Agoraphobia Recovery Part 2: Safety Zones to Freedom

In this episode of Unbuckle Your Fears, lived experience speaker and advisor Megan Barrow, shares Part 2 of her story of Agoraphobia Recovery from working but living within safety areas and behaviours and ultimate freedom. 

Please note a content warning that Megan briefly discusses suicide.

Megan shares a ~20 year period that follows from her returning to employed work and living independently, but still living within the definition of agoraphobia. Her story highlights the rollercoaster nature of mental ill-health "recovery" and that with treatment of her clinical depression in 1998, she ultimately found the path to real freedom from panic and phobic responses, and how to push through her fears.

As always, she leaves you with a question for you to consider.

If you have any feedback, topic ideas or questions, email admin@unbuckleyourfears.com

For more information, head to https://www.unbuckleyourfears.com/

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Transcript

Megan Barrow (00:00:01):

Hi, you're listening to Unbuckle Your Fears. I'm Megan Barrow and I'm a lived experienced speaker and advisor sharing my story and experiences of agoraphobia, anxiety, panic, and phobic disorders, depression, suicide, and complex trauma. This episode is part two on my agoraphobia recovery. But before I begin, just want to do a bit of housekeeping. First, I'd like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people as the traditional owners of the land I'm coming from today, which is Melbourne, Australia. And I'd love if you could help support my advocacy and podcast. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and give me a rating. And you can also follow me on Instagram @unbuckleyourfears. That's where I mainly post on my mental health. And if you want to check out any other information, you can head to my website, unbuckleyourfears.com. I'll pop the details in the description. That website might change over time. So if you're listening to me in the future, I will make sure that I redirect this URL if it does change.

(00:01:21):

So let's get started. So if you checked out episode three, I talked about my agoraphobia recovery treatment and journey. I've got no other better word than journey. I don't necessarily love the word journey, but you get the gist. But I talked about the period which was probably 1995 through to about the year 2000. So it was five years and it was that period of agoraphobia. I didn't do a lot of detail on that and I might do a separate podcast on that if that's helpful. Let me think about it or please give me some feedback if you'd like to hear more on that. But it was mainly about how I went from being housebound, completely housebound, to the point that I was couchbound in reality to working independently.

(00:02:22):

And I had bought an apartment and was living on my own. So I was really living independently. Now in that episode, I talked that I would separate my recovery into two parts because in 2000 I was working and living independently. I was going out and socializing. I was single. I was going on a few dates here and there. But in reality, even though I described myself as agoraphobic free, I really wasn't. And that was mainly because I defined agoraphobia as being housebound. So from where I'd come, I was doing incredible and it was a really exciting time of my life. So in the last episode I also mentioned that recovery and facing the fears of agoraphobia or any phobia is terrifying and that there's no easy way out and that I'll reiterate that the hardest thing I have to tell people when they ask me, "What are your tips?" Is that I have to say, be prepared that it's difficult, it's terrifying.

(00:03:59):

But I always want to caveat that with it's worth it. It's exhilarating. And this time of my life, I was so proud of myself and so happy and I was really grateful and enjoying life. But in retrospect, and I did know it at the time, I had major limitations. So I was working quite close to where I lived. At that point in 2000, I actually could walk to my job. Now I didn't design that deliberately, but I was probably about, I'm hopeless with distance, but probably 10Ks from where I had been living with my mom and it was an area I knew quite well. So for those in Melbourne that understand if this is helpful, for those outside of Melbourne, it won't mean anything, but I sort of grew up in Surry Hills. We then had to move to Blackburn North and then I ended up in Hawthorne and I was working in Hawthorne at a major well-known private school, but most of my activities stayed within the precinct that I knew.

(00:05:30):

So I really wasn't traveling much more than my safety zones to my mom to my workplace and some shops and major shopping strips in that area. If I needed to go elsewhere, it was very much dependent on someone driving me.

(00:05:54):

I was actually going out a bit. I would meet my, my sister worked in the city, sorry, and she is a social butterfly and she would invite me in to come and meet her and her workmates after hours on a Friday night. I'd go in and have some drinks and have some fun. My sister was actually really good at encouraging me to get out at night. I think I mentioned, well, I did in the last episode that I was socializing a lot with my work colleagues. When I moved into my second job, that kind of culture of, because it was also a private school probably, it was just a different demographic so we weren't necessarily going out as much. So it was a very different culture and I still would catch up with those people from my previous workplace and old friends, but I probably started to quieten a little bit and then my sister went overseas for four years.

