Agoraphobia Thoughts: Overgeneralizing, Emotional Reasoning

Since agoraphobia is something everyone hasn't heard of, I want to make sure that anyone reading knows that in my recent posts I have been going through the different types of irrational thinking that someone with agoraphobia would do. Plus, I am putting in some posts about how to get free of these types of thinking.

What I have been calling "Agoraphobia Thoughts" are not actually symptoms of agoraphobia. They are more or less just thought patterns that most people with agoraphobia have, and that contribute to the anxiety someone with agoraphobia feels.

No one type of irrational thinking is fully responsible for agoraphobia. But together they cause enough anxiety to make someone start having panic attacks and hiding in their home.

So anyway, here are a couple more types of thinking that go with agoraphobia - overgeneralizing and emotional reasoning.

Overgeneralizing: Assuming something that happened one time in one place or situation (usually a negative event) will continue to happen in all places and situations. If you have agoraphobia, you will be familiar with overgeneralization because overgeneralizing after your first panic attacks is probably what led to agoraphobia.

Examples of overgeneralizing:

I have my first panic attack and think to myself, “If I had a panic attack at work then I am in danger of having panic attacks every time I go to work or anywhere else.”

I fail one important test and think to myself, “If I failed this I will always fail.”

Emotional reasoning: Using emotions, or how you feel, as evidence to back up irrational thinking. Doing this can lead to inappropriate emotional responses to events or circumstances (such as panic or anxiety) as well as self-defeating behaviors. Emotional reasoning is sometimes done in the face of objective evidence to the contrary.

Examples of emotional reasoning:

I go to a party and don’t see anyone I know. I have trouble getting a conversation started with the first few people I talk to. After a while, I feel self-conscious and anxious. Instead of trying a little harder to be friendly, I start to withdraw and think to myself, “I shouldn’t really be here. I don’t really fit in and the people here would never like me or accept me.”

I approach an attractive woman at a social event. As I start to talk to her I feel shaky inside and like my heart is about to jump out of my throat. Even though she smiles and responds to me politely, I respond to my inner feelings and tell myself, “She really doesn’t like me or find me attractive. She is just being friendly but she is way out of my league. I shouldn’t have approached her in the first place. What was I thinking?” I make short work of the conversation and excuse myself to talk to someone else.

Emotional reasoning compliments overgeneralizing and plays a key role in the development of agoraphobia. Most people who develop agoraphobia interpret the place or situation where they have their first panic attack as dangerous because they don’t recognize what is really happening. As a result, they practice avoidance behavior and stay away from the scene of the panic attack. Once they have experienced multiple panic attacks and deemed an increasing number of places as dangerous, they overgeneralize these feelings and start to believe that it is dangerous to go anywhere besides a few safe places.