How to Overcome Agoraphobia and the Fear of Leaving the House
Updated: Sep 10
Agoraphobia can gradually make your world feel smaller.
Perhaps you once went shopping, travelled on public transport, met friends or drove somewhere without giving it much thought. Now even the idea of leaving home can bring a rush of anxiety.
You may find yourself thinking about how far you are from home, where the exits are, whether you could escape if you needed to, or what would happen if you suddenly felt panicky.
Sometimes the fear becomes so strong that staying at home seems like the safest option.
If that sounds familiar, it is important to understand that agoraphobia isn't simply a fear of open spaces. It commonly involves fear of situations where escape might feel difficult or help might not be readily available if something went wrong. This can include public transport, shops, crowds, queues or simply being away from home.
As a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist with more than 25 years' experience, I have worked with many people whose lives have become restricted by anxiety, panic and avoidance.
Agoraphobia can be extremely limiting, but it is treatable. Professional approaches including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), often involving gradual exposure, are established treatments, and medication may sometimes be recommended.
Alongside appropriate professional help, understanding the cycle of fear and learning ways to respond differently to anxiety can be an important part of moving forward.
If agoraphobia and anxiety about leaving home are restricting your life, I've created an Overcome Agoraphobia Hypnosis MP3 to help you feel calmer, reduce anticipatory anxiety and gradually build confidence when going out.
What Does Agoraphobia Actually Feel Like?
Agoraphobia can look very different from one person to another.
For one person, it might mean being unable to use a bus or train.
Someone else may manage to leave home but only if their partner comes with them.
Another person might drive locally but become anxious at the thought of travelling beyond a familiar area.
You might avoid:
supermarkets or shopping centres
busy or crowded places
public transport
queues
cinemas, theatres or restaurants
motorways or unfamiliar journeys
being far from home
going somewhere alone
For some people, the restriction eventually becomes much greater and leaving the house itself feels frightening.
Physical anxiety can be part of the problem too. Symptoms associated with panic can include a racing heart, rapid breathing, sweating, nausea, dizziness or feeling faint.
The difficulty is that once you've experienced intense anxiety somewhere, you may begin worrying about experiencing it again.
And that can start the cycle of avoidance.
Why Does Leaving the House Start to Feel So Frightening?
Imagine that you have a panic attack while standing in a supermarket queue.
It feels awful.
Your heart races, you feel light-headed and all you want to do is get outside and go home.
Eventually you do.
The relief is enormous.
Your brain can learn something from that experience:
Supermarket = danger.
And perhaps:
Home = safety.
The next time you consider going shopping, your brain remembers what happened.
You feel anxious before you've even left home.
So perhaps you decide not to go.
Again, you feel relief.
Unfortunately, that relief can reinforce the avoidance.
Your brain doesn't get the opportunity to discover that you could have experienced anxiety and still coped with the situation.
Over time, more situations can become associated with danger.
This is one reason avoidance can become such an important part of agoraphobia. NHS information specifically describes avoiding situations associated with panic, becoming housebound or relying on a trusted person to accompany you as behavioural symptoms of the condition.
Agoraphobia Isn't Always About the Place
Sometimes people assume that if they're frightened in a supermarket, the supermarket itself must be the problem.
Often the deeper fear is what might happen while you're there.
You might fear:
"What if I panic and can't get out?"
"What if I faint?"
"What if I lose control?"
"What if everyone looks at me?"
"What if I can't get home?"
The place becomes associated with the feared experience.
That's why somebody can feel relatively calm in exactly the same environment when accompanied by a trusted person but extremely anxious when alone.
Their surroundings haven't changed.
Their sense of safety has.
How to Begin Overcoming Agoraphobia
There isn't usually one dramatic moment when agoraphobia disappears.
Progress is more often about gradually changing the relationship you have with fear and avoidance.
That doesn't mean forcing yourself into the most frightening situation you can imagine.
In fact, established treatment approaches commonly use gradual exposure, beginning with relatively manageable goals and progressing as confidence develops.
Here are some principles that may help you understand that process.
1. Start Smaller Than You Think You Should
If leaving home alone currently feels overwhelming, deciding that tomorrow you're going to spend two hours in a busy shopping centre may simply be too much.
A smaller step might be standing outside your front door.
Then walking a short distance.
Then staying outside slightly longer.
Your individual steps will depend entirely on where you are starting from.
Small progress still counts.
The objective isn't to prove that you can tolerate something terrifying.
It's to give your brain repeated opportunities to learn:
"I can experience some anxiety and still cope."
2. Expect Some Anxiety
This can sound counterintuitive.
Surely the whole point is to stop feeling anxious?
Eventually you certainly want anxiety to become less dominant, but waiting until you feel completely calm before doing something can keep you trapped.
You may find yourself thinking:
"I'll go when I feel ready."
But if going out is the very thing that triggers your anxiety, that feeling of complete readiness may never arrive.
Instead, the aim can become:
"I may feel anxious, and I can still take this small step."
That is a very different message.
3. Notice the Safety Behaviours You've Collected
People naturally develop ways of making frightening situations feel safer.
Perhaps you always carry water.
