I'm a girl in her first year of uni, and I'm struggling with agoraphobia.
It mainly started at the end of last year, where I contracted an awful virus. As a result, I dealt with severe nausea for a month, my worst nightmare, as it confronted me with the possibility of facing one of my worst fears, a fear of throwing up. I also had difficulty swallowing (did not eat anything besides crackers + toast for a month), and heartburn. It absolutely ruined my life. I was hoping to get into medical school, but with the virus, I was unable to attend for a while or have the best mindset for studying and my grades went downhill significantly as a result. I was also doing with family troubles at the time, particularly with my father, who was abusing my mother. I won't go into too many details now due to the character limit, but long story short: for my mother's sake, I had to force myself to get back into the swing of life sooner than I was ready, and I believe I have a lot of trauma associated with this.
Eventually, my virus healed and I was able to go around, but I realised that some things seem to have changed about me - I had difficulty eating around other people (I'd either have difficulty swallowing, or feel nauseous). I think the fact that I was so conscious about this made it much worse. Nonetheless, I was still able to go out and about. But ever since coronavirus + uni shutting down, this has gotten so much worse. Simply leaving the house gives me so much anxiety that I begin sweating, feeling nauseous, getting dizzy, shaking... you get the gist. And being aware of that makes me more anxious and I keep thinking about it - this worsens the symptoms. I don't know how I'll deal with uni opening back up and having to go back to face-to-face classes again.
Just then, I decided perhaps the best thing to do would be to talk about it, so after 9 months, I decided to open up to my mum. Upon seeing how concerned she looked, I ran to my room before I could keep talking and started crying; out of guilt. I hate burdening her. I don't know what's happened to me, or why I'm like this. I want to talk to a doctor about it, but the doctor I'd been seeing for the past 14 years JUST retired (worst luck!) and the thought of seeing a new one makes me even more anxious.
The reason I'm writing this post is because 1) I feel writing and expressing my feelings always makes me feel better, and 2) I am hoping someone will have some much-needed advice on how I can cope with this :(