Here is the full transcript of Linda Bussey’s talk titled “Agoraphobia: The Fear of Fear” at TEDxYellowknifeWomen conference.
Linda Bussey’s talk titled “Agoraphobia: The Fear of Fear” offers a deep and personal insight into her struggles and experiences with agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder that causes individuals to avoid places or situations that might induce panic.
Beginning with her unexpected journey into the grips of this condition, Bussey shares how a routine commute transformed into a life-altering moment of panic and fear. She emphasizes the isolation and challenges she faced, spending years confined to the safety of her bedroom, highlighting the profound impact agoraphobia had on her daily life and relationships. Through her narrative, Bussey illustrates the importance of understanding, support, and therapy in navigating the complexities of mental health issues.
She discusses her journey towards recovery, including the pivotal role her family played and the coping mechanisms she developed over four decades. Notably, Bussey shares her personal victories and the strategies she employs to manage her condition, such as neuro-linguistic programming and the avoidance of certain triggers. Her talk is not only a testament to her resilience but also serves as an inspiration and a source of hope for others facing similar battles.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Thank you, this is fear right now. I have no idea how come I didn’t go through those doors yet. I just want to say I’m Stephanie’s neighbor, the one she talked about, that nobody knows what really the life they live. Anxiety and panic attacks are not a new diagnosis. The ancient Greeks talked about depression and anxiety. Spas were first introduced so people that were suffering from anxiety could find a place of comfort. I’m here today to talk to you about my personal journey. No scientific data, just the way at 20, I was diagnosed with agoraphobia.
The Early Years
So, I spent two years almost in my bedroom, and that led to anxiety and panic attacks till this day. For the past four decades, I learned to be patient, to be motivated. I learned how to trust myself and to trust others.
What is agoraphobia? It’s a type of anxiety disorder in which you fear and avoid places or situations that might cause you to panic. Your panic is your panic. You’re scared of being scared, and you know there’s no age, there’s no gender, there’s no social status to develop the disorder of anxiety or panic attacks. I know people that started when they were 60.
So, it’s important to realize that we’re all vulnerable to changes in our lives. When I was 20, I was in CJEP. I’d been there for three years and a half for a course that was supposed to take two years. I liked it there. I felt comfortable. It was a small campus. It was my community. Going to classes became not very important. I became immersed in the student body. I joined every committee possible.
So, after three years and a half and knowing that it was only a two-year course, I was strongly advised by my family, my parents, and the school to take a semester off. Just try to learn about life.
A Turning Point
So, I quickly found a job as a collection officer in a big bank. Not my type of job, I’m telling you, I didn’t collect a penny in five months. I just couldn’t. I’d find, I’d give people queues not to pay. So, every day I would go to work. I’d take the same route, take the metro.
Over the first couple of weeks, I realized that I was feeling different. I was a little bit more angry. My motivation was going away. I wasn’t a very pleasant person, and there were some changes happening in my body that I couldn’t explain. But I thought, well, that’s part of the working force or not going to school anymore, and it’s a change in life, and it’s just going to go away.
I didn’t give it much consideration. It’s said that people that suffer from agoraphobia have one event or one place where they were triggered with their first panic attack. And often, we can’t go back to that place or that event. It might not be your real trigger. There might be something else under that triggers you. But that place becomes the place where you don’t want to go.
So, after working for five months, I was in the metro, the same route I took every day, and all of a sudden, I’m between two metro stations. My legs are tingling. My breath became very heavy. All I wanted to do is yell. So, I got up really fast because there was no way I was going to yell in the metro.
And I went right away to the doors, and I knew it was my stop. I got there, got out of the metro, walked up the stairs like I did for five months. Went to the mall, and all of a sudden, my life changed. I dropped my bags. I could not talk. I could not walk. I couldn’t even concentrate on my breath.
My head was going one way when my body was going the other way. It was like a warp zone. I was totally not there. And I wanted to yell again or run, but nothing was happening. It was just—it was like an out-of-body experience. There was this little faint voice in my body that said, “It’s going to be okay.” And it was very faint, but it kept me there.
Recovery and Growth
So, it seemed like hours. It was just a question of minutes. And people were looking at me, you know, questioning what’s wrong with her. Nobody stopped except one colleague stopped and asked me what was wrong, and without a beat, I said, “Oh, bad back. I suffer from a bad back, and you know, I don’t know what’s happening.
I just couldn’t move.” I was able to move with that person. Went to the office. Called a friend. Went home. Never went back to work, and went.
That day is still a blur for me, but that night I went to emerge, hoping that I either suffered from a heart attack or I was having something wrong with my brain, and that it would, I would need just medical attention and everything would be okay. Well, the ER doctor that night, I think I puzzled him a little bit with everything that was happening and told me, “You don’t need me. You need a psychiatrist. Go home now and figure this out.”
So, I did go home. Went in my bedroom, and I stayed there for two years. I would only come out of my bedroom to go to therapy once or twice a week, and only with some friends, my boyfriend, or my father.
I was raised in a family of achievers. I have a mother who was before her time in the work world. She went back to school when she was 56 and became a social worker. I have a father who was a mayor. So, he was mayor for 12 years in a Northern community north of Montreal, and I have a brother who was an athlete. A very accomplished athlete and a very good-looking man, but it was okay because when I was young, I made money selling his picture at the community arena. I did. My weekends were great.
