 Hey there I'm Drew and you are listening to or watching the anxious truth this week on the podcast we're going to do an anxiety success story. I have a young man on the podcast who went from homebound stuck in his apartment afraid to leave to going on a world tour to promote Black Adam with Dwayne The Rock Johnson. That is a recovery success story so let's get to that right now. Hello everybody welcome back to The Anxious Truth this is episode 261 of the podcast we are recording in early June of 2023. I am Drew Linsalata creator and host of The Anxious Truth this is the podcast that covers all things anxiety anxiety disorders and anxiety recovery. So if you're struggling with things like panic attacks or gorophobia or OCD or health anxiety this is probably a good place for you to be and I'm glad that you're here. If you are a new listener just stumbled onto the podcast or the YouTube channel welcome. If you are a returning listener or returning viewer welcome back I'm glad that you're here. So every once in a while I have the privilege of doing an anxiety success story on this podcast and if you've been listening to the podcast or watching the YouTube channel for any length of time you may have seen some of those. I have a collection of them on the YouTube channel you can look at a playlist called recovery success stories and today we're going to do one of those. These are some of my favorite episodes to do. I have John Brandon Cruz on. Cruz is a video editor he's a social media professional he's a filmmaker and he went from glued in his apartment unable to leave panic attacks rolling throughout the day agoraphobia to traveling with Dwayne The Rock Johnson doing promotion for the Black Atom movie when that came out. He is by all measures a true anxiety recovery success story and he was kind enough to spend some time with us today to go over his journey how he wound up in that place and what he did to get out. It is an almost textbook example of what recovery looks like. I enjoyed doing this interview so much so let's get to that but before we do just a quick housekeeping note remember that the anxious truth is more than just this podcast episode there are 260 other free episodes there's a ton of free social media content there are books that I've written on anxiety and anxiety recovery there are courses and workshops and all kinds of goodies that you can find on my website at the anxious truth.com if you have been following along here and you are using my my content or using my information and recovery if you're enjoying it if it's helping you and you want to find a way to support it in a more formal way all the ways that you can do that are at the anxious truth.com slash support now financial support buying things is never ever required here but always appreciated any way that you support the work that I do whether it's liking a youtube video subscribing to the channel writing a podcast review whatever it happens to be posting a content somewhere on social comments somewhere in social media and joining the community I appreciate you you actually make this work easier and you make it very rewarding so thank you so much that being said let's get to the interview with Cruz John Brandon Cruz great guy I will try and have him on more for an update down the road you're going to dig him let's get to it and I'll be back at the end to wrap it up. All right here he is the man himself do it scared I told you he made an amazing video and I'm going to link that in the show notes in the video description go check it out we have with us today John Brandon Cruz otherwise known as just Cruz that's how everybody calls him and I'm happy to do that so uh Cruz what up man welcome man this is uh this is a very surreal experience for me so I really appreciate you having me on the podcast I am a surreal kind of guy evidently so so from what I understand now you and I don't know each other this is the first time we've ever actually spoken right so uh we we connected on Instagram a little bit uh you do tremendous work so Cruz is in the video editing filmmaking kind of thing I'm going to call you a filmmaker because you made a film in my eyes and uh working with some very high profile clients clients and conceivably all over the world I'm guessing you're traveling right yeah so working with a lot of like big celebrity clients big movie studios doing videos for doing videos and social media for like massive film properties and stuff like that and over the last 10 years really I've traveled all over the world doing doing social media yeah I mean you could say the names if you want I won't say them but you guys know these names I mean yeah you know these people so the rock uh Will Smith John Krasinski I've done social media for movies like Spider-Man Black Adam uh Ghostbusters uh Bullet Train Gran Turismo I mean it's just yeah like a lot a lot of film properties a lot of big celebrities and basically my job for the last 10 years has just been to run around follow these different celebrities and different movies and stuff like that with a camera and help them figure out how to tell their stories on social media that's awesome work if I wasn't doing this I would love to be in your business yeah that's really great so anyway Cruz and I connected on Instagram because I was not aware that you were following me clearly I don't know my followers but somehow rather you caught my eye because of the work you were doing and I checked it out I'm like this is amazing because it was an amazing cool job work that you do and uh then when you sent me the do it scared video it blew me away so you are a success story if I've ever seen one but let's preface that by saying every success story is a little different so some people come to these success stories and they will say I'm completely an utterly recovered others will say they're halfway there they're down the road it's in progress there's no right or wrong on this where were you give us to give us the story here where did you start and where are you now where did I start in terms of yeah like your anxiety problems oh okay yeah so I had my first panic attack when I was I want to say I was about 15 years old and I was I was smoking weed with my friends ripping up bomb and next thing you know I'm just you know what is oh what's going on what what am I feeling and then it was that all too familiar feeling that you know that we heard that you've talked about a million times on your podcast that so many of us have experienced where that in that wall of impending doom was headed my way yeah and I didn't know what was happening and so that was the very first one I had and then over the course of about 20 years it had been something I've been struggling on and off with and when I started working with these like super