Anxiety and panic are helpful emotions and states of mind, until they aren't. In this episode, Andrew shares personal stories of anxiety and how it has affected his life, as well as some strategies that you might find helpful for coping with your own moments of panic.
Follow along with the transcript: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1960832/10565790
Follow the show on social media: @catharticpod
Anxiety and panic are helpful emotions and states of mind, until they aren't. In this episode, Andrew shares personal stories of anxiety and how it has affected his life, as well as some strategies that you might find helpful for coping with your own moments of panic.
Follow along with the transcript: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1960832/10565790
Follow the show on social media: @catharticpod
When somebody tells you they have an anxiety disorder, what do you think of? Do you think that they're sometimes nervous and they can get over it if they really try?
Or do you think something more along the lines of depression and other mental health issues?
Sometimes it's hard even for me to understand how to think about my anxiety.
Sometimes my anxiety isn't too bad really. I mean, it seems almost what you would call normal.
And at other times it is debilitating, mentally and physically debilitating.
And then there's panic.
I decided that for this episode on anxiety, I'm going to talk about panic as well.
It could probably warrant its own episode completely, but the two go so closely together that I think it makes sense to focus on them both together in the same podcast, and that way I don't have to overlap with any material that applies to both.
Just as with my second episode, the topic of which was depression, this is sort of tough to talk about for me because being an anxious person growing up has always resulted in me feeling like I'm different and other.
I'm sure you also picked up on the fact that I felt like an other due to my depression as well, but anxiety seems almost to be more of like a weakness than depression.
Maybe depression is better understood and so people are more likely to see it as something uncontrollable. Maybe it's just been more popular in our common societal parlance that people aren't as shocked by it, or they take it more seriously.
But anxiety makes you feel like you are unable to handle anything. Anxiety makes you feel like you just aren't trying hard enough to tame your feelings.
Many times, growing up as an anxious child and teenager and then finally into adulthood, I've heard the sentence you need to toughen up or, don't be so sensitive, Andrew.
When you hear those messages from people that care about you and who are honestly not trying to do you any harm, you feel as if, “OK, I will try to do what you are saying. I will try to toughen up. I will try not to take things so seriously. I will try to toughen up.”
But then you can't. Then you don't know how to even begin to toughen up because all that you know is your own experience and to you, these are the emotions that go with a given situation.
Much the same for depression, but depression also feels as if there's another you, as if there's something malcontent, something controlling you.
Anxiety is just you. You are the one who feels like you can't do something. You are the one who feels jittery because you have to speak to a new colleague or some other mundane life activity. You are the one that just needs to toughen up, and you can't.
As far as I can tell, panic comes into this as a result of anxiety.
It could also be viewed as another type of anxiety. Maybe, maybe it would be best to label debilitating anxiety as panic and good old fashioned healthy anxiety as anxiety.
Generally in this series, though, when I'm talking about anxiety and panic, I'm talking about degrees of anxiety, not two separate things.
Anxiety will be in the range of 1 to 5, to 6, to 7 maybe, and then panic jumps in at 7, 8, 9, 10. So it's just uh, degrees of intensity of anxiety.
Anxiety affects the small things in your life just as much as the big things.
Going into a grocery store, for example, is not an easy task for somebody with an anxiety disorder. Being exposed to too many stimuli at the same time can induce anxiety. Even just being asked three questions at one time can be enough to set someone off if they've really been struggling.
I'll say a little bit very quickly on what anxiety actually is, physically in the body, but I don't want to spend a whole lot of time talking about that because that's not the point of this show.
When we learn about anxiety in school nowadays, we do learn physically what is happening in your body and why. And that has a place; that is very important to know.
It's a piece of understanding yourself and what's going on. Other people, though, can explain that stuff much better than I can. I think my strength lies in relaying personal experiences.
As when I talked about what was physically happening in the body with depression, this is my best understanding of what I've learned over the years of what happens inside the body for anxiety and panic if I do make a mistake.
Of course, I do encourage you to let me know because it's important that I get this stuff right, but this is my understanding of it.
