How does agoraphobia form?
Agoraphobia forms when high anxiety causes the ‘what if’ thoughts which are intended to produce a risk analysis of our environemnt in order to identify a threat. So, in a room full of tigers, the mind asks a series of questions to decide the best course of action to take in order to either ‘fight’ or ‘retreat from’ danger. It is this ‘retreat from danger thought’ that causes agoraphobia. As anxiety levels grow during anxiety disorders, symptoms become more apparent and the anxiety control center in the brain ‘reads’ these symptoms as ‘the threat in the room’. You don’t know that the mind is doing this because it is entirely ‘subconscious’. Once the threat has been identified, it then makes the decision whether to FIGHT or FLEE from the threat. Of course, you can’t flee from your symptoms, so instead, we go into ‘safety seeking mode’. This is what causes agoraphobia. As we then move from place to place, your anxious mind constantly produces these risk assessments based on your CURRENT l
