Agoraphobia Strategy: The "South Beach" Diet for Your Mind

After talking about the different ways people with agoraphobia think that creates anxiety, I'd like to share the strategy for "restructuring" (replacing) agoraphobic thoughts that worked for me.

This strategy has to do with changing your self talk. Your self-talk is not only a reflection of your thoughts, it can be a tool to change how you think. You can use this strategy to change any of the irrational thought patterns associated with agoraphobia.

Self-talk is the diet of the mind. Whether or not we’re aware of it, all of us are constantly talking to ourselves. Though we can do this with spoken words, much of our self-talk comes in the form of thoughts. The message of this internal dialogue is the nutrition on which our mind feeds.

If you have agoraphobia, ask yourself:

What kind of diet is your mind eating? Is it healthy for you or is it junk?

Just as some diets can make you sick and other diets promote your health, so it is with the nature of your self-talk. Negative messages are destructive to the mind while positive messages heal. Whatever type of messages your mind constantly chews on and digests will lead either to positive or negative cycles in both your thinking and in your life circumstances.

Consider the following suggestions to be like putting yourself on the "South Beach" Diet for your mind.

Tune into your self-talk

Self-talk can be like a radio frequency. There are always radio waves in the air around us, but we don’t hear them unless we tune into them with a radio. My suggestion is to tune into the channel of your thoughts and find out what you are telling yourself all day. You first need to first become aware of the messages that are going into your mind before you can change them.

It might help to set an alarm on your watch to remind you to pay attention to your thoughts. Set the watch to go off at one hour intervals. Each time you hear the alarm, focus in on what your mind is thinking and write it down. Then, at the end of each day, you can go back and read your journal to see what thoughts are accumulating in your head over time.

Personally, I found that a lot of my self-talk was subconscious and was escaping my notice. I heard messages such as:

“You can’t be among other people five minutes without hyperventilating.”

“The house is the only safe place for you.”

“You have to be perfect to be accepted by others.”

It’s not like I was walking around all day purposely telling myself I was a fearful, nervous person who would be scared by most everything. However, when I paid closer attention to ongoing thoughts, I realized I was doing this subconsciously.

Take responsibility for what you are telling yourself

Once you become aware of your self-talk, you can take responsibility for the messages you are sending yourself. This means telling the difference between the messages others are sending you and the messages you are sending yourself.

This was the hardest step for me because I liked to blame my anxiety on others. For instance, once I realized that anxiety over school performance was related to my disorder, I wanted to blame my mom for putting so much pressure on me in school.

My mom didn’t always put pressure on me in words. She usually did it non-verbally through disapproval, implication, and through praising my brother for his academic performance. She displayed our report cards on the refrigerator each quarter which made it obvious that my brother made straight A’s and I did not. In any event, the message I received from her was that in order to be a capable, responsible and lovable person, I needed to take the most advanced classes for my grade, turn in every homework assignment on time, make A’s on all the tests and, of course, an A in every class.

For a while, I thought if only my mom would ease up on her expectations for me in school I would get better and have fewer panic attacks. That was putting the responsibility for my anxiety symptoms on her and handing her control of my mental health.

I eventually discovered that it wasn’t the messages I received from my mom that kept me so anxious about school. It was the messages I sent to myself!

Sure, my mom let it be known that she expected something near perfection from me in school, but I had bought into her way of thinking and was telling myself the same thing! If she had gotten off my case altogether, I would still have been telling myself that I was not a capable responsible or lovable person because my performance in the classroom wasn’t as perfect as my brother’s.

I had even added something to the message. I was not only telling myself that I needed to be near perfect in school, but that I needed to please to my mom to feel good about myself. Listening to my self-talk helped me take responsibility for my own feelings and admit I was putting unrealistic expectations on myself.

Replace self-defeating thoughts with positive ones

Once I identified my self-talk and took responsibility for sending myself the messages that were shaping my beliefs, I started to replace each self-defeating message with a positive one.

For example, I told myself that I was a responsible, capable, lovable person even if I didn’t take all advanced classes, do every homework assignment, and make A’s on everything. I told myself that I could be just as responsible and capable while dividing my time between schoolwork and sports, being truer to my own interests and goals.

I also told myself that I didn’t need to please my mom to feel good about myself or be lovable. Sure, I loved my mom and wanted to see her happy, but not at the cost of the anxiety I felt trying to live up to her standards for me.

Once I replaced my negative self-talk with a diet of more encouraging messages, I was able to form new beliefs about what it meant to be capable, responsible, and lovable. I felt a lot less anxiety about my schoolwork and about pleasing my mom and felt a lot better about myself.

I had to identify and replace a lot of negative messages during my recovery from agoraphobia, more than just the ones about my performance at school. I replaced negative messages I was sending myself about my athletic ability, my appearance, and what God thought of me.

So here are three steps for replacing negative thoughts with positive ones:

1) After you have journaled your thoughts at intervals for a day or two, list the top four or five negative statements you are telling yourself.

2) Next to each negative statement, write a positive statement that is the exact opposite of the negative one.

3) Make it a habit to tell yourself each of the positive statements at least ten different times during the day.

4) Keep repeating the positive statements to yourself until the negative statements fade away. This could take weeks, months, or even years. The important thing is to persist until the negative thoughts are totally extinguished and you are completely free from their influence.

If you have agoraphobia, changing your negative thoughts will go a long way in reducing your anxiety.