Seeing as how we are the end result of hydrogen atoms trying to learn about themselves, that is to say, a long process of evolution that can at times appear random, but is always directed by one force or another, such as the force of survival of the fittest, it probably won't surprise you to learn that we have many parts of our brain in common with our animal ancestors and animal cousins.
In various books over the years that I've read on the subject of mindfulness and depression and anxiety, the authors have used different animal names to designate the part of our brain that seems to have not evolved as quickly as the rest of us did.
This has at times been called the Lizard Brain.
It's the part of the brain that controls things that you don't always have time to control, such as your breathing.
And just like a squirrel who gets startled by a loud noise and scurries up a tree, your lizard brain, your squirrel brain is trying to keep you safe.
It wasn't that long ago that our ancestors were developing society and understanding the importance of familial ties.
So, we have evolved at an incredibly fast speed and our lizard brains are still trying to catch up.
It would have made sense to jump and try to hide when you heard a noise on the African Savannah; could have been a lion for example.
But now that we live in cities and we have jobs and life is not quite so dangerous, we don't need that lizard part of the brain to always be on the lookout for us. Unfortunately, that's not the way evolution works, and it is still there.
So doing what it did to keep our ancestors safe all those generations ago, the lizard brain is always on the lookout for danger.
It doesn't know that the lions and tigers have been replaced by public speaking and financial difficulties. It just reacts the exact same way.
And just like if you were being attacked by a lion, that lizard brain can take over completely sometimes.
I think it's safe to say that most of the time, for most people these deep feelings of nervousness and panic that come up are manageable and they show themselves only at fairly appropriate times.
And it's important to have those feelings of anxiety when it is appropriate. For example, crossing the street and a car runs the red light, you better feel anxious really quickly.
But in some of us, there seems to be a different set of examples to look out for. Life threatening situations and important decisions that need to be made in the split second without any time to waste.
I was first diagnosed at the age of 16 with depression, but also at the same time, I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.
I know in the newest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual the terms have changed, but that's what I was diagnosed with at the time.
It basically means that my lizard brain overreacts to anything in normal daily life, that maybe is handleable without resorting to a panic situation.
And just like anybody else, I do get anxious at times when there is extreme stress in my life. That's what anxiety is for after all.
Unfortunately, but also fortunately, in many ways I have chosen a bit of a life path that's taken me from unsettled situation to the next unsettled situation. That's not easy for anybody to handle, let alone somebody who is diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.
All of this put together is to say that I am an anxious person and I used to hide from it; I used to hide it from everyone.
An example of how I would have rationalized my way out of an action that I took because of anxiety is something that I've never actually told anybody before, and I do feel comfortable sharing it here because it happened such a long time ago and it really isn't a very big thing, looking back on it now.
At my high school commencement, an event that usually takes a long time to get through as each graduate receives their diploma one by one, walking across the stage, getting handshakes from the principals and teachers, I couldn't handle being in line. I couldn't handle waiting for my turn to go up, sitting in the audience class by class, going by.
My parents were sitting up in the bleachers, watching the whole procession, and they didn't know where I was specifically because we were all wearing our robes and fancy pointed hats.
I actually left. I drove home and stayed at home for about half an hour right in the middle of it, and my parents didn't know that I had left.
At the time when I did it, I knew I needed to leave and that was me saving myself, but I don't remember thinking a whole lot about it. I don't remember thinking, “this will help me with my anxiety. I'll take a quick breather, then I'll return everything will be fine.”
I just left.
And then I came back, and I didn't want to admit to myself that I needed to leave. So, I think I just played it off casually to myself, thinking, oh, I left. It's not a big deal; what's the problem? It wasn't my turn anyway.
And then later when I told my mom that I had left, possibly because some part of me was looking for approval for having done so, she was not happy because they were sitting there watching people go across the stage and their son was not below them sitting in the audience waiting for his turn.
That was another time that made me feel, “well, I did something wrong. I should be tougher. I need to push myself through.”
So now you know a little bit about what's going on with anxiety in a person's mind, and you've heard a short story about one of my experiences and how I viewed it at the time.
Now I'm going to share a longer story about anxiety, one that I can pick apart a bit easier because I was much more aware of myself when this occurred.
