How I Conquered Panic Attacks

No bullshit, just truth

The First Incident

I remember the moment vividly. I was doing a presentation in college. I was a senior and my colleague and I were to present our last paper in front of the engineering college. He spoke first. As I sat there waiting for my turn, the symptoms hit me like a Tyson left hook. Feelings of unreality, air hunger, dizziness. I thought I was coming unglued. Suddenly it was my turn. I could feel sweat dripping, my vision seemed blurred. Was I dying?

I somehow got through the presentation, it was brutal. My voice was shaking, I was disorganized, too serious and I cut things short to escape. This would start to become a theme. Escape.

The Anxiety Devil

The attacks were not consistent yet. I was able to do my job at a large engineering firm, but whenever the spotlight was on me, I wilted. I sat in the back in meetings and made excuses to leave to use the restroom, get something I forgot, whatever could get me out of the anxiety that seemed to be constant around people.

God help me when I had a presentation, I couldn’t eat, sleep, I suffered for days. I would lose several pounds due to no appetite. The only relief was anger. Somehow when I got angry the fear subsided. I was ashamed, embarrassed, less than. A loser. Mental illness must run in my family, I am doomed.

When I told my wife about it, I could see the fear and disappointment in her eyes. Here I was a ripped athlete with a great job, engineering degree and faith and I had panic attacks in Church, in movie theatres, bible studies and especially airplanes. Damn even going to the mall or supermarket was a challenge.

I went to the doctor, he said healthy as a horse, its stress. You should see a counselor. I quit my job, threw my career away and took a landscaping job to avoid the anxiety. I remember overhearing my pastor say, the guy had so much potential, he really crashed and burned. Wow, even my pastor was disappointed. My wife looks at me with regret. My friends tire of my whining. My self-disgust is epic.

The Bottom of the Pit

My wife decided to leave me. I was at the lowest low of my life. I could barely work, eat, function. I had a career, wife and kids and now, I was alone and working a menial job. I hated my church and my pastor was an phony. To add insult to injury, my kids informed me that my wife was getting married next weekend. What? We just got the divorce finalized a few months ago? I realized she moved on long ago and didn’t want to live with a shadow, a ghost, a man of unfulfilled potential. I was a simp.

I had to secure a better job, so I got one in the software industry. I needed money for rent, child support, life. The new job, I found out later, involved some travel and my fear of enclosed spaces, especially planes, caused no end of anxiety. I was so disgusted with myself, I looked in the mirror and saw failure, regret and what could have been. I would have left me, I was going nowhere in life.

A Ray of Light

On one of my first trips I was flying into San Francisco and the weather was miserable. The plane was bouncing like a ping pong ball. I looked out the window and thought to myself, I wished the plane would crash, slam in the water, cartwheel across the bay, smoke, flames, wreckage…please God let it be. I’m a failure, something is wrong with me, I want it to end. Perhaps heaven awaits and my family might be better without me and with some insurance money.

My thoughts continued, hey, if I died this way, I might be considered a success. Man dies on business trip trying to support his kids. I liked that, surely at my funeral the fake church friends would say, he led a bible study, he was amazing, except his wife left him, but yea, he was amazing. He lived for Jesus. What a guy! So sad he left us in his miserable prime.

A bizarre thought entered my mind it made me laugh out loud, at least a fiery death would be better than David Carradine, he died jerking off in a closet in some Asian country, I would just be another casualty amongst the passengers. I thought of my backstabbing asshole pastor, who gave up on me, he would say nice things about me, but later he would think, that’s the best outcome for his poor family. The more I thought about it, the better it sounded. Wreck baby wreck.

We ended up circling again and going into a holding pattern but I felt peace. No anxiety. The plane could wreck, the plane could land, I was indifferent. I had died in a way already. What more could be done. I no longer cared about my church friends, my pastor, shit, half of my friends never called me after the divorce. One of them told me he wanted to, but his wife wanted him to stay away from me. Geez, what a bunch of henpecked soy boys I hung out with. Freaking sad. They were not real friends. I wondered. If I burned the church down, would I be doing everyone a favor. Probably.

Later on, I had enough clarity of mind to reflect. I didn’t feel anxiety when I was angry. I didn’t feel anxiety when I didn’t care. I didn’t feel anxiety alone, only around crowds or in situations where I thought I needed to act a certain way, like at my job or my church. I really spent a lot of energy doing impression management. I deeply cared what people thought of me. Not some people, pretty much all people. I thought all these people mattered, and I mattered to them, but that was obviously bullshit.

