Re: adrenal fatigue & agoraphobia?

Your social anxiety was triggered by the fight vs. flight response, WAY BACK WHEN the events that led you to become "stressed" began. For most people, it's a death, job woes/insecurity, relationship problems, a car accident injury, etc. A lot of folks also have childhood trauma, meaning poor stress-coping abilities, not looking out for your best interests, and possibly weakened adrenals already (yikes.)

Your adrenals began pumping out cortisol when the crummy event(s) happened. (You may know all of this already, ;-P) Depending on how deep into the AF jungle you are (if cortisol is low, then you are probably mid- or somewhat advanced-stage AF) the glands are either malfunctioning somewhat or malfunctioning A LOT. Either way it's a severe distortion of reality, something you're desperately trying to get back to.

When the adrenals are fatigued, you will foresee great danger by simple things like going to the grocery store and having to interact with the clerk. You may even build up (somewhat falsely now) a series of interactions with people that seem negative, because they're not sure exactly what to do with you when you look like you'd rather be climbing the walls or climbing under the rug (or both.) You appear jumpy and nervous. You already feel like you're going in danger driving to the social interaction, and people are just reflecting what you show them, so in that way it just becomes a nasty self-fulfilling prophecy.

AF sucks like that. Everyone else is doing their daily thing, and you're struggling just to get up and put on socks...it's a miserable way to exist. I'm sure Dr. Lam will offer you a way to get out of the jungle. Tweet