I was working in a large Asian city at the time teaching English and helping out with teaching responsibilities for other newcomers, and I had to go to the bank at lunchtime.
The bank wasn't too far away, but in the part of Asia where I lived, it was easily 35 degrees on any summer day, and I am not one for heat.
So, I took the bus, which... it's not always a wonderful experience for anybody, but for me the bus was particularly anxiety inducing because of the amount of people that typically were on buses in the city at that point of the day.
I do not do well with large crowds, and I knew that at the time, but walking two kilometers in 35-degree weather or trying to brave the bus, those were my two options.
So, I took the bus to the bank, which in itself was an anxious thing for me. Being out around people in general is tough for me and walking into a bank, there are obviously lines of people and security guards and so on. So that made me a little bit anxious as well, but I had been to that bank before, I had the paperwork ready, it was the same process that I did every month for handling my bills and so on.
Leaving the bank, I felt anxious but OK.
I felt, “Alright. I got that done. I'll just grab some lunch quickly and I'll head back to my place of employment. Everything is going to be fine from here on out. I did the hard thing, I went to the bank, I got that done.”
And you may be thinking to yourself, “Well, going to the bank. I mean, that's not too difficult, is it?” And no, it's typically not. It's going to the bank. It's an innocuous event. But a series of innocuous events add up very quickly.
So, I left the bank, and I was already employing a strategy that I often use which is self-talk, talking to myself.
It helps to keep me present in the moment and to assure myself that it's OK; what I'm experiencing might be scary, but I've been here before, both physically and mentally, I suppose. And I knew what was going to happen next.
But then I took the wrong bus. I went in the opposite direction of my work.
I do make those mistakes from time to time. I see them as a result of my ADHD and not being great with details.
So now we have three events: we have being in a populated city (which is difficult in general); being on a very busy bus (also difficult for me); going into a bank and talking with people (in a language that I had not yet and have not yet mastered) — And then I took the wrong bus.
So, you can probably start to see how these things were building up on each other when taking them one at a time might not have been so bad. I got off the bus at what I thought was the right subway station to take back to my job.
It was not.
I was really starting to panic at this point.
I was breathing heavily. I couldn't think either, then panic truly set in.
Knowing that being around lots of people is difficult for me, when I lived in that city, I typically had my headphones with me at all times because listening to music is a way of reducing the input that my brain has to handle, and it's easier for me to calm down.
So, at this point I actually sat down and put my headphones on and tried to listen to some calming music while I played a quick game on my phone just to distract me.
And that strategy did work. It allowed me to calm down enough to figure out where I was.
At this point I thought I would be OK. As I said, I was very aware of my own needs and anxiety levels and triggers at this point in my life.
So, I thought, “Alright, I know where I am. I have this under control. I've got my headphones on. I'm going to be OK. I just need to get some lunch and then go back to the office at the school.”
I walked into a restaurant that I knew of that I had already been to many times that typically felt like somewhat of a safe place for me, but it was crowded, and the language barrier ended up being a problem on this particular day because the person I was speaking to didn't speak English, and I could not speak the language that I needed to speak fluently, living in another country.
Somehow, I managed to get a sandwich ordered. I almost left the restaurant without my sandwich because of all the people in the situation and how panicked I was.
I did get my sandwich, but then I left the restaurant and my panic attack started.
If you've never had a panic attack before, I'd like to try to explain to you what it feels like, though I'm pretty sure my words will not be able to explain it completely.
You remember, maybe in old cartoons, there would be a character that was hyperventilating and so they would breathe into a paper bag, huffing and puffing in and out, in and out, presumably as a way of inhaling their own carbon dioxide and lowering the percentage of oxygen in the air they were taking in, so as to reduce the fight or flight response.
That actually does happen when you have a panic attack.
Whether you have a paper bag or not, I suppose doesn't matter a whole lot, but not being able to control the rate of your breathing is very real.
And that can result in light-headedness. It can result in increased panic because you think you might be dying, and that is a common thing that people think when they've never had a panic attack before, and they get hit by one. It feels like you're dying.
