 all right we are back what's up everybody drew here that anxiety guy com with me as always billy from anxiety united in the sunny united kingdom it's not sunny but it's definitely the united kingdom all right baton that's 50 that's not bad yeah yeah we're halfway there i go to vegas with those odds not the moment perhaps but yeah so uh we are up to episode 17 in our series here we are very impressive track record you and i have yeah yeah this is good every week um we had a um a comment on billy's channel i i believe did you get this on facebook or where did you get this we're going to talk about today my mind's gone completely blank it was on facebook it was on facebook yeah sorry that's all right the majority or well not the majority but a lot of the comments that i get are about being able to relate to the things that i say because obviously i'm in the midst of all this crap myself and i think a lot of people would like to hear your side of things you know when although it's not really helpful for you no let's go i don't let's go down that trail okay how did drew used to feel so we're gonna go down memory lane with drew today yeah yeah i don't really mind it's okay it's not that it's not helpful or unhelpful or anything i don't mind talking about that stuff i actually i get asked that a lot too well this is it did i think it's you did you feel this did you feel that i think people like to be able to relate to the you know whether it helps them or not it probably does i guess knowing that they're not the only person because that's how often you feel that you're the only person that feels that sensation or experiences anxiety in that circumstance so maybe you know the more we talk about maybe our experiences hopefully it can put a few of their worries to bed i guess that would be the key yeah i think that's fair and i'm perfectly happy to share that so nothing is a secret so that's fine yeah so all right people have asked you know what was my what was my problem back then what's your problem dude and um you know what did i had to deal with that i have to deal with the same things that they did i get asked that like oh i have problem sleeping did you have that problem that sort of stuff so i mean i'll give you how about the 60 second version of the whole story and then we can go into like specifics let's do it i think the let me just put out the reason for this is because people probably don't understand that you used to be in the same boat that i'm in that i've been in you know and that many other people are because they see you now and they see that you're thriving you know you're successful business better at many things in life and people don't actually realize that you were as bad as we the collective us you know because they don't they don't believe that it's possible to get to your position so here's the proof Drew is about to share okay go ready go clock is ticking so all right i'll give you the the quick reader's digest version i had my very first panic attack which came like out of the blue you know we say it's totally out of the blue it was like 1986 i was it was my sophomore year in college so i'm dating myself if you guys can do math now you know how old i am um and i was at home it was during spring break i was in the house that i grew up in i was in my bedroom like that i had been in for thousands and thousands of nights and suddenly it hit me i had that like that derealization depersonalization my heart was racing below the you know everybody knows what a panic attack feels like and the first time it ever hit me was then everything was going awesome in my life in fact i had a 4.0 grade point average that semester so who the hell knows why it picked then to come out but it did so i had my first panic attack it was probably one of the most terrifying experiences in my whole life i'll never forget it till the day i die i kind of wrote it through the night and i immediately went started going down that spiral you know where oh is this going to happen to me again yeah so we've talked about the difference between people that panic attacks and the people that panic disorder like almost immediately i began to like worry and focus on is this going to happen again i don't want that to happen again because it was freaking horrible so i went through a couple of very uh very difficult months i went back up to school and i really struggled i finished a semester but i was having panic attacks often i was starting to worry about having them all the time came home went to work that summer had a summer job and i remember going to see i worked for company that actually had a doctor and a nurse like on staff and i remember one day i was just feeling terribly and i had sort of been friendly with the nurse because they were in the building that i was in and i would see her and we'd say hello to each other and i remember mentioning to her like i'm having this issue and and she was great i don't remember her name but she actually pointed me to a local psychologist not a psychiatrist and she said you should go talk to this guy his name was dr freedberg and dr freedberg if you're still alive thank you so i went to go see this guy i had two sessions with him he handed me the claire week's book hope and help for your nerves cool and he said this is you know read this and i did and i'm not kidding you i read the whole book in probably six or eight hours because it's a small book you know yeah and i i literally i you know i took the advice to heart right away and the next time i started having a panic attack i'll never forget was in my mother's car and i did exactly what she said to do and it went away in five or six minutes and it was like ha ha like this big revelation and i quickly got back at my feet and i literally did not have another panic attack for probably 10 years and then no no shit i know people think that that sounds crazy but that was actually true as soon as i read the book and i said oh that's what this is i knew what it was yeah i knew what to do i was able to do it and i guess i hadn't gone a far down far enough the negative road yet it was only been six or six months or so for me but i will tell you that before i read that book and before i kind of righted the ship again i was absolutely on a downward spiral you know i was constantly obsessed with how i was feeling i was constantly taking my pulse i was constantly worried about being dizzy i was constantly worried about getting in the car and driving that was always a problem for me yeah so yeah my world was starting to shrink as can happen and then luckily i just by chance i happened to read the book it helped me very much and i and i was good for about 10 years and then fast forward to about 1996 um i had started like my first internet based business and things are going really well we were getting a ton of customers it was like the dot-com boom and they came back again for whatever reason the panic came back again and i was not really for whatever reason i wasn't really able to apply all the doctor week stuff and i just went into that downward spiral and i got to the point where i remember very clearly probably the lowest point just being literally like frozen in fear in my bathroom of the house i was living in at the time yeah couldn't move didn't want to leave the bathroom it was awful it was awful i was i was also depressed i was very clinically depressed at the time and uh it was at that point i was you know i went to see a couple of doctors and my my gp at the time sat me in his office and gave me the you have a chemical and balance speech yeah and he gave me paxil which here in the u.s. paxil i think sarazat sarazat in the u.k. i'm not sure but um he gave me a prescription for paxil gave me the old if you were diabetic you would take insulin speech and i started taking it yep and sure enough it did work and we'll talk about that some other day but it worked within about two weeks suddenly i felt like it