First time poster looking for advices 🙏🏻
Hi everyone ! This is my first post here but i've read many of your stories and wins, which gave me a lot of hope.
Long story short i've been having agoraphobia symptoms for about a year now, always when i have to be out alone. Whenever someone's with me i can do anything. But if i am alone in very crowded/open places it becomes a problem. And it's frustrating because i used to live in a big city, go to concerts (sometimes alone), travel abroad, it's like my brain forgot that i could do these things without any second thought.
Anyway i've been doing exposure, like gradually, doing things outside on my own, feeling the symptoms and doing my best to surrender. Not easy at all at first, but a lot less incomfortable now, i really do feel better and more confident on my own.
My goal is to go back to the big city to see my friends. Problem is that i'm doing my exposures in a relatively medium-sized city (moderately crowded) and the big city i want to go to is really next level lol (European capital of millions of people, but a city i know very well as i lived there alone for 10 years).
I have no ''inbetween'' in terms of crowds, noises, intensity of activities that i could test before going to the big city. And since it is really far from home, i cant just go there for 30 min test the waters and then go back home. Once i'm there, i'm there for 2-3 days.
I have now the hardest time figuring out if i can just go there as just another exposure, or if it will be too much at once and will ruin all my efforts. Sometimes i think about the crowds and the subway and i feel like i would just collapse there .. and sometimes i realize it's just my mind catastrophizing.
Idk if i make sense with all of this but if you have any advice, i'd be grateful ❤️