Homebound No More: How I Beat Agoraphobia

By Blaise Dismer

Blaise Dismer sits in his apartment in Denver, afraid to leave. He suffers from a fear-based disorder called agoraphobia. But years after suffering his first panic attack on his twenty-first birthday, he doesnt know exactly whats wrong. All he knows is the fear of embarrassment looms, and home is where he must stay.

In this autobiographical account, Blaise explains how the nightmarish disorder affected his life, how he was finally diagnosed and how he overcame the disorder to live a productive live. As you read his inspirational story, you will learn how he relied on cognitive behavior therapy, medication, and other tools to help fight agoraphobia and how he found the courage to slough off shame and the fear of embarrassment. He describes how he deals with an anxiety disorder on a daily basis and how the disorder has affected his friends and family.

Regardless of whether you suffer from anxiety disorder yourself, or whether you have a loved one waging a similar battle, youll find hope and practical guidance in this autobiography. Break out of your prison and overcome your fears with Homebound No More.

Blaises story epitomizes the bright externally successful, sensitive people that I generally see in my office. They live like duckscalm on the outside and peddling like hell underneath.
Rex Briggs, MSW, author of Transforming Anxiety, Transcending Shame

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Nov 28, 2011
• ISBN: 9781462039487

Blaise Dismer

Blaise Dismer, MSW, suffered his first panic attack at age twenty-one, but it took him years to be properly diagnosed and treated. He graduated from the University of Georgia with a master’s degree in social work and was trained as an anxiety specialist at the Anxiety Disorders Institute of Atlanta. He currently lives in Georgia.

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Copyright © 2011 by Blaise Dismer, MSW.

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ISBN: 978-1-4620-3947-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4620-3948-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 11/19/2011

Contents

Acknowledgments

Note to reader:

Foreword

Preface

CHAPTER 1

Childhood

CHAPTER 2

Changes

CHAPTER 3

Jesus Blaise

CHAPTER 4

Therapy

CHAPTER 5

Agoraphobia

CHAPTER 6

Beginning Again

CHAPTER 7

A New Life

CHAPTER 8

Positive Moves

To my loving wife, Martha, and my children, Meg and Zach

Acknowledgments

Many people have contributed to this book’s creation and publication.

May I first thank my unseen but ever-present Guide who causes me to walk beside still waters.

Next, I thank my wife, Martha, and children, Meg and Zach, who love me magnificently.

Thank you, Terri Lorenz, for convincing me I could write a book.

Thank you, Penn and Peter, for believing in me. Bless you, Reverend Arlene, for inspiring me.

My deep appreciation goes out to my teachers, especially Julio Molina, Asaf Aleem, Bruce Thyer, Karen Strickland, Lorraine Davalos, Shari Sones, and the entire staff of the late Anxiety Disorders Institute of Atlanta. Rex Briggs and Mani Feniger, thank you for your personhoods first and professional help second. Finally, thank you to all those I’ve forgotten to mention. Namaste.

Rita Clark, thank you for validating me and my work over many years. Neal Sideman, your unselfish creation, paniccure.com, helped me spread a grateful man’s story of recovery around the globe. I value our friendship. Staff and members of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, your kindness and relentless devotion to improving the lives of all persons with an anxiety disorder have inspired me.

Note to reader:

My first several encounters with Rex Briggs, MSW, occurred at his workshops at conventions. Riding motorcycles in the Black Mountains of South Dakota, learning about and practicing bow hunting, and hiking the beautiful wild lands surrounding Rapid City would come later. Rex was, and is, a popular, seasoned speaker at mental health meetings, including those sponsored by the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA).

A recovered panic-sufferer himself, Rex has helped thousands of people to reclaim their lives from the bully huckster panic. First intrigued by the meaningful and thought-provoking topics he chose, I found myself attending several of his annual talks at the ADAA conventions. His book Transforming Anxiety, Transcending Shame encapsulates the lessons anxiety has taught him and his clients over the decades. A pragmatist who is well versed in cognitive-behavior therapy, Rex addresses our internalized shame and shows us how to transcend it.

While not my therapist during the recovery process, my friend and mentor has been a beacon at times when the light in my ongoing recovery was subdued or dusky.

Foreword

Shame is a crusher. John Bradshaw, in Healing the Shame That Binds You, described shame as the core issue behind addictions, codependency, and other obsessive conditions. More recently, in my book, Transforming Anxiety, Transcending Shame, I point out how shame is a driving force behind excessive anxiety—related conditions illustrated in my own years of suffering with anxiety and those of the lives of people I’ve had a chance to help.

Blaise Dismer, in Homebound No More, makes this connection through the generous, very human account of his years of suffering with excessive anxiety. He, like so many who I see in my office, suffered with many different forms of anxiety, all particularly frightening when kept to oneself needlessly.

Blaise’s years of fear and shame began with heartless ridicule at the hands of peers in elementary and high school. With school tragedies like those that took place in Paducah, Littleton, Pittsburgh, and others, we’ve begun to understand that children who have been teased and ridiculed can explode with frustration in killing sprees. Blaise epitomizes others who internalized their rage and became anxious and depressed, and who considered, if not attempted, suicide. Others just suffer in silence, accepting anxiety as their fate in life.

The National Institute of Mental Health estimates that 13 percent of children between the ages of nine and seventeen years are compromised academically and socially by excessive anxiety. That’s a huge portion of our future generation of leaders that are significantly impacted by anxiety. I suspect that estimate is conservative.

Anxiety has become the number-one mental health issue that people seek help for today, more prevalent than depression, and it goes hand-in-hand with depression and chemical use. Seven out of every ten people sitting in a doctor’s office are there for anxiety and stress-related conditions. That shouldn’t surprise us, given our very stressful American lifestyles. Increasingly, I am afraid, we are becoming a more impersonal society, relating more to things and less to people.

Blaise Dismer, in Homebound No More, courageously illustrates how anxiety is related to two main disruptions. First and foremost, anxiety happens as a result of a shame-based and ineffective relationship with the self. Our bodies, through symptoms like panic attacks, shyness, high blood pressure, worry, oversleeping and undersleeping, raging headaches, overeating and undereating, stomach problems, chemical use, depressive symptoms, and so on are simply trying to get our attention (tapping us metaphorically on our shoulders), but we do not know how to communicate with ourselves. Instead, we tend to interpret the symptoms catastrophically; we go into hiding and assume we’re chronically unique.

Secondly, we struggle in our relationships with others. Anxiety-sufferers chronically