(00:07:02):

So as I even say this, I can kind of see how it's quite natural that even my going into the city started to decline as people I knew weren't really in there and encouraging me out. So there was an incident when I was driving to my mom's place one day where I had a major panic attack, which really freaked me out and jittered my driving. My driving had really, I'd really done well with my driving. I was feeling really confident driving and sort of expanding the comfort zones a little bit, even though I was still quite in those let's inverted commas safety areas.

(00:07:52):

But other than that, I was doing quite well, but as I say, keeping within areas that I felt comfortable with. Hey, I'd come from housebound agoraphobia, living independently was massive. I was doing prety well. So when I moved into my third job and again, so you can sort of ... I've got this image. I'm very visual everything. I don't know if that's also trauma. I have very visual reactions. So in my brain, I've got this image of I want to look for another job. I've got the paper out in those days, so we're looking at 2001 probably. We're doing papers really at that point, even though the internet's sort of becoming a beast, but I have to look for jobs that are in my area. I very much know that the thought of traveling into the city is a bit much for me at this point.

(00:08:51):

I still see it as a goal, but at this point I'm like, let's try and find another job not too far away, which I did.

(00:09:00):

So that was all going well until it wasn't. So in this workplace, I encountered my first bout of bullying in the workplace. There's a whole discussion right now in Australia, especially Melbourne or Victoria. There's new legislation on psychosocial hazards and the safety that workplaces need to look after people's not only physical health and the dangers of ensuring that there's a safe workplace in terms of physical hazards, but they also need to look after people psychologically. Now, let's just say this place would have failed and it wasn't just me, but with my background of trauma and mental ill health, I was a bit more susceptible to the effects of it. And what's really interesting, again, in the previous episode in episode three, I discussed that I did a working group before I start in between the agoraphobia, my treatment with my psychiatrist and my first job, I did this little work course for better want of a work, just a short, short term sort of course workshop.

(00:10:32):

And one of the facilitators, I remember him talking to me and I was talking about my ill health and the agoraphobia and he was asking how he could help me and I think I even mentioned in that episode how he actually helped me drive into one of my doctor sessions to sort of help practice my driving. And I talked about the breakdown that I had and he asked what would happen if that happened again. And I said, look, I just can't see how that could happen again. There's no real replication of that.

(00:11:20):

Now I understand because PTSD is something I'm only really diving into in the last four or five years, believe it or not. I probably just didn't have the spoons to sort of dig into it. I was in denial and lots of other things and it was also a coping mechanism not to dive into it, but I now realize with understanding trauma more and more that it's not as simple as replicating that this person was abusing me and making my life hell in a workplace and other situations. It was just anything that would remind me of that so that could cause harm to me psychologically. So this third workplace, I was there for about two years, but in the end the bullying became so bad that I was brought into a meeting without any knowledge or preparedness and had two managers talking to me with authority and parading me about some sick leave.

(00:12:38):

And anyway, long story short, I was like, "I'm done. I resign." And I just walked out of there. They were like shocked, but they tell me, "You're not resigning." I said, "Yeah, I'll resign and don't worry about it. " So I walked out, but what happened there is that it just opened a seed of major anxiety. So what was happening even before that is with the bullying and there was a new manager who'd started who was just horrible, other people in the place also did not enjoy them for better off. They weren't good and had no management skills and were essentially bullying. And I'm just remembering that the days it was only maybe a five to 10 minute drive from where I lived, so I could have even walked, but I was finding that short drive that was actually quite an easy drive, no major intersections or anything like that.

(00:13:40):

It was the agoraphobia girls perfect drive. I just was struggling even doing it, that I was starting to have panic attacks when I was driving that short distance and was trying to find more and more side streets to avoid any traffic or being stuck anywhere. And I even remember on one of the ... There was a traffic light that I just had to ... There was no way around it. I would have to do a traffic light to get into my street and people who know Hawthorne, it's kind of getting inner city so there's a few roads that even though they're not big, they're still very busy, especially in peak hour and I was literally like driving down this road would pull over to just before where the traffic light was and then trying time when the lights would change to green and try and get in there so I wouldn't be in the traffic queue to go through the red light and just pray that I wouldn't get stuck at the red light.