was the greatest thing in the history of mankind like because i would start to feel panic and then it would short circuit and my depression list lifted and i became like a real person again yeah or at least i thought i did and i took that medication for a good nine years and i gained a hundred pounds and i was completely detached from my family and my business and i almost lost the business and my house and it was i was just a walking zombie i didn't have panic or depression but i didn't have anything i made horrific decisions i was unhealthy i was like living as an island it was not a good situation my kids one day i'll tell that story my kids actually shook me out of that and i decided need to stop taking this medication and around that time is when i that's you and i didn't meet then that was 2005 i think it was just after it was after that a few years after it was so i decided that i didn't want to take the medication anymore because i couldn't keep going the way i was going i was literally you know headed for complete and utter disaster so i stopped taking the medication i struggled for a good year with re-adapt i'll call it re-adaptation pharmaceutical companies don't like the word withdrawal but unfortunately i was one of those 30 35 percent of the people who experienced that it was very bad that was a different animal i think because it was probably more chemical in nature than anything else it was nothing i could do to stop it except wait for time to pass and i lived just a nightmare of constant crippling panic and anxiety and depression and a roller coaster up and down an obsessive irrational overpowering thoughts 24-7 couldn't sleep i'm telling you if you feel like you are a mess i absolutely know because i was a complete and utter mess like fetal position in tears i'm not ashamed to admit that it was it was horrific it just beat me right to the ground but i kind of stuck through it i got out of that and you know things were going fairly well i was a little tenuous then you and i met probably around 2008 and i started sliding backwards again my fault no not your fault at all when i found you on youtube it was because i was looking for other people like we had gotten to that point where oh there there is a youtube and i can go and look to see if anybody has made videos about that and i remember the first guy that i found was the guy by the name of jp he's i don't think his channel is still there jp of diamonds he was from sweden and he made a long series of videos just sitting at his desk with his desk lamp on i'm talking about his his panic and anxiety situation it was awesome and then i found you and sarah and a few other people chris in ohio yeah but in those days i i was in that i had slid backward again and my issue then wasn't so much depression although it was it was definitely anxiety and an agoraphobia was setting in quickly because again now i was experiencing it without that sort of chemical shield in front of me for the first time yeah i and i would not go back on the medication no matter what i would not do it i swore that i would i would never ever do that again and i won't so i had to deal with it just sort of naturally and it absolutely kicked my ass for a good six months or more when you and i first met i was in a bad bad spot you you've seen the old videos yeah yeah um so i was people ask did you ever have problems sleeping yes i i would fall asleep i'm a night owl anyway i don't sleep a whole lot but i would fall asleep at midnight and then wake up again at three o'clock in the morning and not be able to go back to sleep i literally resorted to like white noise app on my phone with headphones and like a you know an eye a sleep mask keep the light out i tried all that i would wake up in the morning and just immediately my stomach would be in a knot the minute i open my eyes the anxiety would automatically kick in i wouldn't want to get out of bed i wouldn't want to go to work i wouldn't want to leave the house i wouldn't want to get in the car it was getting harder and harder to do all of those things i couldn't drive my daughter to her horseback riding lessons i didn't want to go literally a 30 second drive from my house is a little dairy store i wouldn't want to go there and buy eggs for the family it was horrible i couldn't be home i didn't want to be home alone i don't want to be alone so monophobia comes along with agoraphobia very often i don't know if anybody's ever experienced that but it's normal if you're agoraphobic there's a really good chance that you also are terrified to be alone you need to always have somebody with you and i know just rambling here but i just i had all of those things i had always checking my pulse always worried about i couldn't feel like i couldn't breathe all the time like again the the racing thoughts came back the obsessive thinking came back all of those things came back and i cannot tell you how crappy it was not to tell you i mean you guys know because you're going through it you know i i've i own my own business i couldn't go and you know this because you saw the videos it was a challenge for me to go to my own office which was literally like an eight-minute drive from home i i isolated myself it was bad it was very bad um i mean i could think of all the symptoms i had them all i had them all all the time well that's it we we used to discuss you know we'd obviously go out and do something and we'd talk about exactly how it felt and yeah pretty much if anybody's ever watched any of my exposure videos that's exactly how you used to feel yes it was yeah exactly the same i had my little orange point-and-shoot camera back then yeah and i would take that everywhere and and i was i have to tell you in my journey and i was asked i went live on facebook just to play with my new camera a couple weeks ago and somebody popped in who i've known for many years too and she said well you know what did you start doing different what did you start doing different it just i knew what i had to do i mean that the clear weeks thing from many many years ago 1986 87 taught me the foundation i i do have a background in behavioral psychology that was my minor uh as an undergrad and i just always been into that sort of stuff so i i always knew in my heart what i had to do and it was just a matter of being cornered to the point where it's like i either have to change this or i don't know what's going i'm gonna lose everything you know i can't i'm letting down my family i'm letting down my kids i you know cancelling trips not seeing friends like i wouldn't you know couldn't go to lunch with a friend for god's sake it was it was horrible living in constant anticipation anticipation of like is somebody gonna ask me to leave the house is somebody gonna ask me to do something you have to go anywhere to have to drive anywhere you can probably relate to these things absolutely yeah like and so i i was there i know all of these things so when somebody says to me you know i have to hey i didn't get this all the time hey drew i have to i have to go to a wedding you know i have a hard time going to the supermarket and i have to go to a wedding in another state next week what do i do like that was me you know i was that was me too so i'm probably glossing over a lot of details feel free to ask questions on behalf of everybody else people probably i don't know whether it's a maybe it's a jealousy thing where because i feel like envious of your situation now but you know it's not because you were lucky that you managed to break free of it it's because you put in the hard work that's the and everybody that's sitting here watching thinking he's a lucky sod like look at him now it's got nothing to do with luck i'm gonna say that there's probably an element of luck and i will tell you where luck comes in or i don't know what call whatever you want luck comes in because i found people like you and chris and sarah and emma and i'm trying to thank