Crippling Panic Attacks & My Road To Recovery

I remember sitting at home starving, but the prospect of leaving the house to buy food filled me with dread.

This was when I was around 18 years old and the idea of making small talk with the checkout person sent my anxiety levels through the roof.

This may seem strange to some of you reading this.

Especially as I now own a business that requires a fair amount of communication with people from all walks of life.

I even sometimes need to do presentations to large audiences.

Being shy as a child, and a chronic over-thinker, definitely contributed to my problems.

Although a series of traumatic events that occurred as I was entering adulthood was the real trigger.

In addition to that, for as long as I can remember I wanted to start my own business, or at least have a promising career.

I thought that the key to success in life was to always appear confident and not show any weakness.

Due to this way of thinking, I would keep everything to myself and I was filled with self-doubt.

I was afraid that I 'would never make it'.

My family members, closest friends and work colleagues were not aware of the challenges I faced.

I hid it from them.

I later discovered this was one of the reasons that I suffered for so long.

The reason I am sharing this with you now is because I want anybody suffering similar problems to know that it's possible to make your situation better.

I want to share the actions that contributed to my recovery.

I'm not suggesting what I did will provide you with a cure for your own challenges.

And I suggest that you speak to a medical professional if things seem particularly bad.

However, I hope anybody reading this who suffers from similar anxiety-related problems will take some comfort from this post.

Things can get better.

In no particular order, here's what helped me.

1) Being more open about my challenges and accepting that there was nothing wrong with feeling anxious at times had a positive impact.

It's ok to feel uncomfortable in certain social situations. It's normal.

Accepting this helped me understand that others feel the same way I do, and that made things easier.

I no longer felt pressure to appear confident, and if I felt nervous, that was fine.

This took a lot of the power away from the negative thoughts that I had in my head.

2) Cutting down on alcohol made a difference.

Some people underestimate how anxiety levels can increase a few days after drinking, even in small amounts.

If you tend to have a tipple at the weekend, think about how that may be impacting you a few days later.

3) Exercise, particularly joining a club (I chose Muay Thai as I knew it would be a challenge) made such a positive difference.

I don't exercise as much as I used to, but whenever I'm stressed, going for a jog can really help.

The thing I loved most about joining the Thai Boxing club was how much it challenged me, everyone was supportive and I also made some friends.

If that sounds a bit too rough, I've heard a lot of people say that Yoga benefited their mental health.

4) Self-help books and podcasts, particularly those that help you understand the human mind a little better, helped me.

Derren Brown's Boot Camp for The Brain and Boot Camp for Life are both fantastic.

You can listen on Audible and it's an excellent place to start.

There's a lot of information packed into those podcasts that actually took me years to discover.

5) This is probably the hardest thing that I did to make things better, and please, ignore this advice if you think it will make matters worse for yourself.

I found that the more I exposed myself to situations I felt uncomfortable with, the better things got.

Taking small steps, with each thing being a little more difficult than the last, really made a difference.

For example, even though I felt too anxious to leave to go food shopping - I did it.

I then got more involved in social situations.

Then I got a job that meant that I had to deal with customers (who were sometimes unhappy) face to face.

This is the point when my anxiety felt like it 'peaked'.

In hindsight, I had actually come a long way since worrying about leaving the house for food.

Shortly after I joined the Thai Boxing club I mentioned earlier.

After 8 months I participated in my 1st fight full contact fight in front of a room full of people.

The job I got after shortly after that involved cold calling and made me as anxious as the Thai Boxing match.

A couple of years later I found myself having to give presentations to small groups of people - that was tough.

Now I own my old business (my lifelong dream) and I can now present to a room of people.

Am I super confident when I go into meetings and presentations?

Hell no!

Yet, I am 100x better than I was when I was starving and had to pluck up the courage just to leave the house.

If I can recover from that, you can too.

PS My inbox is always open if you are reading this and want some advice on the subject.