen as a different kind of ‘talking therapy’ that aims to solve a person’s current problems. In effect it helps you become your own therapist, where you use the skills you have learned.
Through using cognitive therapy we can help make you aware of what your own defaults are: sometimes they help us, sometimes they don’t – CBT helps you recognise those different responses for what they are.
How does CBT help diminish your phobia?
CBT has good results when applied to someone who suffers from phobias. By using cognitive behavioural therapy for agoraphobia, your therapist can help you to tackle negative thought patterns you may direct at yourself or that you perceive from the world around you. It is usually these negative thoughts that trigger a phobic episode.
After you have recognised these negative thoughts and when they occur, you can work to replace them with something more rational and positive which will allow you to cope with your phobia in a calm and controlled manner.
CBT is a way to rewire the software of your brain, rehearsing troubling situations in your mind in order to create alternative ways of thinking when that situation arises again. In effect, you’re creating new mental circuitry by challenging and changing old responses that feel hardwired in, but aren’t.
With CBT, the therapist acknowledges that there may be behaviours that you cannot control through rational thought. Rather, these harmful coping strategies are as a result of prior conditioning from the environment and other internal or external stimuli.
By taking (what can feel like) insurmountable tasks and teaching you how to apply a pragmatic and objective viewpoint to these issues, CBT gradually changes the way you look at everyday challenges.
“We all have our default ways of dealing with situations. Most of us aren’t even aware of what they are. And some of the time they work. But like a tradesmen who turns up to every job with the same couple of tools, there will be situations where those tools just aren’t the right ones. CBT is particularly helpful in treating phobias such as agoraphobia. It helps make you aware and gives you a versatile practical set of life skills to become more agile and resilient for whatever life throws at you.”
Richard Reid - CEO, Therapist & Coaching Psychologist
What can you expect from an agoraphobia treatment and counselling session?
Our agoraphobia therapy sessions are tailored to suit your needs. We work with individuals, couples, teens, and groups. Our sessions usually last from 30 minutes to an hour; our courses usually consist of around 6 to 12 sessions.
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If you’re still unsure whether you need us or not then simply send us any questions you may have via the enquiry form on the right.