seth um who's in australia i can't think of the names right now but um you know that group that grew into panic station when we had panic station um which was you know those were good people those were awesome people natalie here on long island um and that was the luck part in a way like i and i was afforded the option yeah yeah you know and i and i will never underestimate people ask me sometimes why you do this you know you can make money on this podcast or whatever and i like i feel like i owe it because like you guys were there and and i think the biggest difference so look let me just say this you could pick a symptom that you've had i've probably had it you could pick a sensation that you had i've probably felt it you could pick a fear that you have i've probably been afraid of that i was afraid to be the first person to take a drink out of of the milk carton in case it had been poisoned literally and that was an obsessive thought i i couldn't watch the news i couldn't read a newspaper i was obsessed with death and dying i had intrusive thoughts all the time pick a symptom i have lived it no doubt about that but in the end it wasn't so much yeah i put in the hard work but i also were surrounded by people who were cheering me on in a way yeah we talked about a lot right and i cannot underestimate the value of that like it's it's one thing to know like well i have to do this it's another thing to know well i'm going to go do this i don't know billy's doing it right now and sarah was doing it right now no em is doing it right now and these are people that i will forever be indebted to maybe emma emma's not honors em is watching this or not but if emma maybe not know the impact that she had on my life so surrounding yourself with people who are going through the same thing as good but it wasn't a group that was just commiserating chris in ohio who i'm still facebook friends with we interact now and then that guy i'm never going to be able to repay him for showing me his struggle and getting out there and challenging it and doing what he needed to do and it would inspire me to do it too so it's odd like there's like the two people you've just mentioned chris and emma they both seem to be thriving now as are you but then there's people like myself and i know that sarah still struggles with her stuff so like what it there must be something that either we didn't pick up on or there's something that just didn't click for us or were we not putting enough effort in or what i know that's the million dollar question it is a million dollar question what did we miss what what did we miss and i think it's always the million dollar question i can't answer that question either but i think if i look at that group too i would think um i'm sort of thinking as i go here it's just a good good this is actually helpful for me to go through i think we'd let's just pause for a second yeah say thank you for sharing that because that was like oh i think that's going to help people massively to understand that you've been there you've been through it so the stuff that you're saying is not from a textbook this isn't some of that you've learned no this is some of that you've lived and that's why you're the right man to tell us you know i mean i'm just going to share my experiences i'm not going to say i'm right or wrong for anything in particular but yeah i did live it i lived it several times and and if it helps like it didn't yes the first time was a little weird i read a book and didn't have another panic attack like that's weird i admit that's an anomaly but it wasn't like i you know well yeah i had a few panic attacks for a few months and i figured out what to do and i was all better literally from 1986 or through 1996 through 19 to 2010 and we're talking about 12 to 14 years where i was either medicated and having a horrible time of that or or dealing with anxiety depression agoraphobia all of those things it was a big chunk of my adult life has been spent putting a lot of time and effort into these issues so it took time that i failed a bunch of times until i figured it out and started to get it right but um i will never forget i you know i know you've seen the video i'm sure you've forgotten it's nothing to you i have them and i have several people who've asked you have videos like billy's and i do i i have to find them they're somewhere on a hard drive either here at my house and one day i will find a few and i'll post them there was one night that i did actually have to go at night back to my data center where i had a racks and racks full of equipment because that's the business that i'm in or at least wasn't at the time and there was a server down and i could have called somebody else who worked for me to go do it but that person would have had to drive driven 35 minutes i was seven minutes away yeah and i remember i was sitting at my desk at my house when it happened and i was actually watching one of chris's videos and i don't remember what he had done he was out for a walk whatever it was and he used to walk down it was rural part of Ohio you remember these videos he would walk down this like endless country road like there was nothing there it was very unnerving to watch that there's no help there's no people there's no nothing and i remember watching him do it and he would talk into the camera like like we would do it back in those days and i was watching chris as the alert came in that this needed to be done and my first instinct was to say all right let me get let me call so-and-so he's on call i'm gonna have him do it as chris's video is playing on my screen and it dawned on me like this this mofo is out there walking down this crazy deserted country road surely i can do this yeah i took but i took water and i took my altoid mince and i took my camera and it was pitch black you couldn't see what the hell i was filming you couldn't see me but it was a crotch and i took the camera in and i remember thinking like i'm a quarter of the way there i'm halfway there i'm three quarters of the way that seven minute drive dude like and i had to break it down i stopped halfway in the parking lot of a diner and like oh i'm halfway there and i remember filming that talking to nobody in particular but just start to the camera i'm three quarters away i'm there i remember thinking okay great i went in the building shaking sweating i was i was a mess and then there was that thing where it's like i'm gonna hit the button on the server please god let it boot correctly because if it doesn't i don't know what i'm gonna do just oh it was it was a harrowing harrowing experience and i didn't do that right i white knuckled through the whole thing so that was wrong what i did was not correct there and i remember sitting and waiting and i if i watched that video back i was breathing like i was in a marathon and you know just and my eyes were like just the fear in my eyes waiting waiting waiting and bam it came up and i'm like good and the minute the login screen appeared i knew i was good the server was back online i remember yes hitting the lights and just hightailing out of that place getting in my car head home and as soon as they started driving home suddenly you know i felt like you know like Thor like a freaking superhero and i remember thinking that night like uh-huh you know i want this feeling more yeah and i did it wrong but i got through it and that is that was the night that i remember it started like i okay this is this is stupid now i have to do this so we were inspired by a video that's the i was inspired by chris yeah there's one one of mine that i always like that was one of my favorites that i ever did was when i was sitting in the car and i tried to walk like hundred yards down i was in the town outside the bowling alley yeah i tried to walk like hundred yards and then the next the camera cut and i was back in the car smoking a cigarette just freaking yep and then i went and parked