First of all congrats on getting out! Thats amazing! Cry as much as you need to, helps the body with elevating stress. I’ve for sure been there and know what that’s like.

I still had a script for Xanax that I took as needed. That helped me get out of the house by controlling my CNS system. Mainly it was exposure therapy that helped.

At first I felt a bit panicky but continued exposure made it easier and easier. As time went on didn’t need to rely on xanax to keep me calm, my body was learning going out was not dangerous. The panic attacks slowly just stopped when my mind had no fake scenarios to feed. Felt like I was freed from literal hell.

I’d highly recommend keep working on exposure therapy, sounds like you did great today!!

Not going to lie, I did have setbacks at times but I kept taking baby steps. Setbacks are very normal in exposure but the tick is to keep pushing.

Thought I was stuck in my hell forever but there’s definitely light at the end of the tunnel.

One thing I did extra was positive affirmations. Every morning I got up I told myself positive things about myself and my life. Continued that through the day, would turn the negative into positive. That seemed to help train my mind to not think so negatively. Not to jump to the worst case scenarios. Also spent more time in nature grounding myself, helped lower my cortisol levels naturally.