(00:14:59):

So yeah, I don't even know if that makes sense, but yeah the thought of being stuck in traffic and having people behind me and freaking out just was just horrible. So I was really starting to get a lot of phobic thinking back.

(00:15:24):

So after leaving this job, I got another job quite quickly. I never struggled getting jobs and I never really struggled with interviews even. So I got another job. It was further away, but still not going into the city, it was still sort of going still in my kind of area. It was probably a 20 minute drive I started there. They were lovely, but they were also at a time, strangely I got this job and there was all these redundancies around me. So they were wanting people to ... They had cashflow problems. It was a big organization. It was a public government organization and I'm like, "Why did you hire me? And now you're like literally everyone in my department left." I was like, "Why did you hire when you needed to get rid of people? " But by the by. So it was actually a very stressful environment, but the people, it was a small team in this organization that I worked with, they were lovely ads.

(00:16:22):

They were amazing, but what I was finding is that drive to and from was just terrifying. So I felt like I was starting to go backwards a bit and it was really terrifying me, but I kept hustling. The thought of going back to agoraphobia was a no-go. I just couldn't do it. I thought if I go back, I don't know how I'll do it again. It's almost like I know how hard it is to recover. I just can't do that again. And my heart goes out to people because I know there are people that tap in and out of housebound agorphobia and I get it. It's just horrible.

(00:17:11):

So I really just white knuckled going into this job every day. Now there were obviously some sick days in there. I'd just be too exhausted some days, but with this exhaustion meant that other areas of my life also started to get worse. I was there for about 10 months and there's a few stories I could tell you, but as examples of how I wasn' coping, but let's hopefully this podcast will go a long time and there's lots ... I've got so many stories, guys, so many stories. So I could do a whole episode on just the different workplaces really.

(00:18:02):

But long story short, the role ended up being made redundant, but I was quite happy to leave. I wasn't loving the work itself and the timing was they were going to move into the city. So I was already, they were closing down this suburban office because of their cashflow problems and bring everyone into the main city office and I was like, "I don't know that I'm going to be able to do it. " So at this point I had not used any public transport so I really wasn't doing much, like I say, I wasn't even using public transport in my area. So it's quite a surreal time looking back at that I'm calling myself as recovered from agoraphobia, yet today I can see just how much I wasn't.

(00:19:00):

Anyway, so I was given a payout which gave me probably two months to find another job and I found another job quite quickly. It was actually end of year so I took time off over Christmas and I found a job quite quickly and by January, February, I was in this new job and in my speech ... So I do speeches with Beyond Blue, which is a really well known mental health organization in Australia and I've got my speech in my head where I say at my next job, it's a public hospital, it's huge and it was. But again, it's out in the suburbs. Again, that was probably a 20 to 30 minute drive, maybe a 20 minute drive and it's probably, it was kind of going between me and my mom's place. So in Blackburn North, she still was. So for people in Melbourne, you're going to possibly work out where it is, but I won't name them, but it was amazing, but also terrifying.

(00:20:11):

So that first year especially was incredibly difficult. So pretty much every day I was panicking driving home to the point that I ended up packing up me and my cat a few days a week and living with my mom. And even at some points I would just do a nigh at mom's and a night at home and leave my poor cat just in the apartment in Hawthorne, but I was not coping on my own. It was just a relief and I was still panicking driving to my mom's place, but it was a shorter drive and I think it was the comfort of knowing my mom would be coming home, wasn't alone and even just possibly that someone would be making a meal for me or I'd make a meal for her and she would clean up. So just that shared responsibilities rather than the full independence was just getting a bit much for me alongside the white knuckling of just working.

(00:21:29):

So in this public hospital, I had to do things like go and get milk for the department, but it would be a journey to go to the hospital kitchen, which was I was kind of in an admin building and then there was the main hospital and some days I'd be terrified just to do a five minute walk. We were up on level three going down the three levels and going walking down a walkway into the main public hospital and waiting for someone in the kitchen to see me and I would have images of me in the kitchen fainting, that's just all. And it was also really confronting to be in the public hospital. So I didn't see too many patients, but of course there'd be doctors and nurses sort of wheeling people around and it was all a bit too confronting. So if I could just stay in my litle office area in the admin building, I was very happy.

(00:22:32):

Ironically, I was also helping run marketing events or events.