somewhere else and just waited until i felt the urge to go and do it remember i remember and then i walked like to the edge of town on my own and i just felt like it was crazy there was a tennis court and a parking that's right yeah yeah that video is still on it's one of my most popular old exposure ones i'm sitting in the car in a red coat yes and it's just like i'm just waiting for this moment when i've got the confidence to just yep i think i say i remember yes that's exactly right and you just open the car door and went and i remember watching i literally remember like yeah you're like yes you know like literally like you're watching a movie and you're like rocky against the polo come on come on dammit and i just i remember the feeling you had getting back in the car and i remember yeah i was saying you better praise yes i remember that look at it to the camera you best be praising me for this but the feeling was i remember i could see it in your face being so happy i remember another time where you had gone this is so silly now we're just reminiscing about stuff but maybe maybe it'll help people i don't know you had to go to Birmingham you drove you drove to the the the Birmingham shop the club shop right right right to the pitch right so i remember going i remember watching that too and just the you know you were just being you were so happy having had done it didn't you you remade the video with a soundtrack oh i remember that yeah yeah that's right oh we can take it can take it down too because i used i remember the song i used and youtube didn't like that copyright but yeah yeah it was pretty funny i went back there not too long ago in a video i went back to the blues thing the car and took a thumbnail picture out there yeah was it nearly as hard as it was then i'm thinking it's not i'm not saying it's easy but yeah no it was nowhere near as hard but i think the anticipation was probably the same but i think that's the problem that i have now is that like perhaps because i've got so many negative memories that the anticipation of doing anything like i think about even just going to my local shop right and i don't really have a problem with doing it and i go and do it but like if i sit here and think about it i could talk myself out of it very very easily yeah but if you don't think about it i'm guessing you're able to do a whole that you're you're not the same person now that you were it's weird because i feel like i'm completely restricted like i literally i haven't been in the supermarket like i went in a big shop the other week but i haven't been in the supermarket for i would say over a year probably and i haven't been to watch my daughter dance for a couple of years the last time i went i had a panic attack in the theater yeah and because they wouldn't because while people are dancing while the kids are on the stage doing their thing they won't let people out so this was mid dance i was having a panic attack and they wouldn't open the door for me so it's like shit yeah yeah well that's a bad experience then but it was good in a way because it meant that i had to just sit there and ride it out which i did and by the time the kid had finished dancing and the door was open right the moment had sort of passed anyway so it was probably a good thing that they didn't let me out i think sometimes if you really think about that like if i think about my progress there were things that i didn't do also for a very long time but it kind of got to the point where it just became a habit to not do them i think that's where i'm at yeah right as opposed to like oh i'm terrified to do this i don't want to do this it just became like a habit like oh i don't do that and i remember thinking at one point like um you know what's the shopping mall which is from my house it's maybe a 10 minute ride so it's a fairly large mall and i hadn't been there alone for a really long time and i remember thinking when i was like a friday night like wait i don't go there why don't i go there and and i went and it was it was anxiety because i just hadn't done it in so long yeah um but i i think sometimes you get to the point where it's like well it's just a habit that i'm not doing these things it's it's not because i feel like i can't or i won't it's just i haven't i haven't for so long right it's not even a decision you make is it you go like i i take my wife to the shop to the supermarket and like she just gets out of the car she goes in and it's not even are you coming in no it's not there's no i'm not even having that debate with myself i'm going to give it a try because i'm just not but incidentally that it was weird the other day i took my wife to the local supermarket like it's not far away but there's a piece of trim on the car that's come and stuck so i needed to glue it so she went she went into the shop and i was sitting and i thought i'll just do this so i got out of the car and i was fiddling with this thing and then i've done it and then i got back in the car and i thought to myself that might be the first time in many years that i've actually concentrated on doing something outside the house and not been thinking about how i'm feeling really it was really weird i was like a hundred percent just focused on what i was doing and there was no thought of anxiety or god i'm standing outside the car feeling weird it was real weird so it's just automatic it was nice yeah it was just nice because the the only thoughts that i had was this better bloody stick that's all i could think yeah but i am fixing this that's what a you know a normal so-called normal person would yeah yeah because i often think to myself like if my missy we're sitting have a chat me and my missy's and i'm like what what do you actually think about because i find it hard to believe that people can just do stuff yeah without having thoughts and that's like people do they walk around the supermarket and they're not really thinking about anything no and like i can't remember what that feels like no way it feels good yeah i'll tell you the first time i remember that happening to me there were many to actually i shouldn't say the first time in in the things that i went through there were many times or several times that happened when i was coming off the medication and dealing with that i remember one night you know i had been to work and came home ate dinner you know like with the family we're just sitting playing with the dog and i remember it maybe it was a minute or two i don't remember but i remember the thought popping into my head like wow i just spent two minutes just petting the dog like all i cared about was like petting lexie i didn't i wasn't thinking about myself for two minutes and it was such a revelation like oh i forgot what that was like to just like be on autopilot yeah yeah that's what it was like the other day because i did that did that then make you sort of start questioning and then you tense up maybe that was probably in the early stages that was i was different because i was dealing with the the readaptation or withdrawal after the medication it was really nothing i could do i learned a tremendous amount of coping skills there when i came to the the conclusion and i still believe this like the only thing that fixes that if you're going through that right now is time there weren't any herbs there was nothing to swallow there was nothing to drink there was nothing to do i just it was just chemistry so my receptor sites had to up regulate again and that's just the way that goes and i learned a lot of coping skills that was a horrific six or eight months i would do it again today because of the things that i learned going through that when you couldn't stop it there was no stopping it so no amount of relaxing or breathing or meditating or being brave and strong or whatever you want to call it would stop it it would just keep coming at you and i just learned to let it be and just like this is it's