The Agoraphobia Mindset: Personalizing

Personalizing is a type of faulty thinking practiced by people with agoraphobia.

Personalizing is assuming the blame for something that you might have influenced but was not totally under your control. This leads to anxiety that comes from feeling too responsible for other people’s emotions, decisions, or behavior.

Examples of personalizing:

A friend invites you to his party and you say that you have other plans and can’t make it. Your friend gets very angry and tells you that he feels hurt and rejected. You think to yourself, “It was wrong of me to say I couldn’t make it. Now I have really let my friend down and probably ruined his party.”

You ask your spouse to run an errand and she/he gets into a car accident on the way. You reason, “The accident is all my fault. If I had never asked her/him to go to the store, it would have never happened.”

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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