Do you ever worry about the pace of your recovery from agoraphobia? Do you ever say to yourself: “At this rate, it could take forever to get my life back?”

When first trying to overcome irrational fear and anxiety it can feel like maximum efforts lead to only minimal results. If you feel this way, you are in good company.

I would be embarrassed to to tell you exactly how long it took for me to make it to the end of my driveway to get the mail without being overcome by a panic attack. I remember thinking: “If it takes this long to make 20 yards of progress, then I will be about 100 years old when I finally return to work or school.”

This sort of thinking can be demoralizing when you are working hard to overcome agoraphobia. In fact, it can make you feel like giving up. But knowing what to expect in the normal course of recovery from agoraphobia can help you avoid being derailed by discouraging thoughts and stay on the most direct path to freedom from fear.

Here are 5 Laws of Recovery from Agoraphobia that summarize what you can expect in the typical course of recovery from agoraphobia:

Law 1: The Law of Time:

It takes an average of 12-16 weeks to see significant progress if you are faithfully following a cognitive-behavioral treatment program.

Law 2: The Law of Momentum:

When it comes to recovery from agoraphobia, intitial progress will be harder to attain than later progress. In other words, things get easier and recover goes faster with time.

Law 3: The Law of Consistency:

No one heroic effort will set you free from agoraphobia. Freedom comes from practicing lots of little things every day.

Law 4: The Law of Inconsistency:

Don’t expect progress to be all forward. The road to recovery has its ups and downs, but a bad day does not mean you are further away from recovery than the day before.

Law 5: The Law of Aftershocks:

Expect to have some late panic attacks even after you are recovered. Most people do. This does not mean you will get agoraphobia again.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 18th, 2009 at 5:47 pm and is filed under FAQs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.