A Turned Corner and a Set Back: Managing Business, Life and an Ongoing Battle With Anxiety

Last Saturday night, in the far corner of the Delta Terminal at the Minneapolis airport, I was slumped over in a chair, hands over my head, still shaking and trying to catch my breath. I was rattled,?slightly embarrassed and when Bre came out of the gate with her bag, I couldn’t speak words. It wasn’t the best ending to an otherwise great vacation, but it happened.?

As many of you reading this know, I've been battling anxiety since having a bad panic attack on a stalled airplane back in 2017?(I never had an issue flying before this). Three years later, after going to therapy and doing mental health exercises on a daily basis, I was able to fly medication-free for the first time since that event. I’d never really talked about my anxiety issues until then. After that event, I made a Facebook post and put out a podcast episode on what happened, what I was battling, and how I got better. The response was overwhelming in a good way. People from all different ages and backgrounds reached out I realized that mental health issues were a lot more common than I thought.?

I haven’t spoken much on it since because it's been pretty manageable for me. While anxiety spiked for many during the pandemic, for me, it dissipated. No flying, no elevators, no large crowds. The pandemic was a break for me. The problem is that you are either getting better or getting worse. And when I didn’t have an incentive to get better, I got worse.?

I don't get very anxious on a daily basis, and when I’ve needed to fly, I’ve popped some clonazepam and been fine.

Fast forward to a couple months ago, Bre and I wanted to book a long weekend somewhere cool that we’d never been, and landed on Portland and Acadia National Park in Maine.?

On this trip, I wanted to avoid taking medication. While there is nothing wrong with taking medication, I didn’t want to feel zonked out for two of our four days, and I also wanted to see where things currently stood regarding my anxiety while traveling. I’ve done a lot more work over the last year and a half: breathing, daily cold exposure (often in Lake Michigan), and journaling whenever I am angry or anxious using a technique to show myself there is a better response.?

So off we went.?

The first flight was smooth. I had some anxiety going through TSA and when the plane was sitting on the tarmac, but I handled everything well. It felt great flying for several hours without medication for the first time in years.?

The first night was fun; we walked around the harbor area of downtown Portland, stopped at a few bars and restaurants, and enjoyed the area. We called it a night early to get ready for the three-and-a-half-hour drive up to Acadia National Park the next morning.?

We checked out of the hotel around 8:30 a.m. and hit the road. Twenty minutes into our drive north on I-295, we were forced to a screeching halt. About half a mile ahead of us, a woman under the influence drove across the median and started going south in the northbound lanes, crashing into two cars and shutting down the interstate for an hour and forty-five minutes.

Luckily and most importantly there were no serious injuries. As we were stranded on the interstate, I had flashbacks of panicking while stuck in standstill traffic several years ago. To my surprise, in a situation that previously would have been a high trigger for me, nothing happened. I just got out my laptop, worked on a proposal, and waited. Eventually, the police signaled us to drive across the median field that separated north and south, and we were rerouted. Adding about ninety minutes onto our drive, we made it safely to Bar Harbor and drove straight to the top of Cadillac Mountain when we arrived.

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Bar Harbor is a really unique and lively coastal town packed with old-school bars, restaurants, hotels, and shops, nestled between a mountainous National Park and the ocean.

After driving up to Cadillac Mountain and walking around, we checked into the hotel, enjoyed the view, and then were shuttled downtown where we had more drinks, enjoyed more views, and hopped around for a few more hours. My favorite part was stumbling upon?Balance Rock Inn?(pictured) while walking along a Harbor-side trail. We stopped for a drink next to a fire pit that overlooked the pool, harbor and the 120 year old hotel.

The last day and a half included hiking around the national park, a scenic drive back along the coast where we stopped at a few breweries in different coastal towns, VERY cold plunges in the Atlantic, a lighthouse tour, and walking around downtown Portland again before heading to the airport for our flight back and my second attempt of flying without medication.?

