Badass Ways to End Anxiety & Stop Panic Attacks!

by Geert Verschaeve

  I bet you are. And this may be the very reason why your anxiety is so persistent!

  That’s because it is the wrong approach.

  I’ll dig into the details later, but I wanted to bring up this counterintuitive concept now, because it is so fundamental.

  When you suffer from unwanted anxiety, the goal is never to feel calm. The goal is not to take your anxiety away. Please allow me to explain since I understand this may sound very odd.

  The more you try to make the anxiety go away, the more you try to stay calm, the more you try to make your symptoms disappear, the worse it will get!

  And I guess I don’t even have to prove this. You have already experienced it plenty of times or you wouldn’t be reading this book.

  The more the anxiety upsets you, the more power you give it.

  Trying to avoid anxiety or attempting to make it vanish is a form of resistance, and the anxiety you’re feeling already represents resistance to something that’s happening or that you were thinking about. That’s what launched the anxiety in the first place. Hence, the more resistance you add, the more you forcefully try to be calm, the more nervous you will get.

  It’s the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a fire in an effort to extinguish the flames. Or trying to fall asleep by frantically hoping you will fall asleep soon. How well does that work?

  When you are anxious, your nervous system is already freaking out. We shouldn’t increase the pressure.

  This was one of the many mistakes I was making in the past. I’ll explain more later, but I wanted to set this straight from the start.

  Goal number one is not to take your anxiety away; that happens at a later stage. First, we’ll need to work on your intolerance to anxiety because that’s the true root cause of what you’re currently dealing with.

  For now, remember that one of the most calming emotions you can give yourself is realizing that it is OK to let go of control, to let things flow and just see what happens. Even when what you are experiencing is as pleasant as an unwanted hug from a stranger who forgot to shower or apply deodorant for the last seven months.

  The more you fight anxiety, the worse it will get. The more you let go, the faster it will pass.

  Easier said than done, of course. Let’s try to make it as easy as possible.

  Why Are We So Anxious?

  How did this happen? You’re smart. You’re doing the best you can, trying to make something of your life. And then, all of a sudden, anxiety tries to ruin it all.

  It often starts out small. One event, one little thing where it rears its ugly head and shows you what it’s capable of.

  Then, like any sane human being would, you think, “Well, I hope that doesn’t happen again” and the fear of the fear is born.

  This attitude then sets a chain of events in motion where, through a slow process, anxiety will try to dominate your life more and more. Oftentimes there will be things you used to do without blinking that now make you lie awake at night weeks before the event. At that point, anxiety starts to overshadow everything.

  If you suffer from anxiety, you are not alone. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) and the National Institute of Mental Health, an estimated 18% of the population suffers from anxiety-related issues, with or without panic attacks.[1]

  Many people who have contacted me over the years believed their anxiety was unique, that there was something wrong with them. I was no different. It honestly even took me a long time finding out that it was anxiety disturbing me, for at first I simply believed there was a major, overlooked issue within my body.

  Whatever it is you fear, whatever your thoughts, you are not alone. You are not broken, and there is nothing wrong with the chemical substances in your brain. I’ve heard it all during the more than a decade of helping people with anxiety and panic attacks.

  I’ve been there too. I thought I was the only one with those weird thoughts and reactions I used to suffer from. You are not abnormal. You’re just being flooded by negative thoughts that, for now, you choose to follow and put emphasis upon.

  The reason why you may feel unique is because you can’t see anxiety, let alone anxious thoughts. I have some famous celebrities in my client list and, upon looking at their public lives, you cannot imagine the anxieties they face. They seem (and are) very strong, yet they too are burdened with unwanted anxiety, unwanted thoughts and feelings they’d rather avoid. I once had a famous violin player as a client who had panic attacks during her concerts. The audience and even I couldn’t see it. Yet, she was in the midst of dealing with a full-blown panic attack.

  Everyone has anxiety to some extent, a lot of people have panic attacks, and some people you’ve been in the same room with have had a panic attack while you were present. They were simply really good at hiding it, just as you undoubtedly are or at least try to be. Not everyone feels comfortable openly talking about them. We’ll talk about this sense of shame later in the book, because that’s an important part of the problem too.

  Defining Anxiety

  Let’s first look at what anxiety is. Anxiety is a simple self-defense mechanism built into your body to steer clear of a danger or to react in the most appropriate way when we are faced with an imminent threat.

  This means that anxiety is a simple emotion. I don’t want to downplay the enormous effect uncontrollable anxiety can have on our lives; I lived it for fourteen years. Nevertheless, it’s a simple emotion meant to save our life, that’s it.

  This system came in handy on a daily basis until about one hundred years ago, when daily life was life-or-death dangerous.

