Understanding the Safe Zone
For most people with agoraphobia, the safe zone is either their home or a certain distance from their home. Much literature on agoraphobia recovery is written with this assumption.
Recently, I was emailed a very good question that challenges this assumption:
“Why did I have a panic attack when I went shopping just two streets away, but on another day I traveled 1400 kilometers without having a panic attack?”
The answer to this question lies in understanding how the safe zone develops. The safe zone is not always defined as a certain distance from one’s home in all directions.
Phobias like agoraphobia develop through associations formed in the brain through experiences that are recorded as emotional memories. In other words, safe places are places in which someone with agoraphobia learns to associate safety through pleasant emotional experiences. Unsafe places are places in which a person learns to associate fear or danger through experiencing panic attacks.
In most cases, a person with agoraphobia experiences panic attacks in so many places away from home that the fear generalizes - and most places outside the home become regarded as unsafe. In other cases, the fear does not generalize and certain places are recorded in the brain as unsafe due to panic experiences, while other places remain perfectly safe.
In summary, panic attacks are most likely to occur in places where the brain has recorded a memory of panic, regardless of the distance from home. If the fear does not generalize, places in which a person has not experienced a panic attack are less likely to trigger one.