Anxiety Coaching

My story is a complicated one (don’t we all feel that way). If you didn’t know me well and just looked at my life from a distance you’d see someone who has led a pretty extraordinary life. As a kid I was really good at racing and won many trophies in bicycle racing, motorcycle racing, and go-carts. With the go-carts I hade really good sponsorship and raced at a very high level with a team mechanic, free support, etc. I was the California State Jr. Champion in an Olympic Rifle event. That got me a free ticket to train and compete at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado. It was in a way really great, but while most competitors were dealing with mild nervousness I was dealing with anxiety that really took nearly all of the fun out of it. So much so that the reason my list is so extensive is that I would bounce from one thing to another because of my anxiety. Eventually all of the fun would be overwhelmed by anxiety and I would move on.

Anxiety has always been in my life. I had my first panic attack when I was five years old. Like most kids, I just acclimated to this as part of my reality. It was weird for me to explain to myself, let alone others, that I just couldn’t do some things. Spending the night at friends’ houses was the first thing that became really hard for me. Not that I wouldn’t try. I had many friends and was always being invited over for sleepovers. Every few months I would try again and fight anxiety through the night. Sometimes I would throw up; sometime I would shake and cry softly to myself. Sometimes I would fall asleep watching TV and never get anxious. I remember one night at some kind people’s house; we had the old tinfoil popcorn that you cooked on the stove. I must have fallen asleep on the couch still trying to watch the show that was on. The next thing I remember is waking up around two or three in the morning, moonlight was streaming through unfamiliar windows. The feel of an unfamiliar bed, clean tight sheets. It was a space that resembled where I would usually have a panic attack, but it was also different. I awoke at peace and realized that I had a choice; I could let myself fall into my old patterns and turn this beautiful seen into a personal hell. Or I could return to bed and let sleep and peace overtake me. I chose the latter, and I remember it to this day. It would be nearly two decades after that night before I would find some real measure of control over myself. But things had to get a lot worse before I could begin to make them better.

In the beginning I did what most people do, I simply avoided the situations where I had experienced anxiety. Especially if the first experience was reinforced by a second, and often faster, panic attack. Sleepovers, Japanese restaurants, hotels, it was all about where I had had panicked before. I would happily fly a plane, fly on a plane, drive in a car with unfamiliar people, go out on a fishing boat, I just never realized that these situations could produce anxiety. All the while I was compensating for the abuse my ego was taking from having anxiety by doing these amazing things that got me praised elsewhere. In fact, the things that I did often had an element of risk taking. I have heard this called counterphobic behavior. I was constantly reminding myself that I was courageous, successful, and capable. 

At the peak of this behavior I loaded everything I really needed in life up in a small camper on the back of my truck and drove from California to Idaho to fly alongside the 1997 US Paragliding National Championships, not enter the actual competition, mind you, that would cause me too much anxiety. So every day I would launch with the rest of the competitors and face the most powerful updrafts I had ever felt on a Paraglider. Every day the turbulence would cause my canopy to collapse and I would fall and spin until I got it fixed, then I would be back to the racing. One day I spent a full minute falling and spiraling trying to get my paraglider untangled and flying again, I really thought I would need to throw my backup parachute (Those don’t always work). On nearly everyday of the competition the turbulence caused someone’s paraglider to become so tangled that they threw their backup parachute. On about day three I had a fellow pilot die a few hundred feet beneath me. I was so busy staying alive that I never knew that we had lost him. It wasn’t until that night that I found out. He was camping next to me.

My point to all of this is that if it were a matter or bravery that would get one past anxiety disorder, I would have beaten this a long time ago. In fact I probably contradict any stereotype that people might have about those who have panic attacks. I am social, extroverted, courageous to the point of stupidity, I forget the trauma of things quickly and am willing to try things again and again. I am adventurous, try new things constantly, and have always had success in dating and friendship. I just had panic attacks, and tended to have them where I had had them before.

It wasn’t until I was about twenty-three that I really started my steep decline, which would ultimately lead me to start my ultimate recovery.

I was getting a little too close to starting a relationship with a married woman, something that I knew was a bad idea, and something I had always promised that I would never do. She was a great friend, had panic disorder as well, and was a very easy person for me to be around. I enjoyed showing her things in life that I found beautiful that she had never done, like fishing and scuba diving.

A sort of vague depression had fallen over my life and I was still doing adventurous things but they weren’t fulfilling me like they used to. I got careless and had severely broken my wrist and needed surgery. I did not do well with the anesthesia. I swear I could taste it at random moments for months afterward. The wrist injury limited the way that I could exercise, and the depression got slowly worse.

My relationship with my girlfriend at the time was going nowhere and we both knew it. She had anxiety as well, and we would never go anywhere because she couldn’t drive with me. My heart was growing close to the married friend that I knew I shouldn’t be with.

One night, I was over at the married friends house, a fire was lit in the fireplace. I was sitting on the couch with the married woman next to me. Her husband was working late as he always did and we were in her home. (In retrospect this all seems a little predictable) My heart wanted to move in a direction that my brain knew was really, really dumb. So right then and there I had the worst panic attack of my life.