  Imagine a version of yourself four hundred years ago. You’re alone and walking around in a wooded area. As you’re walking, you suddenly hear the rustling of leaves. You turn around and see two men approaching. They are armed with weapons and the look on their faces makes your stomach turn. You quickly try to hide behind a tree without making too much noise. As these men walk past you, you sigh with relief and continue your journey.

  Not long after this encounter, you notice some movement to your right. You instantly realize it’s a brown bear with cubs walking through the woods. Your anxiety rises again, and you slowly and quietly step away. Because of your swift action, the bear won’t see you; you get to live another day. In a span of thirty minutes, your anxiety system saved your life, twice.

  Until not so long ago, our anxiety systems were necessary on a daily basis. We faced physical threats and many possible dangers to our lives, and we had to constantly be on guard.

  That system is still active and alive in us today. Like radar, it scans your surroundings and analyzes what you see, hear, and yes, it even scans what you think. The anxiety self-defense system can be induced in many ways, both on a gut-level reaction without having to think (a part of our brain called the amygdala takes care of this) and by using thoughts that often start with “what if?”

  Having one “what if?” thought can be all that’s needed to launch the anxiety and self-defense system.

  As you are anxious, your body can go into a variety of modes. It will most often go into some form of fight-or-flight status. As a result, your muscles will receive more blood in order for you to fight the threat or run away from the danger. Your heart rate will go up, your digestion will cease, less blood will go to your brain leading to dizziness or light-headedness, you will get a dry mouth, your breathing pattern will change, and so on. You’ll feel a whole range of unusual sensations. The same ones you would feel after running as fast as you could for about one hundred yards. Only this time, you might not have been moving at all.

  If you met an angry bear you would probably not mind feeling any of these strange sensations. All of your energy would presumably go to freaking out about the bear, not the sensations and the anxiety itself.

  Now imagine what happens if you’re just involved in your daily activities and start feeling any of these strange sensations then... what then?

  Chances are
you will worry about what you’re feeling. It doesn’t make any sense for you to have racing thoughts, feel the anxiety in your stomach, have a rapid heartbeat, or any of the other symptoms that accompany anxiety. That’s when anxiety, a generalized anxiety disorder, panic attacks, and phobias can start to take over your life.

  The anxiety will start to pop up more and more, as if it’s playing hide-and-seek. It will seem to spread like a virus that you frantically try to avoid. The reason is simple. This is yet another self-defense system. Whenever you’ve felt anxious somewhere or when anxiety hit you while you were doing something, your mind remembered. Consciously or not, you made a mental note: “That was dangerous. That was life threatening. Let’s avoid this place or doing that in the future.”

  These are the wonders of our amygdala and other “let’s live another day” systems. The next time you go to a similar place, the anxiety will start to rise automatically. Sometimes even thinking about it will be enough to make you anxious, especially when you know you have to do that what you fear in the future. As the moment comes closer, your mind will go into anticipation mode, reviewing and fretting about all of the possible outcomes and imagining how that day will be a disaster. That’s when the “what if?” thinking starts, my favorite hobby in the era of my anxiety and panic attacks.

  What your body and mind are doing in this case is telling you, “Hey, last time you were here, you met that angry bear, remember? Be on your guard! I’ll be preparing you, just in case.”

  Again, a very handy system when life was super dangerous. But when your mind tries to warn you about an upcoming flight, a meeting, the checkout counter, that wedding party, or whatever it is you dislike at the moment... it’s not so handy.

  On top of this, the system that’s trying to regulate everything, your nervous system, is getting so worn out and tired that it will make your anxious reactions grow exponentially. That’s why I’ll spend a significant amount of time on what you can do to desensitize your nervous system, so it can heal.

  A Different World

  We, as a society, are more anxious than ever because our anxiety systems are malfunctioning. Life isn’t as dangerous as it was a couple of generations ago and yet our bodies haven’t adapted. The alarm keeps ringing and continues to classify events as dangerous when they aren’t.

  We, on the other hand, are faced with many pressures and non-lethal dangers like meeting a deadline, making enough money, keeping up with the Joneses, paying back the mortgage, having the best possible career while being the best possible wife/husband/mother/father/boyfriend/girlfriend/pet-owner and more... pressures our ancestors never had to deal with. All of these stressors and “oh no!” moments launch our anxiety systems over and over again while there is no real threat.

  The way we live plays a role in this too. E-mails and stress-related work stuff follow us around like a boomerang. Our smartphones now offer continuous busyness. We’re constantly bombarded with urgent e-mails or new (social) messages; these may cause little stress spikes giving you the urge to check your phone over and over again, thus stressing your nervous system even more.