(00:22:41):

I loved the work. I loved my department. I was really open with my team about my mental health and that's something I haven't really talked about that I was in all the jobs up to this point actually. And again, there was good, bad, and horrible regarding that. Again, another episode, I think. I think that's a whole other topic. But in that timeframe, in this first year at this job, I decided that I would sell my apartment and buy somewhere else. I was kind of over this apartment. I knew I had probably made a nice little profit real estate in Australia at that time was going ridiculously well as it still is. So I'd got in, even though I felt high at the time, I had got in kind of at the right time and decided to sell and find something a bit bigger in a different area strategically.

(00:24:01):

Again, let's be honest, my agoraphobia and my phobic thinking definitely determined the areas I was going to look at. I needed to feel comfortable. I needed it to be an easy distance from where I was working. I needed it to be an easy distance from my mom so I could still visit her.

(00:24:25):

I just needed to feel comfortable. So I did find a place, a place I'm still at 23, 22, three years later. So yep, I found a place, a two bedroom, but of course what do they say? Some of the most stressful things you can do is moving and selling. So yeah, that was a pretty stressful time and I'm on my own and only my mom was in Australia. All my other family was overseas at the time so I really didn't have a lot of support. I had a really great friend at the time who was a great support, but yeah, obviously doing an auction and then that did well and then trying to find a place and marrying up, moving in and moving out and all those sort of things, but it all worked out and I settled into this new place and what was great for me is that I no longer had to drive to my work.

(00:25:40):

I could actually walk. So I did not just buy because of that. It's actually a beautiful place. Like I said, I'm still here, but that certainly helped ease my huge anxiety and panic working at this place. I started to settle in. I started to get confident in my work. It was actually quite a not complicated role, but there was a lot to it and I had no handover of any sort and no one there knew anything about what the previous person had done. I was really starting to step into marketing at this point. I was still considered an admin role, but I was definitely progressing my career and that place was even great that they encouraged me to go off and get sort of trained ... I went off and did a diploma in marketing and it started with doing a free cert four within the hospital.

(00:26:46):

Obviously I killed it with those things just because my experience. So it was great. Again, I will say until it wasn't and it wasn't necessarily them in my fifth year and again, I have my speech in my head that where I say I just notice regular sadness coming into my life and it'd probably been creeping a while and it was definitely a time, even though I was feeling more confident in the workplace, my independence really over the last five years had really decreased to the point that even when I was still in the apartment that I would put the alarm on a Sunday to get up around 6:30 AM to go shopping at the supermarket when I knew it would be like so quiet.

(00:27:59):

So I was avoiding anything that might produce a phobic response, crowds, cues, traffic, anything where I felt like I might be stuck and have a panic attack. I was doing my utmost to avoid panic attacks again. So really getting back into that agoraphobic mindset. It's just that I'm not lying on a couch and at this point I don't necessarily think I'm going to have a heart attack and die, but I still think something bad's going to happen even if it is just panic attack, but you have all those what if thoughts. So all that CBT training, all that exposure therapy and at this point I was only seeing that amazing psychiatrist maybe twice a year to do my script refills and good question when I'm sure you're asking, but why? Why didn't you go back and see him? And I think I was so terrified of the reality I was going backwards, I couldn't even articulate it to anyone.

(00:29:10):

So I was just masking up to myself and the world that I was still free of agoraphobia, even though all the signs were there that I was going backwards drastically. So at this hospital, I even remember there was some amazing ... I just stuffed up any social networking. There was some people in another department that would say, "Hey, do you want to go out? " We'd sort of chat in the corridor and she'd be like, "I'm going out with some friends. Do you want to join us?" And I would just say, "No, I'm busy. I had nothing on. " And of course, when you say no a few times, people think you don't want to, and I didn't explain why I wasn't doing these things. The department I was with, most of my colleagues were married with kids a little bit older or a lot older.

(00:30:10):

The few times we'd go out, most people knew I didn't really drive so they would help me get to places if need be. But most of our socializing would be lunches, not far from where we were, so we'd tend to sort of walk up somewhere. So in between a lunch break or whatever. But yeah, I was starting to feel real sadness come in and I'd just have image of me sort of washing the dishes and bawling my eyes out, just thinking about stuff, revisiting the past, probably a lot of trauma sitting there. But what was happening is I was just starting to not cope at work as well. So I would sort of break down a bit more easily or break down like I wasn't normally breaking down. So I ended up thinking, right, I need to go and see my GP and maybe it's time to see that old psychologist who I hadn't seen in gee, 10 years.