So, there I was, sitting on the side of a busy road, in a country far away, surrounded by a language I didn't understand, which also caused me great amounts of anxiety and a little bit of shame as well.
And I was crying, and I was so scared.
And I knew what was happening because this was not my first panic attack. But except for understanding that I wasn't actually dying, it felt just as bad as all the other ones had always felt.
Very slowly I was able to calm down and observe what was happening to me and have a better understanding of my situation and that I was actually physically safe, even though it certainly did not feel like it at the time.
I walked as quickly as I could back to the school. I could have gone anywhere at that point, but the school was not too far away, and I knew that it was a place that I could generally feel safe.
Later in the day, after I had gotten home and things had improved a bit, I sat down and typed up an email for my boss just to explain what had happened.
In preparing for this episode, I was looking back over my old journal entries, and I found this. So, I'd like to read a bit of it to you. Now, this was written just a couple hours after the events:
Have you ever seen that movie inception? There's a scene where the main character, Ariadne, goes into a dream for the first time and she starts changing things in the dream.
Cobb, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, tells her not to change too much because the people in the dream will start attacking her.
As Ariadne walks down the street, people start to stare at her more and more.
Some of them start bumping into her on purpose, and eventually they're all chasing her.
What she was feeling in that scene, walking down that street, that's what it feels like when I have a panic attack and I'm trying to find a safe place.
I have to keep checking over my shoulder to make sure no one is watching me. Sometimes I do feel like they will actually come and attack me.
At the ending of the email to my boss, I wrote this:
Imagine from the start of this story to the end that you are way up high on the top of a very tall building or a cliff. Each step in the story takes you a step closer and closer to the edge.
Eventually the wind starts blowing you from behind towards the edge.
By the time you reach the edge you are staring over it and trying not to fall.
All the physical feelings and responses of your body that you would feel in that situation are what I was feeling throughout this whole ordeal.
The fact that I could explain all of this to my boss shows, I think, that I was at a point in my mental health journey where I was starting to be no longer ashamed of it.
I did feel ashamed for not being able to walk down a busy street without crumpling over into a ball, but I knew that it was the kind of thing that I needed to face.
Even today, after having been on such a long mental health journey and having started this podcast, I do still feel a little bit of shame as a result of being anxious all the time.
Being at a large family gathering, for example, people that I've known my entire life, makes me incredibly anxious.
I would often disappear for hours at a time as a kid when we visited my aunt’s, just hiding in the basement, watching TV, finding something that looked normal so that I didn't have to feel the anxiety that I felt just being in a room with ten people who are my blood relatives.
But as I said in the episode on depression, I've seen so many young people who don't know how to deal with these feelings, who have never actually learned that this is sort of normal for some people.
And it's really difficult to deal with, but at least you're not the first person to have ever felt this.
I'm not saying that there's any way I could have stopped what happened to me in that particular instance.
I think I actually handled it pretty well.
I used a number of strategies that I always have at the ready, just in case I need them, and I made it through the situation, although it was extremely difficult to do.
But that's the thing about time; you don't control how fast or slow things go.
Your perception of time can change depending on the situation.
Certainly, when you're in a panic attack time feels very different, but time's going to move on forward regardless. And that's why I'm now able to talk about this with you because it did happen a while ago and time has moved on since then.
So, although it felt like the end of the world in that moment, and I have many other moments very much the same where it feels like the world is ending, that's something that happened to me before and now is now. It will likely happen again, and I will be ready for it.
And it is going to hurt so bad.
And I will be crumpled on the floor crying.
I know that.
If it doesn't happen, that's great. I'm not saying it needs to, but it likely will.
That's a good segue into the topic of resilience, actually.
Resilience is not withstanding a blow. Resilience is being able to get back up afterwards.
I tell myself that frequently because it's important to remember and I need to remember it for myself, not just for sharing mental health stories with people.
I know I am resilient because I am sitting here right now, sharing my experience with you and you are resilient too.
You may not feel resilient if you suffer from frequent panic attacks and extreme anxiety.
You probably feel like I often felt when I was young: that I was weak, and I couldn't handle a regular day at school.
There were many days that I couldn't handle a regular day at school too.
There still are many days that I can't handle a regular day at school.