Portland has a small airport of only about twelve gates, and it was pretty dead on a Saturday afternoon. We made it through TSA quickly and then realized our flight, like many others, was delayed a couple hours due to the flooding in NYC.?

When we boarded the narrow CRJ9 a couple hours late, I was already anxious, and being in the middle of a cramped plane after being delayed didn't help. Shortly after we were boarded and told that they were going to get us off fast to make up the time we were stalled on the tarmac due to “uneven weight distribution”. After about forty minutes, they came to the brilliant resolution of moving a petite woman and her 8-pound bag from the back of the plane to the front. I can’t imagine she accounted for more than .001% of the total weight and yet somehow solved a weight distribution problem.?

I wasn’t doing great, but eventually, the plane finally took off. I’ve never had any issues while in the air or moving on the ground in a plane, only when it is stalled. Three hours later, when we landed in Minneapolis, the pilot informed us that our gate wasn’t ready, and we were stalled again. Shortly after that, I lost it. Breathing heavily and shaking (I even made a few noises that would resemble a wounded animal), Bre tried to calm me down and a nice man across the aisle asked if he could do anything. The problem was, at that point, I was so far gone. I couldn’t think, couldn’t speak words, and I just wanted to get out of there. But I couldn’t.?

It’s a feeling I’ve had several times in my life, dating back to when I was young and accidentally locked in a car for 45 minutes with the sun beating down. I screamed and banged on the back window, but people were too far away to hear me.?

I hadn’t had a full-blown panic attack since I was stalled on the O’Hare tarmac in 2017, but here I was over six?years later in a similar situation. This time on a tarmac in Minneapolis,?it happened again. Back to square one?

What I learned?

I’m not going to view this as a step backward and discount the progress I made. I did fly without medication twice (although one was a mess), I did 10x better in stand-still traffic than I used to, and I did better riding elevators there.?

Performance experts say to get better and rewire your brain, you want to push yourself about 10% out of your comfort zone and master those situations before moving on.

After my panic attack in 2017, my therapist made me do “exposure therapy” and start riding elevators again (something I was scared to do after that). She first made me go to floors 1-4 five times every day until I felt no anxiety, then I could move to the next level. Several months later, I was riding the entire high rise without a phone (a phone is considered a “safety mechanism”).?

The flight on the way there, the standstill traffic, the elevators?were?about 10% out of my comfort zone.

The situation on the way back was still out of my league right now. At least now I know where I stand.?

There should be no shame in taking medication if you need it. On the way back, I let my ego get in the way, wanting to prove that I was better and that I was normal again. The fact is that you don’t create a “normal again” version of yourself. The past is dead. You can only move forward and create a new version of yourself. I don’t think there is anything wrong with medication, especially if you are also doing the work to get better naturally. Next time I am in that situation and feel anxious, I will take medication and I will continue to do the daily work to get better long term.

Avoidance is not the answer. As I mentioned earlier, if you are not putting in the work to get better, you are getting worse. Luckily?for me, I won a four-night stay in St Croix at a golf tournament last year and just realized the expiration date is December 18th. I'll look at this as a sign,?the tickets are now booked, and I’ll be boarding planes and facing my fear again soon.?

In closing

If you are dealing with mental health issues, you can get better. I have gotten better (although I clearly still have a ways to go, and it’s something I’ll likely need to work on for the rest of my life). I encourage anyone to get the help they need AND to put in the work. It is difficult, it takes time, but the progress is worth it.?

On a different note, this newsletter is typically business-related, but as you can tell, that was not the subject of this?email. That said, I will give a quick update since I haven't in a month.??

We have now passed the four-month mark of launching Story Mark Studios.?

Although we got off to a slow start, which was expected as re-launching a business takes time to grab traction, we have been moving in the right direction and are now looking to hire a few new positions. We will also be launching a new offer to local B2B companies next week and releasing the Milwaukee Uncut podcast on a regular cadence again starting later this month.?

If you are interested in any of the above, or the story I just shared feel free to reach out!?

Thank you?for reading!?

-Richie