Quotes & Sayings About Agoraphobia

I'm in a caregiver's relationship with my body, a perpetual internal gauging of wellness. My spine is Hogarth's thermometer. I ascend and descend its rungs a hundred times a day, reading the mercury level. The same dis-ease speaks many languages. If you block one mouth, another will speak. The symptoms represent differently, and as I get older, my translation changes. The prescription changes. Must be vigilant. Must be my best nurse. — Jalina Mhyana

Writers tend to be addicted to houses ... We work at home, indulging the agoraphobia endemic to our kind. We are immersed in our surroundings to an almost morbid degree. — Erica Jong

People with mental illnesses aren't wrapped up in themselves because they are intrinsically any more selfish than other people. Of course not. They are just feeling things that can't be ignored. Things that point the arrows inward. — Matt Haig

Those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters, for without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves we collude with it through our apathy. — J.K. Rowling

When I first read Lovecraft around 1971, and even more so when I began to read about his life, I immediately knew that I wanted to write horror stories. I had read Arthur Machen before I read Lovecraft, and I didn't have that reaction at all. It was what I sensed in Lovecraft's works and what I learned about his myth as the "recluse of Providence" that made me think, "That's for me!" I already had a grim view of existence, so there was no problem there. I was and am agoraphobic, so being reclusive was a snap. The only challenge was whether or not I could actually write horror stories. So I studied fiction writing and wrote every day for years and years until I started to get my stories accepted by small press magazines. I'm not comparing myself to Lovecraft as a person or as a writer, but the rough outline of his life gave me something to aspire to. I don't know what would have become of me if I hadn't discovered Lovecraft. — Thomas Ligotti

On the other hand, a neurotic fear, such as agoraphobia, cannot be cured by philosophical understanding. However, logotherapy has developed a special technique to handle such cases, too. To understand what is going on whenever this technique is used, we take as a starting point a condition which is frequently observed in neurotic individuals, namely, anticipatory anxiety. It is characteristic of this fear that it produces precisely that of which the patient is afraid. An individual, for example, who is afraid of blushing when he enters a large room and faces many — Viktor E. Frankl

Agoraphobia was my quirky armor against a gregarious America ... — Florence King

A fine line separates the weary recluse from the fearful hermit. Finer still is the line between hermit and bitter misanthrope. — Dean Koontz

Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to form of mental agoraphobia and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters, they are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude through our own apathy. — J.K. Rowling

What he feared the most was that all this hiding had made it impossible for him to ever be found again. — John Corey Whaley

Outside has everything. Whenever I think of a thing now like skis or fireworks or islands or elevators or yo-yos, I have to remember they're real, they're actually happening in Outside all together. It makes my head tired. And people too, firefighters teachers burglars babies saints soccer players and all sorts, they're all really in Outside. I'm not there, though, me and Ma, we're the only ones not there. Are we still real? — Emma Donoghue

Maybe my time's running out, but at least I'm living. And if that's what it is for you, being here inside where nothing ever happens, where you think you're safe, then stay. Stay right here and you let me know how that works for you.
Bacause I'm gessing it'll never be enough. — John Corey Whaley

You can get claustrophobia and agoraphobia - a fear of wide, open spaces - simultaneously on a spacewalk. — Chris Hadfield

Being stress and anxiety free is a human preset, I just show you how to 'flick the switch' to off. Permanent stress and anxiety recovery is possible quickly and simply despite what many are told. — Charles Linden

In Separation (1973a), Bowlby puts forward a theory of agoraphobia based on the notion of anxious attachment. He sees agoraphobia, like school phobia, as an example of separation anxiety. He quotes evidence of the increased incidence of family discord in the childhoods of agoraphobics compared with controls, and suggests three possible patterns of interaction underlying the illness: role reversal between child and parent, so that the potential agoraphobic is recruited to alleviate parental separation anxiety; fears in the patient that something dreadful may happen to her mother while they are separated (often encouraged by parental threats of suicide or abandonment); and fear that something dreadful might happen to herself when away from parental protection. — Jeremy Holmes

I know nobody ever got over being afraid of the dark by never turning off the lights. — J.D. Ruskin

Solomon had good days and he had bad days, but the good had far outnumbered the bad since Lisa and Clark had started coming around. Sometimes, though, they'd show up and he's look completely exhausted, drained of all his charm and moving in slow motion. They could do that to him - the attacks. Something about the physical response to panic can drain all the energy out of a person, and it doesn't matter what causes it or how long it lasts. What Solomon had was unforgiving and sneaky and as smart as any other illness. It was like a virus or cancer that would hide just long enough to fool him into thinking it was gone. And because it showed up when it damn well pleased, he'd learned to be honest about it, knowing that embarrassment only made it worse. — John Corey Whaley

I lay on my floor crying again ... shaking. Searching for inner strength and coming up empty. My eyes burned and my mouth was dry as I sucked on air that seemed to keep getting thicker and harder to breathe. I tried to leave again, but ended up leaning my forehead against the door, feeling defeated and wishing the Grim Reaper would come for me in all his silky, black glory. — Nathan Daniels

Go to parties. You can't even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not
they dare not turn the page. The laws of mimicry
I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate this moral agoraphobia
it's the worst kind of cowardice. You can't create something without being alone. But who's trying to create here? What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress. We imitate. And we claim to love life. — Andre Gide

treatment, phobic avoidance worsens and becomes Agoraphobia. — Claude Perrier

For me, boviscopophobia (=the morbid fear of being seen as bovine) is an even stronger motive than semi-agoraphobia for staying on the ship when we're in port. — David Foster Wallace