I'm Nat, a 48 year old female autistic, and I have been in recovery from agoraphobia and panic attacks since 2011. I've basically lost 15 years of my life to the extremes of panic attacks. It didn't help that half way through I was made homeless (in 2017). Several years of temporary housing placements and uncertainty followed, and this period of complete instability, decimated what little function I had left. I became totally non functional in 2019, resulting in a 4 month hospital stay. The whole ordeal of hospital, added to and aggravated the already severe PTSD that I was attempting to manage. I now have medical phobia on top of my difficulties as a direct result of that hospitalisation. I've spent the years since that hospitalisation, slowly rebuilding my function and getting some kind of life and function back.
I'm extremely fortunate in that I have stable housing finally, which has massively helped. I also have regular weekly support for a few hours which has also helped enormously. It's taken a long time to get where I am today, but I have gradually managed to resolve some of the worst difficulties that I was left with. My sleep was completely demolished and I basically became fully nocturnal. My appetite was dreadful, and I was binge drinking to manage the panic.
I'm finally at a point where I have good routines for sleep, eating and exercise, which I'm able to maintain alone at home, mostly now. I'm able to walk very short distances outside (with conditions) compared to several years ago when even sitting in the garden for 5 to 10 minutes was hugely difficult. The depression and overwhelm feelings that I lived with intently every day, have diminished and I've weaned myself off of all the medications I was put on. I don't drink alcohol at all now. Finally my head feels like it is clearing from the dreadful fog of total overwhelm and heavy medications.
I've been fortunate to have had 3 years of Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy, which made a good dent into the trauma symptoms I was living with for so many years. I have also managed to get a decent regular meditative practice going, now the worst of the overwhelming emotions have started to calm down. Meditation is something that I can tell has made a tangible difference to how my mind and body reacts to things.
I'm at a pretty good place currently with day to day life. It feels like I'm slowly waking from a coma and coming back to life.
I still have considerable restrictions on not being able to leave my home due to the agoraphobia, but I am working on this. My main priorities now are to maintain my current function whilst adding things to my life to increase function in areas where there are still difficulties.
I would love to be able to work again and earn my own money, but it's several years away yet I feel. I'm focusing on increasing my interactions online and in real life to become more comfortable with interacting with people generally. Ideally I would like to find some kind of voluntary work this year or next. If voluntary work is achievable, then that gives me confidence for paid work further down the line.
I would be interested in hearing from and connecting with other people who are also rebuilding their life in middle age, after a long period of societal absence. I'm interested in what strategies other people have used and what they found helpful vs what they found unhelpful.