(00:31:15):

So I wasn't thinking to go and see my doctor, my psychiatrist. So I went to my GP, so at this point I've been seeing her for about 10 years as well. And I said, "Oh look, I think I'm sort of heading towards a bit of depression. I think maybe if I go and see that old psych, if you can give me a referral, I just want to try and nip this in the bud." And we did the old, I think it's the Q10, I've forgotten what it's called, but she's like, "Look, let's fill this in. Let's go through some of the symptoms." And she's like, "Oh, you're depressed." And I broke down. I did not want to hear this. She's like, "Yeah, you have depression." She's like, "Right, I don't want to manage this because you've got an amazing psychiatrist. I want you to go make an appointment with your psychiatrist.

(00:32:13):

I'm giving you a week off work. So you're just going to go home. Go and see your doctor." The psychologist ... I don't know. "The psychologist is not for you at this point. I want you to see Dr. M. I'm going to call him Dr. M. That's what I call him in my speeches. "So got him to see him the next week. I couldn't get in. At this point I was no longer driving or seeing him independently. My mom would take me. So that's something else I haven't mentioned that for the last five years, I'm probably having to coordinate seeing him when my mom could take me. So again, that was sort of probably also a reason I wasn't seeing him regularly. But got in and saw him. I actually started back at work the next Monday and said," Look, I need to go and see.

(00:33:11):

I've got an appointment tomorrow. I'll be in late. "So here I am a bit sort of just not thinking about it. Had the week off thinking, okay, everything will be okay. Saw him. I said," Oh look, I think I have depression. My GP thinks I have depression. "And he's like, " Do you? "He's just, " Okay, let me suss this out. "He was very good in terms of, " Let's not diagnose ourselves. Let me take over. "And again, we did the same K-10, I've forgotten again, but we went through the symptoms and he didn't even say anything. He looked at it. He's like, " Right. "Oh no, I think we actually, actually we talked about it and I think he must have realized what was happening and a content warning and I will put a content warning on the description because I was suicidal.

(00:34:17):

Yeah, actually some thoughts are coming back to me as even I relive this. It's funny because in the last episode I said I was getting a bit emotional telling the story and there's something really personal about sharing this story one-to-one. It's like I'm just sitting here talking to you. But yeah, even before, just remembering before I even went to my GP, I'd rung my mum and said I wasn't doing well. And I can't remember if I articulated that I wanted to end my life, but let's just say the support around me at that time wasn't great. I don't think anyone in my family really understood the gravity of it. So in this appointment with Dr. M after us talking, he then handed me the K-10, the checklist to go through and rate where I was at. He said," Look, I'm just going to get up.

(00:35:24):

I'm just going to have a chat with your mom. "So, oh, okay. He had never done that before. He'd either bring her in. Yeah, only the few times that he spoke to her, he brought her in and we spoke altogether. So he went out and I couldn't hear what they were saying. I could hear talking, but I couldn't hear what they were saying. And he came back in and he didn't even look at what my ratings and what I'd written down on this checklist were. He knew that I was depressed and he's like, " Right. Okay, I'm going to put you on some medication.

(00:36:02):

It's going to take again his upfront honesty about expectations, just like he had with that original medication when I was agoraphobic. He said, "You're probably going to feel rotten for about two, three weeks. You're going to feel really nauseous, but then you'll start feeling better." He's like, "Just stick with it. You just have to stick with it. Well, you're going to come in here weekly. We're not going to make any decisions. You're going to come in and we're going to touch base with how you're going. " Or it might have been fortnightly actually. But also he said, "You're sorted with your mum. You're going to go home with your mom." I think he told me, "But you're going to go home with your mom. Your mom understands. I just want you having some care at the moment.

(00:37:01):

I'm going to get your GP to write another sick leave certificate for two weeks. Now there is a point to me telling you all this, so bear with me. " And from there, I'm just going to make up. I'm going to play by you in terms of when you'll go back to work. So okay. So I went and spoke to my manager and she knew my mental health background and I was honest with her and I shouldn't have been. It's the moral to the story. I told her that to see my psychiatrist, I do have clinical depression. I've got another sick leave at this point. I dropped into my GP, the certificate was there.