There was a key, an answer here, maybe a way back home to myself. I bought some books and I learned that many people suffered agoraphobia, panic attacks. Ok so I wasn’t a freak, a total loser. Good to know. I read a book called “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway”. I joined a free self-help group called “Recovery International” and started reading the text book called “Mental Health through Will Training”. I found in the city I lived, a counselor who specialized in this malady. It was expensive and I didn’t have much cash but I could not live with myself as I was. I had to be better, I had to adapt, if not for me, for my kids. I would rather die than stay this way.

The Program

I can summarize how to cure yourself, how you can heal. I can summarize dozens of self-hep books, hundreds of hours of counseling and years of learning. I have a plan that works. You can begin to claw back self respect like a prisoner inching out of a tunnel he dug for 20 years. You can stop smelling of regret and shame and bad choices. Its simple, but brutal. You will have to want it more than air. You will have to bleed, sweat, make friends with fear. Be so disgusted with yourself, you would crawl across glass and climb barbed wire naked. I was there. If you are there…..read on.

I built my ideal self, one brick, one inch, one fingernail, one workout, one humiliation at a time. I took all that fear and turned it into rage, obsession, will, drive, attitude. I drove around in my Jeep screaming at the top of my lungs, never again, never ever again. So here goes, its simple, its proven and it works. Do you have balls to try?

I was afraid to fight. Simple, I joined martial arts gym and started fighting in tournaments. I was afraid of public speaking, simple, I joined toastmasters. I was afraid to leave my church, cause they told me only we are saved. I gave those assholes the finger. Not God, just those assholes that pretended to care about me. I needed God in my corner, but not that fundamentalist God they taught me about.

I catalogued every fear as I built my idea self. If I had no fear, what would I say in that work meeting? So I began to speak my mind, even if it bothered people. I watched movies with characters I wanted to be like, I imitated them, their walk, their talk, how they entered a room, how they handled insults. How would they respond to that aggressive asshole from marketing? That’s how I would respond.

People started asking me, “"are you OK”? You seem a bit angry, a bit aggressive? Just a bit motherf*cker I’d answer and watch them melt away like snow in July. I built a presence, an attitude, a force of nature. I wanted to enter a room and have my energy make people look up and wonder about their gender.

I read pick up books and listened to tapes by Ross Jeffries. I wanted to learn to approach women. I won a few tournaments, started accumulating trophies. I looked forward to clocking some asshole in the head with a round kick. You entered the wrong tournament motherf*cker. When I walked in the office with a black eye, bruises all over my arms, people just got silent. I smiled, like an assassin.

I thought to myself, I want a motorcycle, so I bought one. I wanted a Jeep, so I bought one. I always loved the water but was fearful of sharks. I got a scuba certificate, then another advanced cert, then a technical dive cert. I did shark dives, went to Belize, dove the blue hole. Every fear I conquered changed me from the inside out. More swagger, more confidence, more attitude. This is how winning is done.

I started having confidence to talk to women, I even picked up a woman on a plane. She was reading a magazine, she was sitting next to me. I said “Excuse me, but I am far more interesting than that magazine”, she said “that’s a pickup line” and I replied “sure, but it’s true”. She told me she had a boyfriend, and I replied, “We are just talking, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. I am quite harmless”. We had a wonderful conversation and as we were exiting the plane she stopped, turned around and said “I don’t think I am going to be dating my old boyfriend much longer, here is my business card”. We went out that weekend and dated for more than a year. I was so back, not only back, built better, built resilient. I had surveyed the floor of hell and I lived to tell about it.

So here is the plan. Visualize yourself, not as you are, but as you want to be. Write about it, dream about it, begin to live it. Watch Charisma on Command channels on youTube, watch James Bond movies. Memorize the lines, watch how they walk, how they dress, how they respond. Memorize it, start living it. Read the posts by Day

Write down all your fears, even the secret ones you won’t admit to yourself or God. Rank them, one by one. I bet you have all the fears common to man. Did you know you are only born with two fears? Loud noises and fear of falling. All the rest are learned. If they are learned you can unlearn them. You can change, you can be different. Stop living a lie, you are better than that.

Make a plan to address each fear. Not all at once. One at a time. Reward yourself. Get a motorcycle, learn to surf, do something you dreamed about. Each fear you conquer is one piece of armor you put on, forever. No one can take it again. Get help. Join Recovery International, it’s free. Join a martial arts gym, learn to box. Develop prowess. Become a man to be reckoned with. One fear, one brick, one humiliation at a time. God is in your corner. If God can be for you, who can be against you?