Has anyone defeated agoraphobia and how?

I feel like I have no right to answer, but how I felt at times sounds similar to BlackHoleSun. I'm always a wallflower until I get comfortable with people or places (usually taking a long time or frequency of meetings); even then, once when I found a really great new coffeehouse once and went with my friends often; they decided to try live music one night, and the new influx of people crammed around us made me go ballistic and more unfriendly than usual.

Something as weak and as vague as such, I've just learned to deal with; hence most people who barely get to know me think I'm an ***. Lol, sorry I couldn't help more.

If all else fails, Klonopin is a good option.

The cook "Paula Dean" on Food Network (foodnetwork.com) suffered from it, and look where she is now......She wrote a book about it, and how she overcame it...you should read it....

When I was 21 I moved with my new husband from Texas to Merced, CA. When we got there and I realized we weren't actually in the kind of valley I had pictured but surrounded by by dirt and grapes for as far as the eye could see, I was devastated. It wasn't long before I could not go out of the apartment by myself. If I opened the door to check the mail and saw the postman coming up the walk I would slam the door in a panic and wait there holding my breath until I was certain he was gone. The only time I drove there in the four years we were there was on the very rare occasions that he had a kidney stone attack or had to go tdy or whatever they called it. Only when I absolutely had to function was I able to. The strange thing was that when we would go back to Texas for a visit I was like a completely different person, I functioned just as I always had before moving to California. Once I got back to Texas for good, I never experienced anymore symptoms of agoraphobia at all. My only other "mental" malfunction came after surviving an aneurysm at 40 which left me with anxiety attacks for which I take medicine daily. My thought on agoraphobia is that it happens when we feel our lives are totally out of our hands and we are so disappointed by our circumstances and surroundings that we just shut down as a defense mechanism. My advice is to look back on a time when you were completely happy and felt safe. Try to regain that somehow, even if it means moving. Living life stuck behind four walls is no life at all, but surely there must have been a time when you enjoyed your life and were eager to get out. Once I got back to a place I felt safe, I have since moved several times to different areas of the country and the agoraphobia symptoms have not returned and it's been 30 years. Of course I've been on low dose Ativan for the past 13 years which may be helping. Try getting in a situation where you feel safe and check on anxiety medication, the combination of the two may help you cope. Good luck!

I haven't defeated it yet but with working on it every day and not giving up hope I have made great progress. The progress is slow but its progress. For a while I almost never left my apt and now I am looking forward to joing my new husband at our new place and getting out and starting our life together. I still have to talk myself through the fear each time it pops up, I dont know if that will ever go away, but I can get out now and thats whats important.