You constantly check how far you are from home.
You only go somewhere if somebody comes with you.
You sit close to an exit.
You repeatedly check your pulse.
You keep your phone in your hand.
Not every precaution is a problem, of course.
But it can be useful to notice whether you've started believing:
"I can only cope because I have this."
If so, the safety behaviour itself may have become part of the fear cycle.
This is something that can be explored carefully with an appropriate therapist rather than suddenly abandoning things that currently help you function.
4. Learn Not to Be Frightened of the Anxiety Itself
For many people, the most frightening part of agoraphobia isn't the shop, train or street.
It's the possibility of panic.
You notice your heart beating quickly and immediately think something is wrong.
That thought frightens you.
Your anxiety rises.
Your heart beats faster.
Now the physical sensation seems to confirm the frightening thought.
Learning what happens during anxiety and panic can help reduce some of this secondary fear.
NHS self-help advice for agoraphobia includes focusing on something non-threatening, slowing the breathing and remembering that the frightening sensations associated with panic will pass.
5. Bring Your Attention Back to Where You Are
Anxiety tends to pull your attention into the future.
"What if I panic in five minutes?"
"What if the queue gets longer?"
"What if I suddenly need to leave?"
Notice that none of those things is happening now.
They're predictions.
Try gently bringing your attention back to the present.
Notice something you can see.
Feel your feet against the ground.
Listen to the sounds around you.
Allow your breathing to settle rather than constantly checking whether you're becoming anxious.
You aren't trying to convince yourself that nothing uncomfortable could happen.
You're reminding yourself to deal with what is actually happening, rather than every frightening possibility your mind can produce.
6. Don't Turn a Difficult Day Into Failure
Progress with anxiety is rarely perfectly smooth.
You might manage something several times and then suddenly have a difficult experience.
Perhaps you leave a shop earlier than you intended.
Perhaps you have a panic attack.
Perhaps one day you simply can't face doing what you planned.
It is very easy to interpret this as:
"I'm back to square one."
You're not.
One difficult experience doesn't erase the progress you've already made.
Instead ask:
What did I manage?
What made today harder?
What would be a reasonable next step?
Progress matters more than perfection.
What If I'm Afraid to Leave the House Alone?
This can be particularly difficult because another person may have become part of your sense of safety.
Perhaps you can go almost anywhere with your partner but struggle to walk to the end of the road alone.
Again, the answer isn't necessarily to remove all support immediately.
You might begin with very small periods of independence.
Perhaps your companion walks part of the way rather than the entire journey.
Perhaps you go into a shop alone while they wait outside.
Perhaps you make one familiar short journey independently.
The appropriate steps will vary considerably from person to person, and if your agoraphobia is significantly affecting your life, professional guidance can be particularly valuable.
What If I've Become Almost Completely Housebound?
If agoraphobia has reached the point where leaving home is extremely difficult or impossible, you don't have to solve the problem entirely by yourself.
Speak to your GP or another appropriate healthcare professional.
Importantly, being unable to attend a GP surgery doesn't necessarily prevent you from asking for help. NHS guidance says that if you are unable to visit your GP in person, it should be possible to arrange a telephone consultation.
NHS Talking Therapies can also provide access to psychological therapies, and CBT is an established treatment for panic disorder with or without agoraphobia.
Getting help doesn't mean you've failed to overcome the problem yourself.
It means you're giving yourself more support to do it.
Can Self-Hypnosis Help With Agoraphobia?
Self-hypnosis shouldn't be presented as a replacement for established treatment for agoraphobia.
Where I believe it can have a useful supportive role is in helping you work with some of the anxiety and anticipatory thinking that can surround leaving home and entering feared situations.
You may have mentally rehearsed frightening outcomes hundreds of times:
"I'll panic."
"I won't cope."
"I won't be able to get back."
"Something terrible will happen."
Hypnosis can provide an opportunity to practise something different — becoming physically calmer, imagining yourself taking manageable steps, responding differently to anxious sensations and mentally rehearsing coping rather than catastrophe.
Relaxation itself also has a recognised place in managing agoraphobia; NHS guidance includes applied relaxation among the approaches used for the condition.
I've created a Self-Hypnosis for Agoraphobia recording to provide this kind of supportive help for people working towards feeling calmer and more confident when leaving home and entering situations they have been avoiding.
If you're currently receiving treatment, self-hypnosis should complement rather than replace the advice and treatment provided by your healthcare professional.
Your World Can Become Larger Again
One of the hardest things about agoraphobia is how gradually it can take things away.
One avoided journey becomes several.
One uncomfortable shop becomes every busy shop.
Going out alone becomes going out only with somebody else.
Eventually home can begin to feel like the only truly safe place.
But avoidance is a learned pattern, and patterns can change.
You don't have to go from being frightened to leave home to travelling anywhere without anxiety overnight.
Progress might begin with something that appears very small to everybody else.
Opening the door.
Walking to the gate.
Going around the block.
Entering the shop.
Staying another minute.
Doing something alone that you normally only do with somebody beside you.
Those steps aren't insignificant.
They're how a restricted world can gradually begin to open up again.