(00:38:08):

GP rang me, asked what was happening, asked about the medication. So we talked so that she was on the same page and I said, "He wants you to do the certificate." And that was so it could be private because he knew that if he wrote the certificate, it would look like a mental health issue. He didn't want me saying it was a mental health issue, but me believing that I trust and support from my team, I told the truth. Anyway, gave her the certificate, the manager and said, "Look, I'm off for two weeks." She said, "When will you be back?" And I said, "He won't tell me. He just said that I have to see him in two weeks and then he'll make a decision." So this went on for six weeks. I saw him another two times I think at least once obviously. It must have been more often than fortnightly, whatever it was.

(00:39:07):

I definitely went back a couple of times.

(00:39:13):

What happened was, and I'm not going to go into the depression again, this is early stages of this podcast, guys. So there is so much I want to do in more detail and these episodes will become a lot shorter because I'll have talked about a lot of other things, but I think the depression warrants a whole other episode. But let's just summarize that within a few weeks I was really lucky this medication really had a profound effect on me. So I felt like for the first time I understood what a normal brain felt like. And with that, not only did the depression start evaporating, so did that extreme anxiety. So this medication, which I'm still on today at a lower dose, but I'm still on today was a game changer, not just for my depression, but for my anxiety and panic and phobic disorders.

(00:40:23):

But before that, look, that week at my mom's was horrible. I don't remember much of it. Depression is just pure despair. I was exhausted. I couldn't eat, lost heaps of weight. I would sleep all day, couldn't sleep at night. I was just all over the place. I did go back and see my psychologist at the same time when I asked my psychiatrist if I could. He said, "If you think that's helpful, go for it. " And she was great just sort of talking about, just having chats, more detailed chats about things. So anyway, each fortnight, the second round of giving the certificate, so for the weeks three and four, I noticed that my manager was getting a little bit less patient between weeks four and six the patients had gone and I remember thinking I was ready for work after four weeks, but my psychiatrist was like, "No, we're going to keep you on leave." Maybe he knew how hard things would be.

(00:41:40):

So I rang after six weeks and said I had a return to work plan from my psychiatrist to ease back into work so I wasn't returning full-time. I started part-time and then transitioned back into full-time. But long story short, on my return it was not good. So that's a whole other episode, like I say, talking about psychosocial and just working with mental health and my experiences as an employee and the very treatment I had, but it was not good. I had some great support there, but I had some horrible support there or no support there and treatment. I quickly left that job.

(00:42:29):

From there, I had a few other jobs before starting my own marketing consulting business, which I've now been doing for 14 years. But the moral of the story and talking about this is, and I'm not saying this as advice, I'm simply sharing my lived experience, but what happened was when I got on the right medication, my life changed, but again, it was kind of in stages. So this would be 2008 and from here my date knowledge gets a bit wonky, but I was still struggling with things, but what I found was that I had a different mindset to be able to take, to return to where I was in the early days of agoraphobia recovery. So in the years 97 to 2000, before I started to decline again because of life and situations and trauma responses, I was able to recapture that stuff pretty quickly, but then over the years I was then able to push myself and into pushing myself outside comfort zones.

(00:44:06):

So even though I was still struggling with driving, because after the hospital, I got one job very short term and then got another job. Again, it was still in areas that I could drive to. This one was probably also another 20 minute drive, but it was in an area I hadn't worked in before and didn't know that well, but I felt comfortable driving, but still a bit nervous in that peak hour traffic, but sort of major traffic, traffic lights, didn't love it, but did it. I did have a very strong, important relationship in that time and we were getting into the horrible habit of him driving me to and from work. Then when we broke up, it was possibly a blessing in disguise because I possibly would have got into a lovely habit of just going backwards in my driving. So he loved driving. So he would drive places.

(00:45:11):

I remember even one time wanting to go shopping somewhere and I said, "I'll drive." And he was shocked. I said, "No, no, no, I want to drive. Let me practice." And he was thrilled. But yeah, I was starting to say, "Look, I wanted to start taking the reins again." But in this job we were on a tram line and my boss, the guy I directly worked with, loved tramps. He was always on the tram. And so guess what I ended up doing for the first time in 20 years I got on a tram first with him and I think we all went as a team for Christmas lunch in the city and I'm like, "I haven't done this. " I couldn't even remember being in the city without my mom or someone like that to go and see something like at a theater or something or a comedy festival or whatever it was.