It was as if there was a constant scream in my brain that wouldn’t stop, and my body was screaming as well. My heart was racing; my fingers were cold and sweating. It wasn’t the physical feelings that were so frightening; it was the mental breakdown that was terrifying. It was as if my brain was an incoherent blur of fear and speed. I tried to walk it off, but I could not get a hold of myself. The only thing that made sense was to flee. For the first time in my life running away was probably a really good idea.

 The thirty-minute drive home took forever; passing each stoplight was a victory. But when I got home things really didn’t end. It was as if I was a bell that had been rung that would not stop ringing. The illusion that there was a safe place to run to was finally destroyed. It was finally clear that my anxiety came from within and that I had always been fooling myself into thinking the causes were external. At the time this was a terrifying realization: The source of all of my fear was me, and I can never run from me. It would be five years of near constant anxiety before I would begin to really work past this.

For me my weight was a tangible measure of how I was doing. When I felt better I could eat, when I felt worse I could not. I started this process at a very slim 165 pounds and month-by-month they slowly slipped away. After two years I was down to 140 and still dropping. My body was consuming itself and there was nothing that I could do about it. I still felt that if I could only find that one big “why” that I could turn everything around.

My turnaround came when I was finally ready to reach out for help. My life was such constant suffering that I opened the phonebook and pointed to a name of a Psychologist. I was 137 ponds and really, really, open to new ideas. He politely listened to me for forty-five minutes and said “sounds chemical, biological, there isn’t much I can do for you. You should try medication.” Mind you, this is from a guy who makes his living without medication. The ones who specialize in drugs are Psychiatrists. Considering the source, I believed him and went looking for a good Psychiatrist.

It turned out that one of the very best lived on my street, within walking distance. Her office was attached to her house. She was this unassuming Japanese-Hawaiian woman with a kind of understated approach that put me at ease. She listened very carefully and asked thoughtful questions. She prescribed me something and gave me plenty of samples. It was the kind of drug that works right away and my appetite came back with a vengeance. I gained ten pounds that first week.

Even with this huge turnaround me life was far from normal. I was still of the mindset that there was one answer, one big thing that would cure me. I thought that this drug was my big answer, so when I realized that I was still struggling I asked for a change in my medicine. I screwed myself up by doing this. This mindset cost me at least two years.

The reality was that I needed to make many small changes in my life, all over the place. It tuned out that the answers I needed were even closer that the Psychiatrist down the street.

All this time, while I was struggling, my parents were working on the Breakfree program. This was a nutrition-based approach that they were really finding success with. My father is a doctor and my mother has anxiety disorder. Between them they had created a comprehensive program that looked at anxiety in a way that I had not. They believed that anxiety was a genetic condition that could be mostly managed by replenishing basic nutrients in the body, monitoring carefully what we eat, when we eat, and what we put in our bodies. About four years into my really dark time, I finally gave their ideas a try and I began to get better right away.

Looking back on all of this, I now know I could have turned this around at any point. It would have only taken a few weeks from even my lowest point to get my life back using the skills that I have learned. Isn’t that life? Without the knowledge things seem impossible. With the knowledge things seem easy.

Being pummeled like I was for so long was cause for me to question everything. “What had I done to deserve this?” “Have I paid enough?” “Does God hate me?” “Is there no God, and will I just disappear into this horrible disorder?” “Will I go to an insane asylum?” “Will the rest of my life look like this?” “ Do I want to live if this will never end?” Pretty heavy stuff, but everyone who has struggled like I have has felt and thought nearly all of things that went through my mind.

            If you are asking similar questions I have come to these answers: Yes, this might last for the rest of your life if you do nothing about it. It might let up on its own, but it might not. Everyone, however, can get over this no matter how long that they have struggled. There are enough tools available now for everyone to get better. It is important here to note that panic creates a kind of brain-state that has you looking for one big answer, and recovery just doesn’t look like that. It is not just one thing, although one big insight can be a turning point, it is more about only a few small changes that you work into your life every day.

            I tell people that they can undo a year of suffering in a week when they are working with me and have access to the best tools and advice. I took about two years to undo twenty years of struggling and five years of extreme suffering. But I was learning everything without a guide, without someone who had walked my same path and was teaching and encouraging me. Now I am that person for others. I feel profound joy in knowing that I have really made a difference in many peoples lives. This may be hard to believe, but I am glad to have gone through what I have gone through. It was all of my mistakes that help me understand what others are going through and help me guide them towards the right answers. I like who I am now, and I know that I couldn’t be who I am today without going through what I have gone through. I couldn’t help others like I do without having had this journey go this particular way.

            When you have really faced a panic attack that punched you in the soul you will always be able to see in others if they have gone through the same thing. Not that they will wear it like a strobe light, but if you ask them, you can tell by the way that they answer. My older brother always used to be cruel to me about my anxiety as I was growing up. When he was thirty-four he had his first real panic attack. It looked like he had seen a ghost when he told me about it.

            When people talk to me they know right away that I have been there. It seems to change the discussion totally. It creates a trust and openness that is very hard to find with someone who hasn’t been there, no matter what their education might be. Once you have that connection people often feel real hope for the first time in a long time.

            If you are ready to get started, which I hope that you are now, give me a call.

Call anytime 619-889-9996