My Life Was Slipping From Me and I Didn't Know Why: A Sports Media Executive's Internal Hell

No one else could see it, but my world was fading. 

The dizziness started in the bridge of my nose. The sudden fever engulfed my heart. My lungs clenched as I tried to take a breath. 

I was simply trying to keep eye contact with a group of people I had not met before this moment. It was a work meeting with external partners, nothing too formal. It wasn’t overly important nor do I have a fear of speaking or presenting. In fact, I love both. 

But there I was sitting in internal panic, anxiety coursing through me, and I didn’t even know why. All I knew was that I was in a crowded room, and I needed to get out.

My fear was irrational: afraid of being in environments that I could not physically control — anywhere in which I couldn’t decide myself to quickly leave. 

In those moments I would become flushed and unable to calm. It kept getting worse. 

While that particular meeting was casual, my ability to speak and present in my role was important. And my mind has already told me it was not going to cooperate on that day. Some days it would but not that day.

I don’t know how I got through it, but there’s no doubt anyone even noticed the internal horror I felt for that hour. For me though, it was truly traumatic.

I have suffered from anxiety since I was in middle school. Through life, that feeling would be intense or light — but it never vanished. It has manifested itself differently across the years, but it’s always physical and it’s almost always irrational. Anxiety doesn’t need to answer to anyone: it does whatever the hell it wants.

Just a few years ago, however, it roared like never before and it came right at the time my career was really starting to lift off. In 2019, just prior to a pandemic that sent us all home, I was struggling to be present in any room. That meeting was one example. 

It felt like walls were closing in and I was going to implode if I couldn’t control my environment or sit by a door for an easy escape. I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t function. Would I pass out? Have a heart attack? Pee? Throw up? Die?

I was internally a wreck. So I learned short-term hacks to take charge of my surroundings: 

I would ask to do meetings on walks outside.

I would never ride in the car with anyone, always making excuses to go on my own.

I would always sit by the door.

They were all cheap solutions though. Sometimes, I couldn’t control these things. A flight, a meeting with an external partner, a seat in the middle of a boardroom, sitting in a crowded audience — those things became my biggest fears.

My mind would not still. I was worried. My heart would race. I couldn’t just be. 

 It felt like I was losing the life I knew.

The mental anguish became so destructive that I reached a point of crisis and did the last thing I wanted to do: I opened up about it. 

I told one of my closest friends in life. He is a therapist, so you’d think I would have been open sooner. But that’s what shame and stigma does. My friend recommended a new style of therapy he was practicing called “Brainspotting.” It’s visualization, bilateral music (in one ear then the other) and some very intense processing. 

Desperate (even though I didn’t need to be in order to seek care), I sought out a therapist in the Los Angeles area.

What I never was able to accomplish in terms of healing from years of cognitive behavioral or talk therapy, I was now achieving in just a matter of sessions of Brainspotting. I remember taking notes during my session with the therapist, and she stopped me: “No, you don’t need to. You are doing the work now. You are shaking out all those anxious thoughts you could not process as a child.” 

It was working. It worked. I am doing better. So much better.

To say I am “healed” is not where I am ready to go just yet. I don’t know what it would be like for anxiety to not be perched on my shoulder, so I don’t even know how to gauge what full healing would feel like. But I do know I no longer struggle the way I did and my mind is no longer manifesting these terrible physical symptoms.

There are reasons for my anxiety and there are tangible, tactical methods I have practiced to shake so much of it. I feel much more in control. No longer do I deal with that unpredictable behavior. I feel lighter. I recognize when I do feel anxious, but it doesn’t linger and it doesn’t overwhelm. 

I also feel a desire to be much more open with the hope that others will relate to my experience and perhaps find means of healing of their own. I plan to write far more here about my personal experience and share the tactical healing methods I have found. As an executive in the sports and entertainment space, I plan to encourage others in professional positions of influence to seek care and never feel shame.

I also plan to write about the glaring hole that exists: most people cannot access or afford quality mental health care. The result is, and will further be, more and more inequality. Those with access to the care will get sharper, healthier, more productive and will be more successful. The have nots, however, will just lose further ground. The equality gap will widen. It is, to me, one of the most massive social justice causes to rally behind.

It’s why myself and my friend, Dr. Armando Gonzalez, — along with artists, musicians, athletes and mental health experts — launched the Cheatcode Foundation, of which I am the chair.  The mission is to end stigma toward seeking mental health support and increase access to effective mental health services in the most at-risk and underserved areas.

I will write more about that too.

It’s time for me to be more open and share. Please walk with me on my journey and follow this newsletter.

Thank you for listening to my heart here and letting vulnerability win,

Jimmy