But so, I would only leave my room to go to therapy. I did go back to school in that semester. They allowed me to take one or two courses, but I could not move. I had to be driven everywhere I went. My family did not understand what was happening. They were caring, but we didn’t talk about it.
I figured out that summer we were told that there were mental health issues in our family. It wasn’t brushed away, but it wasn’t talked about. We didn’t. We acknowledged it but did nothing about it. So, a year and a half after being going to therapy, and my dad used to leave his workplace, come and get me at my house, bring me to therapy on the other end of Montreal, wait while I was in therapy, bring me back home. He did that for a year and a half without saying anything except that he just felt he had to do this.
So, I owe a lot to my dad. After a year and a half in therapy, the therapist decided it was time to do an exposure intervention. I was going to take the Metro alone, and nobody could come, and it was time to do it. I told him no. I said, “No way. So, what happens, I told him, what happens if I lose it while I’m in the Metro?” “That’s okay. I’ll come and get you. In the meantime, I’ll have to find you.”
Conquering Fears
But anyways, it’s very—I did do it. It took a lot of planning. I had to take six bus stops and eight Metro stations. Believe me, I still have the paper. After all these years, I had an escape route for each bus stop and each Metro. I had a place where I can run to. I even knew the underground city in Montreal. I could tell you where the cars would stop because I had to stop at a car that was next to the stairs. So, that’s why I like planning events because I had to learn to plan my escape routes.
See, there’s always opportunities with challenges. So, that happened in 1987, and since that day, I’ve taken the Metro six or seven times. Not by choice, it’s because I was with friends, and we just, we were traveling, and all of a sudden, we ended up in the Metro. It, you know, sometimes it was like we’d get off the Metro, and it took me so much energy to do this. I never took the Montreal Metro since then, and I don’t think, I don’t think it’s worth it. Since that day, anxiety and panic attacks are a part of my life. They happen every week.
Learning and Coping
The thing that I’ve learned the most in the past 40 years is coping mechanisms. There are tons of coping mechanisms to deal with anxiety and panic attacks. You just have to find the right one. Last week, I was very privileged. I was in my vehicle, and there was a segment on Radio-Canada, the French radio that I listened to in my vehicle, and there was a show about, the first part of the show was talking, there were four specialists talking about panic attacks and anxiety and agoraphobia and all social phobias.
And after that, there were four people living with those phobias and those attacks, and it felt so comfortable to feel normal listening to these people talk. One of the things that’s important is to change your coping mechanism as you get older because there are things that worked when I was 20 that don’t work anymore.
An example, when I had a panic attack coming, I could take a two-liter of water and jug it down, and it would, because try drinking water really fast and breathing really hard, it doesn’t work. You’re going to, so but when you’re younger, you can do it, and you can’t do it as you get older, and I’d always be in the washroom, so I don’t do that anymore.
Don’t drink water anymore. So, but I did that for a long time. I have tons of mantras in my head that I repeat. I’ve done, when I say 40 years of therapy, I didn’t do 40 years of therapy. I did here and there, and I learned a lot of techniques that I applied. Some worked, some didn’t. Grounding my feet worked for me. And this one, this one is the one that I’ve been doing for 30 years. It’s one that I can still do as much as I have introduced new ones every decade or every two, three years, I introduce new ones.
This is neuro-linguistic programming, and the one I do is the eyes in the front, and I invite you to try it sometime. For me, if I put my eyes to the right, I don’t move, and people don’t even know when I do this. I do this in meetings. I do this at supper with friends. I can, if I feel I’m having an attack and I don’t want it to grow, for sure, but I could just place my eyes, not move my head, just place my eyes to the right, and the feeling is instant. And it gives me total, I can calm down and be present.
I don’t dare go to the left because that excites me and brings back different feelings. So, I invite you, if you do have panic attacks or a little anxiety, there are tons and tons of alternatives out there that work.
Finding What Works
Like for me, one thing that doesn’t work is yoga. Everybody’s into yoga. I get out of there so stressed, it doesn’t work for me, and trust me, I’ve tried it. I’ve tried them all, but someday, maybe it’ll come. You know, one thing I want to say, two little things, I worked for 40 years on this, and seven years ago, here in Yellowknife, I’ll always have panic attacks and anxiety, but seven years ago, I was able to close the loop on my triggers, and I did it here with a great counselor in Yellowknife.
So, that makes me feel so much at home here, and the services and the quality of services that we can have here. In closing, all I want to say is, you know, there were a lot of times where I was the only person that believed in myself, but it’s worth it. And it can happen to you anytime. I take it now as this challenge gave me a great opportunity. With all the work I’ve done on myself, I became very self-aware of myself, and I pushed myself to do things that I would have never done, but every time I travel or I go somewhere, I have to plan it.
The only place I can’t plan an escape route is in the plane. So, if you see me on the plane alone, I’m either in the first row or the last row. Don’t ask me why, that’s my safe place. So, but even if I was alone, thinking that I can do this and I was alone believing in myself, I thought it was worth it. So, everybody’s worth it. Thank you.