I thought my agoraphobia was a virus
The TV presenter tells ELIZABETH ARCHER how she overcame the panic attacks that often prevented her from leaving home
AS A presenter for Channel 4’s A Place In The Sun, Danni Menzies has a jet-setting lifestyle that most people would dream of. But little do viewers know that 10 years ago she was severely agoraphobic and couldn’t leave the house without taking Valium, let alone get on a plane. “It was awful,” says Danni, 31, who lives in London.
Danni’s symptoms started while at university in Loughborough studying art. “I had a great time at uni,” she recalls. “I went out most evenings, had a great group of friends and really enjoyed it.”
Then one day in her second year of university, she started experiencing nausea when she tried to leave the house.
“At first, I thought I had a virus. Every time I wanted to go outside I started sweating, my heart would start racing, I’d feel sick and need to go to the toilet quickly.”
As the weeks wore on, Danni expected the problem to clear up, but it didn’t. She went from being an outgoing student with lots of friends, to a recluse who was unable to leave home. “I wasn’t managing to attend any classes and my social life was nonexistent,” she says.
Then one day, after weeks of suffering, she had the urge to drive to her parents’ house in Perthshire, 350 miles away. “I woke up and thought, ‘I need to go home’.
“Before I knew it I was on the road back to Scotland. I didn’t tell anyone I was going or say goodbye to the friends I lived with. I just went into autopilot and got in the car and went home.”
MIDWAY through the journey, she began to feel unwell. “I hit some traffic and I could feel my heart racing. I felt hot and was convinced I was going to be sick,” she says.
“For some reason, I was worried about what people in the cars around me would think if they saw me being sick in my car, rather than thinking they might be compassionate.
“I managed to get off at a service station and woke up in a toilet a few hours later covered in sweat. Even now, I can’t remember getting in there. Looking back I realise I must have had a really bad panic attack.”
Danni managed to drive the rest of the way home and, with time, slowly began to feel better.
“Being in the house where I grew up, in a tiny village on the lochside, it was almost like I was okay again,” she says. “It wasn’t until I’d try to go to the shops that I would start to have bad panic attacks. I felt like I couldn’t breathe and the world was closing in on me.”
After six months of suffering, Danni went to her GP. She was diagnosed with agoraphobia – a panic disorder which makes people fear being in situations where there is no escape, or where help might not be available.
Around one in 50 people in the UK have a panic disorder and a third develop agoraphobia.
“Now it’s almost normal to talk about anxiety and panic, but 10 years ago, when I was diagnosed, the world was a different place,” she says.At first, Danni was prescribed anti-anxiety medication, then antidepressants. Finally she was referred for talking therapy, but nothing helped.As time wore on, she began to feel hopeless.
“It was such a big change, going from being a student with lots of friends to living with my parents and not leaving the house,” she says. “I started to get really depressed and felt I wasn’t ever going to have a life again.
I didn’t ever think I’d hurt myself, but it got to the point where I just didn’t want to be here any more.”
When Danni confided in her parents about how severe her depression was, they checked her into the Priory, where she had a course of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT).
But it wasn’t until she tried Timeline Therapy – a form of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), which helps people let go of negative beliefs about the past – that she finally found relief from her panic attacks.
“They get you into a really relaxed state and take you back through your life and whenever there’s a lot of emotion attached to a memory, they take you into it in more depth,” Danni explains. “There were things I hadn’t realised were affecting me but which I carried with me.”
Among the traumatic memories was the sudden death of a childhood friend. “There was a chap I went to school with.
“I’d known him from a really young age and I loved him. He died when he was 21 from a heart condition. He just didn’t wake up one day and it broke my heart.”
Around the same time, Danni had an accident on a night out at university. “I fell off a bucking bronco and was propelled face first into a metal pole. I couldn’t see for a week and I had to get stitches in my nose, you could see the bone in one part.”
DANNI now believes these incidents may be partly responsible for triggering her agoraphobia. After just one session of Timeline Therapy, she immediately felt better.
She says: “I went home and just slept for ages. I think I might have even slept for a few days. It was like something had just been lifted off my shoulders and I felt really different. I wanted to try having a life again.
“After that, it wasn’t like I didn’t ever get panic attacks any more, or didn’t have to deal with anxiety, because I definitely did, but I wanted to fight it. Rather than avoiding situations that I found difficult, I put myself in them more and more because I knew the more I did, the easier it would get.”
Gradually, Danni’s mental health improved. Using farmland her family owned, she started buying horses from Hungary which were destined to be killed for meat and rehabilitated them.
Before long, she had six or seven horses and started a riding school for local children.
“I went to work in the morning, got home in the evening and fell asleep on the sofa, then woke up on the sofa and got back to work,” she says. “It was my life and I put everything into it. I didn’t even think about anything else, and it was good to have a focus.”
Soon after, she began modelling and was signed to an agent.
She started doing TV adverts and small presenting jobs, before being put forward to become a presenter on A Place In The Sun.
Although Danni still struggles with anxiety, she works hard to keep it in check. “If I feel panic rising in my chest, I get outside and go for a walk, or I meditate.
Looking back, Danni can’t believe how far she’s come.
“I went from having to take a lot of Valium just to get on a bus, to flying around the world for my job.”
● A Place in the Sun is on C4 daily at 3pm
‘I felt like I couldn’t breathe and the world was closing in on me.’