Agoraphobia and Manipulation

Yesterday morning I was held hostage for a total of three hours. At first I thought I was being reached out to in love. You know, I need someone to talk to so I will reach out and this person will comfort, support and just listen for awhile. But that’s not what was going on.

It was pretty clear about an hour and a half into the conversation that I was being manipulated. They wanted me to “fill them in” on someone else’s actions, sayings, etcetera. To me this is voyeurism, it’s no different then dressing up at night in all black and spying through someone’s windows.

That moment of recognizing I was being manipulated is when the alarms started. Can you hear them? If you can’t hear them, can you recall the sound? Those are the alarms of caution, it sounds a bit like a fire house bell from earlier years: DingDingDing! Then there’s the alarm of manipulation. This sound is a bit like a vinyl record scratching to a halt. You think, ‘Huh? What was that? This isn’t a “reach-out” it’s a “reach-in”. That sound hurts. Then the church bells chime in. The bells warning you to be supportive but cautious. Remember, you love this person and they must be feeling desperate to use your relationship to spy on another person.

Somewhere in there the agoraphobic bells start ringing like tinnitus. They are muffled and broken. Panic is glass shattering and self-pity is sucking mud against your shoes. Walls going up is the sound of metal leggos snapping together and the need to get out of the conversation is a prayer chanted over in over in a silent whisper.

Eventually, the conversation ended and I sat back and shook and cried and played the conversation over and over in my head. When I finally determined to calm down I concentrated on breathing . But it seemed my chest expanded but the air was not getting in, just a thick goop that made it even harder to breath. I took a valium and slowly came down from that place that is a pit over the edge of a cliff. First you climb out of the pit, then you peek over the edge of the cliff and with concentration and lots of visualization the ground you are clinging to is just a step above the rest of the world. You step off, and if it’s a good day, it wasn’t all an illusion and you don’t find you’ve stepped off the edge of an abyss and will fall, sinking for days, weeks or even months.

You see for me, part of my fear is finding a way out of, not just situations, but also conversations that are disturbing. Sometimes I'll talk very fast, to hog the conversation, so the other person can't direct things. Sometimes I'll blank out and just smile and nod, you can't do that online or on the phone. Sometimes I disassociate completely and couldn't tell you what I was wearing at the time. There's a fear that making an excuse will be obvious and that person won't like me anymore or will turn others against me. It's a paranoia of being trapped in a conversation I don't like and lacking the confidence to just gracefully bow out.


Say what you will of my faith, but that’s what keeps me taking that step off the “little ledge”.

For an agoraphobic a betrayal in trust is a betrayal that sticks with you for a very long time. It doesn’t end your love for a person, but it edits every conversation and moderates every action from then on. I will continue to love this person and be their friend and even support them when they need it, but I will never again interact with them without suspicion. It’s not, I don’t think, a hard heart or an inability to forgive. It’s survival. People that try to manipulate you are manipulating others as well.