The Agoraphobia Mindset: Emotional Reasoning

People with agoraphobia often engage in a type of distorted thinking called emotional reasoning.

Emotional reasoning is 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 by people with agoraphobia in the face of objective evidence to the contrary.

Examples of emotional reasoning:

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

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

For people with agoraphobia, emotional reasoning often complements 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 are responding to their feelings and 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.

Article Source: http://www.agoraphobia.net

Stephen Price is a recovered agoraphobic with a master’s degree in psychology. His informational website on agoraphobia featuring a free newsletter can be found at: www.agoraphobia.ws

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