just gonna be time just gonna be time so that episode to me was like a beacon like if i could be normal for two minutes you know then you know i can be normal again it's not impossible so i remember thinking that so every time i would have a breakthrough like that i think or realize that it i wouldn't i wouldn't think i wouldn't second guess it and start having those thoughts again or yeah it wouldn't trigger me it would actually be i would interpret it as a good sign like this is progress happening a little celebration yeah yeah a little bit yeah this is progress and i would try and build on that like oh yeah the day that i got in the car and and just tell you no problem like i remember getting to the point where my kids were a smaller elementary school but i remember getting to the point where it's like yeah i'll just drive into school because i spent so many mornings so many mornings getting up when everybody was sleeping in the freezing cold putting on my jacket my hat and everything getting in the car just driving around driving to the school the school was literally like not even a mile from my house and i would have to practice going there and i remember thinking because i want to be able to drive my kids to school or pick them up isn't it strange though how you can sort of learn to do or back then you could learn to do certain things but if you had to drive in the other direction maybe it was you have a complete whole different animal but then exactly what we've been saying for weeks it's the interpretation of yes feelings because you're probably where you are exactly the same physical person doing whatever it is right it's just how you're interpreting whatever it is you're doing same guy same level of safety same everything same life same everything just why is this street scarier than this street it's it's not it's only i think it is yeah and i will also tell you that even so that building that i used to have a problem going to where my business was and we moved out of the building years ago probably four years ago now and even then so when i was you know at that point living a pretty normal life even four years ago i was out of that building but going to that building even to that day was still there was always that undercurrent and i think it's just our brains are that is survival and i do believe in a way there's a lot of survival instinct in that yeah when you perceive danger your brain is really good at trying to steer you around that and to the day i moved to that building there was always a slight undercurrent of anxiety in that building and even after moving out of that building i would probably say it's only in the last year or so that if i drive the same path i do not get that twinge anymore even even two years after being out of the building if i drove near it past it toward it like i used to i would and i know the turn i would hit one spot where this was the point of no return when i would be out am i doing my practice i'm gonna go to the end of this block where the diner is if i make this right turn i am committed because i'd be on a big road i couldn't turn around yeah that turn would give me that just a little twinge every time i did it for years so people also ask me like oh you're cured well and i've said this before on the podcast like no not necessarily cured just because it's still there and if i'm not careful yeah i can come back but i have that helps it's not like oh this is a that's that i never think about this again something's getting grained deeply they do yeah yeah so that's it that memory association yeah yeah so i don't know that's i mean i could i could sit and talk about every symptom that i had but that's yeah i probably had them all would save up for another episode yeah i probably had them all i mean there were some things that i didn't get i i'm sure we don't get every symptom but i you know for me it was there was it was several times when there was a huge struggle so i will say i will assert that there's probably nobody listening to us right now that was any worse than i was yeah and that you have been and that any of us have been and i will offer this bit of advice and i tell people this all the time stop judging your anxiety as worse like oh you must i'm worse than than you yeah you know i have it you didn't have it like this or whoever whether you're talking to me or anybody else it's not nobody has it any worse anxiety because people just see they see you standing there they see me sitting here and we both look absolutely fine right i can assure you but it's like in the past when i beat when i have been out and stuff and like i'll say i'm feeling really weird and my mrs will say well you just look absolutely normal right you don't look any and i'm questioning like i'm like have i gone pale you know am i sweating do i look weird am i shaking nope you look exactly as you did if you didn't say anything to her yeah yeah yeah she probably wouldn't have even known yeah i've had that situation like hey you know and i've said that several times in the past few years like just sitting there with something like well right now i'm having a swing and panic attack right now like you are like really you are so you're right who would know like nobody would even know yeah yeah that's crazy so you gotta stop judging it as i exchanged messages the other day with somebody and you know he kept talking about this horrific how horrible it was horrible experience horrible horrible and you know what i i've used those words in this episode just now horrific horrible crushing i've used all those negative adjectives but in a way you have to for me one of the big turning points was i'm gonna stop judging this as being anything like i'm not going to deny it's bad nobody wants to feel this way but i'm not going to keep calling it horrible it just is and like my heart isn't racing any differently than your heart would race or anybody's heart would raise and i didn't breathe any heavier than anybody else and you can't get any dizzyer you're either dizzy or you're not dizzy it's sort of a binary thing so yeah i don't know that was it's a big lesson that's it so that's it that's that's my rambling i've completely monopolized the airwaves here can i talk now sure you can talk i'm being very rude yes i have noticed so for anybody that's wondering there was a comment on episode 16 that said it's their first time tuning in and the guy on the right seems a little rude so i'm not 100 sure if they meant my right yeah or my they're right my right or they're right so yeah i believe when when you're watching these videos i believe you are on the right i'm not saying you're rude or i am on the right and that's what i've been stressing about this all week i've just told drew before we started like the guy on the right seems a little rude but i thought i was the good boy jesus christ you're the feather rougher ruffling the andrethal from new york yeah he's the well-mannered lad from the uk come on this is it if anybody's rude dammit i'm rude it's my game yeah come on so what do we want to do you want to take any questions i was just looking at the questions that we had we had a few on episode 16 which i haven't even posted yet that uh i know yeah what is with that i've been so busy i'll post all in behind i know um there was one question about i think we were going to save this for a separate podcast but it was wondering if we could touch on how we can stay positive in the face of family members or friends that are not understanding or perhaps judgmental yeah when anxiety panic disorder and agoraphobia takes over a person's life it's an interesting topic in it it's and this person has lost many people in life because of extreme anxiety and it can be quite disheartening i mean i'm i'm pretty much the same i don't really class myself as having any real friends like not in person like a tortue other than via the internet which is pretty sad you know i used to have a