Agoraphobia & Social Anxiety Support Group
Agoraphobia is an anxiety disorder, often precipitated by the fear of having a panic attack in a setting from which there is no easy means of escape. As a result, sufferers of agoraphobia may avoid public and/or unfamiliar places. In severe cases, the sufferer may become confined to their home, experiencing difficulty traveling from this "safe place."
Today I went shopping and even though I felt comfortable going into the store by time I got back in the car I was ready to rush home and crawl into bed. I picked a very noisy cart and was self conscious that people noticed but I felt terrified to grab a better cart because would watch me do that too. So I suffered with the noisy cart. The whole time I felt like the noise and screaming out, 'look at this idiot!' I only picked up half of what was on my list because I wanted to get out of there. When I got into the check out line the lady in front of me had an entire cart full and she needed a price check on some items. This held up the line and people behind me were starting to complain. I felt like they were thinking I was dumb for not moving into a better line. I felt paralyzed to the spot, and that if I moved to a faster line it would just bring more attention to myself. So I stayed and felt self conscious the whole time. A guy behind me called the lady out and complained and she told him he only had a few items and go use self check out. Her comment was not addressed to me but I looked at the few items in my cart and thought she is talking about me. I felt miserable. Does anyone else have experiences like this? If so what helps you get through it?
I'm currently in therapy, and we have been working on not assuming what others are thinking. But, it will take me some time to get good at this.
When I'm out at the store, I have found that if I appear too passive, others are more likely to be rude to me in those situations. But, if I make eye contact right away, an incident is less likely to happen.
I was at the store today, and there was this couple in front of me who had 4 kids. And they made 4 separate transactions for each of the kids. This of course, took even longer. The husband mumbled something in Spanish to the wife, and she looked at me. I made eye contact back with her as if to say, I'm being nice by not saying anything with all of these transactions, you shouldn't be staring me down as if I'm doing something wrong!. I can't stand those situations when they are clearly the idiot, but they are looking at me as if I am. That's so frustrating.