(00:46:10):

I hadn't been in the city sort of wandering around in high heels and having a few drinks and on a tram in so long.

(00:46:21):

And then I remember one day he was in the city, he'd forgotten something and he rang me and said, "Can you jump on a tram and bring that into me? " And I'm thinking, "Oh my God, I've never done a tram by myself. Oh my goodness." But I think we'd done it as a group, but I was like, "Okay." And I was terrified, but I was like, "I just have to do it. He's relying on me bringing this in. " So I went on these trams and I'm navigating my way around the city and I've just completely forgotten where the streets were and all that stuff now, it's just so interesting to think about.

(00:46:56):

And now for perspective, my house is literally a minute walk from a tram line and tram stop. So I hadn't even used that in the five years I'd been living in this place to that point. Anyway, so yeah, I was really starting to grow in confidence, but what was the big changer was actually when I started my own consulting business. So on the surface it might seem like, "Oh, that must be really good for your anxiety because you can work from home and you don't have to go into the office all the time and you can avoid all that peak hour traffic and blah, blah, blah." Well, I knew it'd be the complete opposite and the boss that I just referred to, the tram guy at this other place, he was the one who encouraged me to start my own business. I'd left that business again, they'd been bullying, not a good environment in the end.

(00:47:56):

He was great, but we couldn't work the office politics out. So I went somewhere else for a short time and he's like, "You should just start your own thing. You're really good at marketing and giving advice and blah, blah." And when we were talking about, so we'd catch up with coffees and have these chats about how would I leave this workplace and start my own business. And he's like, "But how would you get to clients? How would you ... " I was like, "Oh, there's taxi everywhere." And he was like, "Okay." He's like, "But that will get expensive and so that's all right, cost of time I'll work in the taxi and blah, blah, blah." Obviously that is unrealistic, but what ended up happening is the first year or two of starting my consulting business was incredibly hard and I avoided a lot and even though I wanted to do it, I started with no clients.

(00:48:55):

I wasn't gifted a client list. I didn't leverage off someone else or a business partner or an old boss. The idea was that we would work together, but that didn't pan out because of health issues with him. I remember being at the two year mark and I was kind of meeting a few people, but it'd be really hard, but to do that, I just had to start traveling on my own and I was doing a lot of networking sessions and meeting other business owners and I just had to go out there and meet people. So guess what I ended up doing? I started to like tram places and then a friend loved a train so we would jump on train to get to places and I started to become comfortable with that and I was just sort of pushing past all these areas that I'd avoided for like 10, 15, 20 years and through doing it just becomes normal.

(00:50:01):

I remember sort of rushing off to a tram one day and thinking how I'm no longer thinking about panicking. And then I remember driving to my mom's and at a traffic light and at one point in that period where things were going bad, I would like work out every ... I would take twice as long to get to my mom's place because I would use every side street possible and all of a sudden I'm sitting at a traffic light and I'm like, hasn't occurred to me. It has not occurred to me to panic. And I just thought about those days where it felt like I was white knuckling everything and that I would never feel normal, that I would never not feel panicky to do these things and all of a sudden it hadn't occurred to me that I was living free of feeling fear.

(00:51:02):

Now that doesn't mean that I still didn't feel fear I did, but everyday living was different. I was just doing it and that's pretty much where I am today.

(00:51:20):

Now I will do another episode again. How many times have I mentioned that there are so many tangents for me to do other episodes? So that's my commitment that I will keep going with this. But there has certainly been periods where hormones have really played. I'm 54, so I've been through perimenopause and menopause, which is really difficult with hormones and anxiety. And we also went through a pandemic, right? And in Melbourne, for those who don't know, we had some of the most severe lockdowns in the world. So I was able to bunker into my home. I didn't mind it like I was bunkering in, but even when you sort of headed out, it was so quiet because everyone was bunkered down. So when that sort of lifted, it was a real shock to the system to get back out to the hustle and bustle.