lot of friends but i guess they used to invite me out and stuff and then i'd say no whether it was if i was honest and said no because of anxiety they probably wouldn't have understood anyway but i'd probably usually just make up some excuse and then i guess people just get bored of asking well it's like when my missus don't ask me if i want to go in the supermarket anymore it's pretty much exactly the same thing yeah you're probably right i i think and then that's worthy of its own episode that was a good yeah we'll do one like that and then we had one a couple weeks ago from somebody who said uh you know maybe we could talk about not that we talked about this like maybe you could do a video we could do a video for people who are with people like you and me like what do you do with someone but they're probably not watching so yeah exactly yeah i think it's a good topic i think just to quickly touch on it my gut tells me that when you lose people in your life because of these situations it's probably it's probably a combination you know like we i know i would isolate myself just out of fear and then people don't understand or they don't want to be around that so it's a little bit of both it's not that people and i've heard this before like oh everybody abandoned me or no one cares or no one understands so they leave me it's probably not all that it's probably a little of both there's a yeah i would say i always just found it easier perhaps it's easier for me to not have to explain and to not have to go to the pub for a sure with the you know it's just easier it's more comfortable than not of course of course the problem yeah but yeah we'll talk about that it's good because it's just out of interest how did your wife deal with your anxiety back then like if you were maybe if you let's just example you're panicking in the supermarket with your wife what's the response um okay here's probably the best way i can answer that question i mean i didn't hide it from her you know i wouldn't hide it from her i would try to hide it from my kids because they were small but um i wouldn't hide it from her and i think first of all she deserves a medal for sure for going through that with me multiple times yeah and second of all she i think would think what can i do here but saw that there was not a whole lot that she could do and she to her credit would just give me the space to handle it the way i needed to handle it in a way so what was my wife's reaction i think she tried not to react i will give her credit for following my lead a little bit i never this is just the way i'm wired i do not want to be taken care of i do not need to be coddled i don't want your sympathy but i've always been like that it's just part of my nature so i would i would i leaned on her in a big way in my worst time she was my safe person and and she would just quietly fulfill that position without i think coddling me because she knew i didn't want to be coddled so her reaction often was no reaction like i know you have this covered if you need my help you'll ask for it and that's kind of how that went that makes any sense yeah yeah hundred percent yeah there were times though when you know i was in the car and freaking out um and i would call her i was on the i've been on the phone with her at two o'clock in the morning yeah because i was out working or putting you know putting out a fire or something like that and in a complete panic you know in the car on the way back i'm not sure if i was gonna make it back and i would wake her up and she would she would talk to me so i have done that the things that i always say not to do i've done them yeah so you know he's human i have i have done them yes so but the people you know close to me in my life i think i didn't try to hide it from them but i also i feel like i didn't lean on them a whole lot because i'm just not yeah i'm not generally that person anyway which i must say it's bad and that that's just the way i am it doesn't make me right yeah i feel like sort of my mrs can't do right for doing wrong when they try and help it's like it's hard it's really hard for them to because the number one they don't understand so if they try and help you like come on you can make it it's like no i fucking can't you know but then if they don't try and egg you on you like you don't care it's a worry they're in such a difficult position it is a topic for a whole freaking podcast man it is and i don't know if it's you know because you know odds are your wife she wouldn't need to watch us so people like us wouldn't be looking for the podcast but i think for me i would love to talk about it just because of the acknowledgement of what our role is in that in a way you know so yeah i never like how should we expect other people to exactly exactly and i would have to say that i think i had a little bit of a leg up because of the stupid isolationist way like pig-headed stubborn way that i am like i'm going to do it myself i've always been that way like i don't need you i'm gonna do it myself in a way it helped because i think it took some of the burden i mean it was burden i freely admit that i put a burden on the household then the people close to me but and they were concerned about me my mother i know very concerned about me i might lean on her a little bit more back in those days um but uh i didn't i didn't expect anything from them and that helped i think yeah yeah i don't expect you to do anything i know you can't fix this or save me so i don't know if that matters at all i never expected anybody to understand i don't care if you didn't have to understand yeah that helps you said that yeah yeah you don't have to understand it's okay there's another part to that question then just commenting on how to stay connected with people while being housebound any tips there i guess unfortunately social media i know oh we're doing it right now i mean you know yeah we're a six hour flight apart and communicating so i think it's a double-edged sword it's it's sword i actually pronounced the w what the hell what's sword what's up with that so uh i think it's a double-edged sword because it's cool that we have this technology now so you can communicate with people yeah it's the problem is it's bad you don't go and communicate with them exactly yeah and but it's also bad because it can be a crutch like yeah i don't need to go out to the pub to see my my real-life friends because i can just get on the internet so in a way technology is awesome but it's also a bit of an enabler i think yeah yeah i would agree yeah so i don't know it's a good question we'll talk about that for sure uh somebody commented said that they do watch the whole video because we always say if you've got this far we're at 44 minutes i gotta i will give full credit to anybody who made it to this point in this video just watching me ramble for a better part of 30 minutes somebody said uh they always get anxiety at it's worse at 8 p.m and they think about certain foods that they eat because it's going to make their acid reflux come and they'll panic from eating this or that and we spoke about this before we went live but i said that i have struggled terribly with acid reflux and indigestion for it's been a couple of years man certain foods that i eat if i eat them say after 6 p.m or something then i get it but i have noticed and whether it's anything to do with it that's i've been off the caffeine now for is it three weeks it's two or three weeks it's been a while and i and it has i haven't experienced it and i even had a little plug here for dominoes pizza and that is a hundred percent acid reflux after eating dominoes and i had it last weekend and i didn't get it wow read into that what you will whether it's anything to do with caffeine i don't know how or why it would could be but yeah i think especially if health anxiety is an issue like anything that makes your body feel differently yeah you know the heart burn the acid