Yes… we are out there. Most of us can push ourselves to go out. That does not mean it was easy… it also does not mean it was not fun << Crap! Done in by the old double-negative (like “non-fiction”).
Things can be fun, and even more draining than things that are not fun. I can have fun. But it can also cause anxiety – especially if it means challenging my boundaries. And a LOT of things do that.
The BIGGEST PROBLEM is that once people see you out, they assume that’s it. To most of them, you are now cured. If you fall back, that works against you. People do not see the cost of the effort to plan, and hope to go out, on any efforts to feel… good.
We can get very easily discouraged when others expect us to make more progress now, because we did so well……… so…… why should we try so hard… again?
Ramblings of an Agoraphobe 
I’m a new follower, but I did just read your entire blog from the beginning, so I feel like I know you. I wrote ‘just’, like as if it took a few minutes, but I’ve been at it for about 2 days, I just caught up, that’s what I meant.
I don’t go out much these days either, only when I need to. It wasn’t always like that though.
As I was reading through your blog, I noticed my own thoughts and feelings change in response to the way you have changed over the months and years. I wanted to comment on many of your posts, but didn’t because I realized that the person you are today is probably different from the one who wrote the post I was reading.
But one thing which seems to have remained constant is something which I think most people struggle with, and that is a lack of self acceptance. Many people don’t receive unconditional love and acceptance as children and that sense of ‘wrongness’ gets internalized. The thing we think of as our ‘self’ never measures up to what we see around us as being ‘normal’. But our idea of who we are is only an idea, its not real. Other people’s ideas of who we are is only their idea, based on their very limited experience of what they see from the outside and what we choose to share, clouded by their own personal experiences in life.
I’m going to shut up now, because any illusions I have that I may be able to ‘help’, are just that. And anyway, its taking most of my energy these days to keep myself out of my own pit. But I will keep following your blog.
I hope you find a really really good therapist, there are not many really good ones around.
I don’t do birthdays either.
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With me it was not my parents… my older sibling was successful at everything she did, and seems to have decided she knew better how I should be, than I did. She was my “domineering parent”.
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And all such comments HELP.
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I was wondering which parent you were writing about, it was a bit confusing, but this makes it clear, thank you.
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