The Agoraphobia Mindset: Fatalistic Thinking

People with agoraphobia often engage in fatalistic thinking.

Fatalistic thinking is thinking of yourself as powerless to make choices or affect the outcomes of your own life. Fatalistic thinking is holding the belief that the forces that govern your life circumstances lie completely beyond your control. This is a way of not taking responsibility for your decisions and behavior.

For people with agoraphobia, it is also a way of avoiding responsibility for doing things that might cause anxiety. People who engage in fatalistic thinking often say “I can’t” when they really mean “I don’t want to,” “I am afraid to,” or “I won’t.

Examples of fatalistic thinking:

You are supposed to go to a conference for work, but it will mean flying in a plane and you are afraid to fly. You say to a co-worker, “I can’t go to the conference because the company can’t really afford to send another person.”

You don’t want to go to class because you are afraid to take a test. You tell yourself, “I can’t go to class today because I feel too sick.”

Fatalistic thinking may start out as consciously making excuses for things someone with agoraphobia would be afraid to do. However, people who talk this way often start believing that their life circumstances really are out of their control. When you perceive the important outcomes of your life as in the hands of fate, you are setting yourself up for feelings of powerlessness, fear, and anxiety.

For most people with agoraphobia, fatalistic thinking gets combined with rigid expectations to cause even more anxiety. That’s because when people holding rigid expectations for themselves succumb to fatalistic thinking, they live in a world caught between what they “should” do but “can’t” do.

An example of this “should-but-can’t” thinking is if someone with agoraphobia experienced the death of her mother, the funeral was to be held out of town and would require a drive of several hours. This person might think, “I really should attend the funeral or I am not being a good daughter. Missing my own mother’s funeral would be absolutely unthinkable. But I can’t make it because I can’t drive. What if I had a panic attack and got into a major wreck.”

The woman in this example is caught in the classic bind between rigid expectations and fatalistic thinking. There is something she “should” do but feels like forces beyond her control will prevent her. She is likely to feel guilty about missing her mother’s funeral and anxious at the same time because she doesn’t think she can do anything about it. She is likely to compound her anxiety with self-criticism.

Most people with agoraphobia experience these binds all the time, and live in a near constant state of self-criticism and anxiety as a result.

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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