reflux which is no fun yeah yeah drop the caffeine drop the caffeine is never a bad idea it's really hard because i know many people are just literally physically dependent upon it yeah that's my lifestyle choice for the week there was something i we spoke about before i was talking about so it's a uk thing but the nhs are trialing this thing where they're refusing minor surgery to anybody that is maybe not anybody but most people that are overweight or that smoke and they'll make unhealthy lifestyle choices so not major surgery if their leg falls off they're going to fix it but anybody like i know like ingrowing toenails stuff like that maybe yeah they're refusing to do the surgery until they start to look after themselves and it got me thinking about like you know when we go to the gp and the first thing we're offered is medication or maybe the talking therapy it might be a good suggestion for gps if there's any any watching very much doubt it but why not you know suggest to people look we're not gonna give you this diazepam we're not going to send you for CBT until you get some exercise at least for a month you know try stop smoking yeah let's start eating healthily you know make those lifestyle choices and see because that might be all it takes what's your thoughts my thoughts on that i i think it's not a bad idea and i think um i don't know if i would go so far as to say we're not going to send you for CBT or or help you until you get on the treadmill because that's a tough one um i think to me that sort of hints at that like you can fix your anxiety with your diet or exercise yeah those are things that can contribute to and to improving the situation but i don't know how responsible it will be for a doctor to say i'm not gonna do anything until you exercise for a month but but that being said i think it's smart for the doctor to make you an active participant in your recovery wherever possible like if your leg falls off well you can't do anything about that they have to fix it but um i remember when my leg fell off that was that was tough but i remember you remember that was difficult but it was very messy but i think there's nothing wrong with being being an active participant like part of this process is maybe we're going to give you some medication we're going to send you to see this therapist and you also have to do these things yeah you know it's not a bad perhaps perhaps instead of medication being the first because that in the uk that's the first thing it is here is so often you go to the doctors here's some pills yeah come and see me and you know well no let's get it right here's some pills you're gonna feel worse within the first couple of weeks yeah nobody wants to hear that no what about going in and saying okay go home exercise eat healthily let's see if you feel worse within two weeks because you're pretty much guaranteed to feel better after two weeks of making those choices yeah rather than having the medication and we're not talking about medication for psychosis and schizophrenia and that we're talking about anxiety here sure yeah i think that's my thought yeah and it's not a bad thought we don't entirely disagree i think it's how the approach would be it's the changing the approach and what that symbolizes i think i could definitely get behind a little more explanation like this feels horrible but you know what's wrong with the doctor saying i know this feels really horrible and scary but i assure you it is not going to kill you so let's try this you know i'm going to give you these pills this benzodiazepine you know try doing these things take one if you think you need to yeah i would get behind that a hundred percent as opposed to i'm going to write you a prescription here's a 90s annex yeah just take them three times a day and i'll see you in two months from trial that i cannot get behind that plan i'm sorry i just can't so yeah there's a lot of ways that we could change this and make it better there here we're medicating first also does it come down to finance at the end of the day there's more money in medication than there is in selling exercise bikes if i am glaxosmithcline sure i don't want to i don't want to hear like i'm not going to give you a prescription i want that guy i want that pad on fire man yeah i want that pharmaceuticals like the biggest industry one of the biggest industries in the world financially it is pharmaceutical companies are large they spend tremendous amounts of money on lobbying here in the u.s which i'm sure they do in any place where they get an influence in the vote i don't want to make it turn this into a pharmaceutical conspiracy theory come on thing but we'll do one of those yes but sure drug companies are in business they are businesses i own a business i'm here to make money that is unapologetic about that my business is designed to make a profit theirs is too so i don't take that away from them but you know at what point my dog died it felt horrible handing me you know 60 60 days worth of prosac is is bullshit in plain english pardon my french but like i should be sad the dog died like welcome to the human race brother i'm not saying that all of it is like that but we are so heavily over medicated in the u.s don't get me started it's like we spoke about before when like the i suppose the the best thing for us to come from doing these videos is that nobody watches them because everybody's got out there yes and their stuff you know whereas you see the programs in that they're on the net for sale will help you with your anxiety they need to make the money to keep their business going so they want more people to be suffering essentially really they thrive off people that are suffering from it whereas for us we don't want we want to get to a point where we have zero viewers because we're getting zero ad revenue yes yeah swines but that's the point isn't it that is true it's a really good point and we're all fun to tangent a little bit we're at 51 minutes but yes it's true if your product is medication you need people who have reasons to take it so it's not surprising that and and you know i don't want to get too far into this but a huge pet peeve of mine we're in it fuck it we're going down that one um we are going down a rabbit hole here in the us it's less now because cooler heads are starting to prevail but i could not when i was at my worst coming off my medication my doctor who i will stand by to this day he stuck with me he gave me the line that he got from the pharmaceutical companies which is there is no such thing as withdrawal this is your original problem coming back you need to get back on the medication and i basically told him you can stick a knife in my heart before i take another one of those pills and he said okay we'll do it your way and i would go see him twice a week because he was very concerned about me and i could not walk into that office and sit in that waiting room without seeing a very attractive young lady in a short skirt with with food free lunch and and samples of some drug or another all pervasive all the time and the pharmaceutical companies haven't had a stranglehold or a very large influence on the way medicine was practiced in the u.s i don't know if it's the same in the uk but it wasn't an issue oh you could not go to a doctor's office not for us the lunch wasn't for me the lunch was for the doctor and his staff oh i was gonna say no it was influence peddling in a big way we're gonna keep every day there was another spread at my doctor's office picture and you get sandwiched i'm freaking starving man how about i'll take one of those and they would bring every day was a free lunch from some and i could not sit there for 20 minutes waiting in the waiting room without having one or two pharmaceutical reps walk in the door with their samples with some sort of gift and like yeah can i see the doctor and they would be like well he's really busy right now well can you tell him