And it's not OK, 'cause it sucks and it hurts, but it's OK because it is what it is. So, we meet the situation as best as we can.
I don't want this message to come across as all anxiety is bad and you should do whatever you can to prepare yourself for terrible situations in life.
As in all my other episodes in this series, my point isn't to say that this is how life is.
My point is to say that this is how life is for some people, maybe you.
Anxiety is not always bad.
As I used the example before, anxiety will save you getting hit by a car if you see it in time. Anxiety will make sure that you study for your tests, usually.
Sometimes anxiety will keep you from studying for your tests. That was all too frequent with me growing up.
Anxiety keeps you alive, both literally and metaphorically, so it is important to have anxiety. It is a healthy thing to have. It's a healthy emotion to have. It can be problematic for some people though.
If you're listening to this episode and you think, “Oh wow, maybe I have experienced panic attacks before, and I just didn't know it,” then I hope some of what I'm saying here is able to help you or direct you in the right direction to get some help.
Maybe you've experienced panic attacks and they're different than mine. For me personally, I often end up in the fetal position crying.
For other people, it turns into rage, into anger, into physical violence.
There will always be a small part of me that feels shame for not being able to handle a “normal situation,” but I know so much about myself now and how I react to situations and what I can do to make my life as fulfilling as it can be.
And you can do that too. It does take work. I've been in therapy for most of my life; most of my adult life anyway.
I've seen a number of therapists ‘til I found one that worked for me.
I have reflected on things that were hard to reflect on because ultimately, all that panic and anxiety that you feel, no one else is going to feel it exactly the same way as you feel it.
So, if you feel the anxiety of everyday life draining you throughout the day until you can find a quiet space to decompress, then I hear you.
I understand the pain. I understand the sheer terror of the situation. What I hope you take away from this episode is a sense of belonging as a result of my anxiety. I have often felt like I don't fit in.
I have made choices that I think look normal as a way of masking my anxiety, as a way of pretending my anxiety didn't exist. And you maybe have felt that too.
And it doesn't fix the fact that sometimes panic attacks happen to me or you, but it does make it feel a little bit less lonely to know that others have been here before.
If you see somebody experiencing what you think is a panic attack, it's important to know that they are going to be OK; they will not die from a panic attack — that does not happen.
But at that moment, that person is in extreme anguish. And they are hurting.
And telling them that they need to toughen up or, “Don't be so sensitive,” or yelling at them because they can't stop crying, and then continuing to yell when they cry even more... That doesn't help the situation. That person is not rationally in control of their actions at that moment.
They may be hearing you, but they also may not be hearing you.
The best thing that you can do is be supportive and calm.
If you know the person well and you think that a blanket might make them feel more secure, put a blanket on them.
If you're a teacher in a school and you see another teacher hiding in the library trying not to sob uncontrollably in front of his students, give that teacher time.
It's not a choice to be in a state of panic.
It feels really, really bad, but that person will be OK and hopefully they will use that experience to prepare them for the next time it could happen.
Just a couple of notes here before the end of the podcast.
I realized after recording the episode on depression that I left so many things unsaid and I feel the same way about this episode on anxiety as well.
So, it's very likely that there will be a Depression Part 2 and an Anxiety and Panic Part 2.
Also, an interesting thought occurred to me the other day.
Aside from close family members asking me if I was sure that I wanted to share all of this with the world, no one has contacted me to say, “How can you be talking about this stuff? Isn't it difficult to share your innermost secrets and feelings with strangers, with the world?”
And it always would have been scary to think about doing that, but maybe that says something about how I now view mental illness compared to how I viewed it before — that I feel I can share these things with the world. I am strong enough to talk about this.
My goal is to help some of you be able to face this stuff as well.
But even though I really do believe that this can and has and will help people, there's a part of me that feels ashamed for sharing this side of my life.
I have been so lucky to have wonderful mentors in my life who have been there for me when I needed them, so I know helping people in this way is possible, and I just don't want other people to feel the hurt and loneliness that I have felt. If that means sharing my mental health stories and being frank about the shame that I have felt, then that's what I'll do because I really do think this is worth it.