(00:52:22):

So the moral to all of this, I guess my key takeaway for you, and there's a lot more detail I could get into, but again, all these stories will come out over time. What I really want you to take away with you for those that are struggling with panic disorder and agoraphobia or really severe anxiety, I kind of now don't even say I have anxiety disorder because I think the theory on it, people's understanding of it is just not what I live. I have panic disorder and phobic disorder and I've had anxiety my entire life. So for people that are in that stage where they feel like they have no peace in their life, they may not be able to leave the house. If you are a couch band like I was or if you're like where I was 15 years ago where you kind of are living but you really got your safety zone or you can't do some things because of fear, I want you to really take away that my explanation and my story really summarizing my agoraphobia recovery has gone over two episodes in two different stages and that it's taken decades.

(00:53:58):

There are still things that I can't do. My driving is not great. I don't drive on freeways. Now I kind of think I'm not going to do it, but you never know, but I'm over even worrying about it at this point, but there are still things that I do and I still get scared by or I sort of need support systems around me or I need to tell someone, "Hey, I might panic here. I probably won't, but all the stuff that a lot of theories say don't do. Well, whatever, dudes, like whatever." So I want you to really understand that when you see me, when you look at my unbuckle, your fears, posts, and my Instagram posts are very much, I'm not here to, as I've said before, I'm not here to share theory. There's theory everywhere. There's lots of people who do it really well.

(00:55:02):

I'm here to be living proof that you can live with panic disorder and live well. You can live with some phobic responses and still be independent. You can have anxiety and thrive.

(00:55:20):

None of this has to be a barrier to living well, happily and healthy. Some days are harder than others, some days are easy. Some days I don't even think about any of it. Some days it's all I think about, but I keep going. That's my motto. Keep going day by day. So I want you to have that perspective. Now it might seem daunting to say, "Oh my God, I'm starting this and that chick on that Unbuckle Your Fears podcast that it's going to take 20 years." No, no, no, no. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying that at all and everyone's different. What I'm saying is give yourself time and don't expect it to happen in a month, in a year that just keep going, keep chipping away. Don't give up, keep chipping away and I'm chipping away myself. And when there are things that I have done even say 10 years ago and I've got a bit jittered because of hormones and COVID and all that and I'm not used to doing it again, I pick myself up and chip away and say, "Okay, I'm going to be nervous doing this again.

(00:56:32):

Remember 10 years ago when I could go to a gig and I didn't even think about panicking?" Well, now I think about panicking, but it's all right, I'm doing it. That's great.

(00:56:44):

So the question I want to leave you with today and it will be different for different people depending on where you're at in your health journey. But I want you to think about the two parts that I've done on agoraphobia recovery and how essentially I reset what my comfort zones were and I still do to this day and what they are to push through, what I need to push through. So always when I get to a point of comfort and that's a great way to live, but is there something I actually truly want to do and achieve, then let's do it. Look what I've achieved in the past. So as I've briefly mentioned, I'm a speaker. I've been doing public speeches for 12 years. You don't think that's terrifying, but I decided, "Hey, I'm living quite well. I want to go out there and share my story and help people, save people from the journey I've been on, give people hope that you can live with anxiety and agoraphobia and recover from depression and all those things and to keep going and push through suicidal thinking, that the moments in time that you can be well and live well,That was me resetting what I wanted to achieve.

(00:58:19):

So have a think, have a think. Where are you at now? Maybe you pushing outside that comfort zone is just your original goal, like what I talked about, what I challenged you with in the last episode, but maybe you're doing really well and you're just listening to this out of interest, but what's something that you wish you were doing? Go and do it. Maybe it's something that should be fun but you're a bit nervous. Maybe it's a gym class. Maybe it's an art class. Maybe it's going on speed dating. Maybe it's going traveling on your own.

(00:58:57):

What is it? What do you need to do? And I'd sort of encourage you to reset that every now ... Sort of check in with yourself. Where are you at? Think about your comfort levels and comfort zones and what could I be doing? What could I be pushing? What's going to give me the dishes? But I'll feel really proud that I've just taken one step towards achieving something different. So I'll leave you with that. Thank you for listening. Again, it's been a very long episode. I hope you've beared with it and enjoy the way I tell my stories. I do want to shout out that even though as I record this live, I have not even promoted what I'm doing at this point. I want sort of to grab a few episodes together before I promote it, but people are finding it and I've had some lovely feedback.

(00:59:56):

I really do treasure feedback and hearing from people people, so please do all the details will be in the description. Please take care. Look out for another episode. I will do another and take good care of yourself. Again, follow me on @unbuckleyourfears. If you've enjoyed it, subscribe so you know when the latest episode drops and give me a rating. Take care. Bye.