so-and-so is here and they were this is the way we did it i don't see that anymore here so it is changing to a certain extent the only thing we get the doctors here is like six months out of date magazines on a table that's it medium and weak hey look it's a review of the 1987 Camaro yeah awesome it's covered in like spittle that people have been coughing out well that's that's bleak that is very bleak and it's it's foggy and cloudy because it's england yes beautiful anyway let me have a look we've got something else it was something uh johnny q he posted about because i was mentioning different scents and sounds and foods and he was saying that pizza he ate pizza once had like three panic attacks the day after and then stayed off pizza which is completely irrational but that's the kind of stuff that we're talking about in it he does now eat pizza by the way good job johnny well done i want pizza right now dominoes yeah unless you don't have caffeine then you'll be all right then you're okay the lack of caffeine shields you from the negative effects of the pizza but i know if you remember paula from panic station days she lived in the uk paula a little bit i remember the name she commented on the last video just saying wow i've just realized who drew his she remembers you from no i don't have to look at that yeah i have to look and she's now doing exposure so she's like i would say she's probably worse off than myself she's really really struggled with stuff but she has a a health visitor that goes in and like sets her different tasks and stuff so she's working really hard as well i just thought we should uh yeah say hello to paula i know she watches the stuff and like i've had a back and forth with her before because she doesn't live too far away from me oh very cool but i i don't know if i've ever mentioned like recently i set up a facebook group just for the local area i think there's only like 50 members in it and i posted in there the other day just saying about a local meter you know nothing not like a big extravagant thing with loads of people there just like three or four of us maybe meeting on the side of a road just to say hi that was where i was thinking but that's the sort of thing i'm trying to just to get out there whether i need to meet other people that are suffering as well i don't know i just need to meet people hey that's my thing it's not a place to start and you know what i think knowing you as i do you know those groups are awesome they could quickly become like that's all commiserate together or they can cheer each other on and yeah that's what i'd love to find that that we used to have i feel like i need that yeah again like and i've said so many on so many of my videos like if you do anything like this please share a link to the video but nobody seems to do it but there are people out there that do it i just i don't know i don't know positivity goes a long way it doesn't cure everything i'm not not that guy but there's so and there's a therapeutic value in that when you try and do something when you want to try and inspire and cheer other people on it tends to impact it did for me yeah that night that you were watching chris and then you got that call there you go that was the reason that you gave it a go yes he absolutely it was inspiring like this guy's doing i could do that like i want to do that too so yeah yeah it's good stuff man so if you are doing exposure therapy share the bloody link share in the comment yes yes absolutely love it on either channel for sure or even maybe people want to start doing it and they don't know where to start just share a comment let's try and build maybe some kind of community we can bounce it off the the facebook forum group that you've put together yeah sure anybody that's in the podcast if they want to do it on facebook or wherever they want to do it there's always if they want to do it privately whatever yeah even if you want to just do it yourself and just tell us about how it went privately is uh well we're we're almost an hour into it but for those diehards that are still hanging in there i gotta throw this out there i have i have received in the last two weeks more than i ever have messages that are always awesome and i love the feedback and i'm glad we're helping about how rude the guy is on the right very much they are so upset by this the guy with the funny accent and i will figure out who that is but um it could be me forget about it so but i have received more message in the last two or three weeks than i ever have asking if i will have private conversations sky phone whatever this is not that i don't want to do that uh the issue that i have is two number one i only have so many hours in a day so i'm happy to answer questions anyway i can i would like it if your questions can benefit everybody so you ask a question and we can answer it you know on the podcast or or in a public forum that would be awesome i will answer private messages i have no problem with that but i only have so many hours in a day i don't do this for a living and i am not a a therapist i'm not a licensed credential i do not have a phd in psychology so he's reading all this from a teleprompter it is it's up there you know so as much as i i like to help and i'm i'm willing to put the time in i don't have enough time to do that sort of thing i don't mind you asking it's not offending me in any way but i'm not qualified to do therapy over the internet or otherwise and i i would it just doesn't it's not right for me to do that i can help point you to somebody who maybe can yeah yeah not that there is any is there recognize qualifications for it i guess there is for therapy oh there absolutely is yeah yeah yeah sorry where i live for sure i was thinking mindfulness and all that kind of junk yeah there's a ton of people although you know what on the flip side i've seen many people on social media call themselves anxiety coaches they don't i don't believe they have any particular qualifications i i actually have a diploma in mindfulness nice i'm allowed i'm allowed to use letters after my name really yeah if i but i have to pay i have to i think i have to pay like 30 quid and i can have certain letters after my name wow nice which is interesting i have letters after my name usually they're s o b i was going to say n yeah so uh you know they're out there anxiety coaches i don't know if what that is or not i just don't feel yeah that's it i mean i i have a diploma in mindfulness and i really don't know what i'm talking about so that's how easy it is to get sure that point yeah anyway i just wanted to throw that out there for anybody who's still watching so should we wrap this up if anybody wants mindfulness sessions they're 50 pound per hour there you go there you go or send one large domino's pizza to yes tandoor that's it we're i'm out of questions all right i'm out of answers that's it then so we hope you can relate to uh yeah yeah that was the point wasn't hardly the point was to share drew's experience that was the whole point of this podcast is so people can actually see that he's been there yeah he knows what it feels like and that's why he's talking from experience so been there done that exactly all right peeps thanks for tuning in as always episode 17 in the bag in the can we will i will upload 16 now billies two days ahead of me i'll throw that up there and i try not to fall behind i'm always on schedule but as always that anxiety guide dot com or on youtube it's always that anxiety guy wherever you go facebook twitter and it's the same with us anxiety united wherever you look so comments questions videos sharing whatever you want it's it's the best yeah get the comments and get the questions in i i love doing this part at the end yeah it's cool very cool that's it right dude hopefully my audio was good on this one apologies for the last episode we're working on it yeah i need a new setup so all right see you guys next time