As a former agoraphobe, this seems unlikely.

All agoraphobes have an area that is their comfort zone. This can be inside their home only or it can include their yard. Sometimes it's as restrictive as certain parts of the house. Most of us started out having sudden, intense panic attacks in public settings that took us completely off guard. The symptoms are similar to a heart attack but with extreme anxiety to the point you are convinced you're going to die. Most agoraphobes rush to the ER assuming something has gone wrong with their heart or other organs, only to find out it's just a panic attack.

Some people can have these attacks and cope just fine. The problem arises when they occur at random and with frequency. Since they're so debilitating (you can barely breathe when they hit), it's mortifying to be in public when they hit. No one wants to be in the grocery store and suddenly look as if they're having a heart attack. It's embarrassing. There's also the fact that, aside from the unwanted attention, you need to get to a safe place where you can ride out the attack and let it run its course. They eventually end once your body depletes its supply of adrenaline, and this usually takes several minutes. Someone experiencing an attack wants to sit down somewhere that isn't the floor of their work or some grocery store and try to cope the best they can until the attack passes. Most try to run to their cars so they can sit in peace. Once you have your first public attack, you quickly learn how upsetting they can be. I had one hit when I was checking out at the grocery store and I actually had to stammer out to the cashier that I left my wallet in the car and stumbled outside on the pretense of getting it only to never return.

Once you begin having these attacks in public, and since there is generally no way of predicting when they will strike, you begin to slowly cut down on your excursions. Big, open areas like shopping malls where one can travel quite a bit from their car while walking or any place where a means of escape will be time-consuming and embarrassing become huge obstacles. We need the reassurance we can get out of a certain place quite easily and with minimal embarrassment.

If you don't seek help early on, your activities slowly become more and more confined to the area around your home. You'll only shop within a few blocks of your house, even if there's a cheaper store further down the road, etc. You don't go to movies because if you have to get up and leave your company by themselves, it will be mortifying. Things like that. You become comfortable with a certain geographic area and anything outside of it becomes a daunting task to take on. The problem, which most don't realize until it's too late, is that every time you avoid an area, you're training your brain to associate it with danger, and it basically rewires it. You're actively convincing yourself that you need to stay away from an area, and your brain sets up a trigger for it. Then, whereas you might not have had a panic attack in that area before, you will now for certain because you've told your brain it's an area you should avoid. This is when you are working against yourself without even realizing it.

Rock bottom (which truly only happens to a few sufferers) occurs when your comfort zone becomes confined to your home because it's the only place you feel safe enough to ride out an attack at. This is when you're truly agoraphobic. The comfort zones vary. I once only used part of my house and would panic if I had to go to another area of it. Eventually I could handle that and go within a few feet of my door, but I have a long driveway so getting the mail was a no-no. The extent of someone's comfort zone can even extend to the end of their street...it's really anything they feel safe in.

But once you get past the invisible boundary, your body immediately responds. You get anxious the closer you get to the limits of your comfort zone, and once you pass it, you have a full-blown panic attack and your only thought is to get back within your comfort zone, whether that be on your street, in your yard, or within your house. You've basically told your body that it's going to have an attack if you go beyond a certain point, and the body responds appropriately. I could even get a panic attack just thinking ABOUT going beyond my comfort zone.

As for how they feel, the character's symptoms in the movie are more stylized, but it's not that much different. Your heart races, your breathing becomes shallow, you start sweating, your chest hurts, you become dizzy and your vision can blur from the hyperventilating. Some people can faint.

If someone physically picked me up and carried me outside my home, I would have been fighting them and crying to get back, yes. Physically, my body would be on overload because I'd be having an attack and dealing with someone keeping me from getting back to an area I felt safe in.

Recovery comes when you allow yourself to stay in the situation when the anxiety hits and realize you can cope without fleeing, since that's basically what a panic attack is to begin with--your body's fight or flight response kicking in. You have to learn to fight and not flee. You start by venturing a little outside your comfort zone and remaining there until the symptoms pass, then gradually widening the area until you are no longer afraid to not be near your comfort zone. It takes a long time, but one who sticks with it usually sees recovery unless there's a relapse for some reason. You have to be willing to face the symptoms to get better, so one has to be fed up with living that way by that point. I decided 5 years was enough.

How would faking agoraphobia lure pedo's in their house though? That doesn't make sense.