  Our work, our to-do lists, and other peoples’ wishes follow us around everywhere. The only place we were free from work-related stress and people’s immediate demands was flying high up in the air. Unfortunately, even that has been invaded with the introduction of Wi-Fi on planes a little over a decade ago.

  This is not a rant, mind you. It is the way our society is evolving, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. There are many advantages, too. We nevertheless have to adapt and do it fast. If we don’t, more and more people will suffer from anxieties, burnouts, and other stress-related illnesses every year.

  Thankfully, you can learn how to adapt and change.

  A Choice

  As you’ll learn, a major cause of anxiety is the way we interpret what’s happening around us—the story we tell ourselves whenever something happens. Good news! We have control over these stories, and we can change the impact they have upon us.

  This is not my personal invention. Many great thinkers have been battling and overcoming anxiety and other emotional challenges for centuries. The first one that comes to mind is the great Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-181 A.C.E). He wrote in his journal, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

  Victor Frankl, the great doctor and psychologist who was captured by the Nazis during WWII, learned many lessons while he was humiliated and starved in a concentration camp. He discovered how to enjoy himself even though he was in one of the most horrendous places on earth. He described in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

  Claire Weekes, the Australian general practitioner who specialized in anxiety, also kept explaining to her patients that the solution lay in true acceptance because that’s the only way to calm down the nervous system that’s causing all the havoc.

  It is all a choice, as overly simplistic as that may sound, for now. Here too I don’t want to downplay your anxiety. But it is crucial that we see it for what it really is.

  It is never the symptoms or the location and situation you’re in that cause anxiety and panic attacks. It is your response to them that matters. One person’s heart skips a beat, and she doesn’t even notice it. Or she does and goes on with her day. Yet another woman with the exact same symptom can end up in terror with a pure panic attack while Googling what it could all mean... because she chose to get scared of the symptom.

  One person can be in a major traffic jam, in the longest tunnel you can imagine, and be lip-syncing to a popular Taylor Swift song about one of her many ex-boyfriends as loudly as he can. While another man can sit there in the exact same situation, with sweat dripping down his forehead, heart pounding through his chest, fingers gripping his steering wheel like he’s holding onto a ledge because he chose to agree with his “I can’t get away here! I’m stuck! Help!” thoughts.

  It is a choice! And if you suffer from anxiety with or without panic attacks, you’ve simply made a habit out of making the wrong choice. This, luckily, can be changed.

  Let me give you a simple example. You’re driving to an important meeting, and you’re running late. You unexpectedly end up in a traffic jam on the highway, and there are no exits the next couple of miles. What do you do?

  If your mind automatically thinks, “Oh no, I’m going to be late. I’ll never make it, and my colleagues/boss will be mad. Why oh why did I leave so late? This always happens to me!”

  Guess what? You’ll be pumping yourself up, and before you know it, you’ll try to telepathically make all of those cars in front of you move out of the way, which they probably won’t do. Your heart rate will go up; your face will turn red, and you’ll be pushing yourself into the fight-or-flight state because you’re communicating to your body that there is a major threat. As a result, you will feel absolutely terrible. When you finally arrive at work, you’ll be exhausted even before you start dealing with the consequences of your tardiness. This is the path you chose, and the resulting emotions you’ll feel are the consequences.

  That said, it is a choice.

  There is another approach to this situation. Your mind might say, “Well, there you have it. I won’t make it. I might as well not stress about it since pumping myself up and getting anxious won’t give my car wings or make the other cars vanish. So be it. I’ll deal with the consequences when I get there. For now, I’m going to listen to my favorite playlist, sit back, and relax.” If that’s the path you choose, you’ll be totally calm when you arrive at work. You’ll be ready to deal with the consequences as best as you can.

  The outside environment is the same in both cases. The traffic jam will make you late, and whoever is waiting for you might still get mad. However, your emotions, your happiness, and your entire nervous sy
stem will get a totally different treatment based on the thoughts you choose to focus upon. It is a choice—a hard one at first, a simple one with practice.

  Later on in this book, I will give you techniques to make this choice more effectively, and of course not just in traffic jams. And after a while, your mind will start to automatically choose the correct response because you will have reprogrammed it to do so.

  But for now, let’s dig a bit deeper into what happens when you’re anxious.

  The Vicious Cycle

  When anxiety is dominating your life, it didn’t happen overnight. It creeps in and starts to take over little by little even though it may seem to have started suddenly.

  As we’ve just seen, anxiety is a simple but vital self-defense mechanism in our bodies. It is meant to point out the danger and to help you take care of it. We can avoid that danger or deal with it when avoidance is no longer an option.