high profile celebrities and working on these big projects where I was feeling the pressure to perform and to be this professional it came in a way I hadn't experienced before and I think I felt now that there was so much at stake because my whole career was you know I was I had worked so hard to get to this place so there was just all this confusion and the panic attacks last year started to ramp up to a point where yeah just it got to a point where there was a day where I it was like rolling panic attacks last year I remember the day and I was actually traveling with the rock yeah and we were we were shooting some videos and stuff and I just told the team and I told him I was like guys I have to I have to step away to figure out what this is that was my rock bottom moment with anxiety where I felt like I was drowning in it so severely that it had just become this all-consuming thing that I felt like how am I ever going to get out of this this whole yeah and um actually your podcast was the first glimmer of oh wait I will be able to get out of this it's just going to take a lot of hard work yeah but I'm no stranger to hard work I mean my whole career has been just just go for the things you want and if you don't get it right away it eventually you just got to keep you know persistence is the name of the game yeah and so listening listening to the anxious truth was like to me that was that that promise that somewhere down the line I would I would recover and I had faith in that so it took about two months I'll say of like all day every day working at it to where I was I felt like I I I wouldn't say I was like done with it but I felt okay I'm on I'm getting to the other side of this thing yeah so it was it was about 60 days of a combination of therapy a ton of exposure therapy so you know just all day every day five six times a day I would go do things that I didn't want to do okay going to the gym you know working out as you know huge trigger because yeah your heart starts to increase you don't you know you're you're experiencing a lot of the same symptoms yeah so that brings me to about I'd say that was in like August September of last year and now I'd say I'd say I'm like 95% of the way recovered yeah so that was like a like a two month boot camp almost you know you were in it man yeah I'd say it was like the Olympics of because luckily you know I'm in a position where I work for myself and I can step away from work when when I when I need to yeah so I just told everyone around me I was like this is priority number one this is my full-time job and I just did that's what I did I made it my full-time job you know I'll never forget I would go to restaurants which would be like a huge trigger for me and I would set a timer on my on my phone and so the first time I went it was like one minute then it was you know five minutes then 10 minutes and then eventually I would just stop looking at the timer and that's those kinds of things where I was like oh I'm like everything else I've done in my life whether it's fitness or my career it's it's moving the pebbles every day is what moves the mountain yeah I love that analogy moving the pebbles every day you're a hundred percent right so you were doing stuff clearly because I know people are going to ask like that's the first question everybody wants to know well how did he do it he's 95 cover how did you do it so you're hearing crews tell you what he did what about when you were scared man like what happened what were you doing well listen I'll tell you guys um you know fear is still a part of my life I still experience fear I still experience the feeling of inadequacy of discomfort um life can be scary life can feel scary especially like in my line of work where I I do feel like there's a lot of pressure sometimes to perform but it's it's changing the relationship with fear and understanding that and this was something the rock told me because when I when I called him and I was like hey man I don't know what's going on but I need to figure this out he said just never forget that it's it's super uncomfortable but it's never dangerous yeah so that understanding that concept that you can feel awful you can feel scared you can feel I I still shake sometimes when I'm on set or when I'm headed to a job that there's a lot of pressure but that that doesn't mean that something bad is going to happen it's just it's just me experiencing those natural symptoms that we all experience in life where we where we get scared sometimes and one thing I wanted to tell you it's like a big thing for me a mindset shift was I stopped looking at an anxious moment as this feeling of impending doom that I need to run from and I started to try to think of it like this is a moment where you're going to learn a valuable lesson about yourself you're going to learn something really important about how you are going to navigate the rest of your life yeah so instead of feeling fear about those moments coming look at them as teachers and and think oh I'm excited to experience more moments of fear because on the other side of those moments is a better version of me yeah that's a hundred percent I cannot I so appreciate what you're saying here because those things ring true in recovery you know people think that recovery is oh making my anxiety go away and yeah that's the happy side effect in the end most of the time but really when you say you learn things about yourself do you find that that experience of going through those two months and sort of clawing your way out of the hole is that stay with you every day are you bringing lessons with you now that you can use man it changed it changed my life I mean one thing I'll say and if you're listening to this and you're like in the hole right now you you may not fully understand this but one day you will right now you think of your fear and anxiety as the worst thing that's ever happened to you I look at it now as the greatest gift that I ever experienced because now I now I I have clarity about my life and actually like a fortified sense of self that I before I felt like I was just going through the motions now I know like what I am capable of overcoming so I think that to sort of answer your question it fundamentally changed the way I view my human experience and now I feel like it's like it's like in the matrix when Neo gets unplugged from the matrix and he's like now living life I actually now feel like because of this gift this experience which like I said most people won't know what that is until they're on the other side of it that's great now I feel like I'm part of something like with you and with millions of other people who have come across it and gone to the other side where we can like look at each other and say look at what look at what we've accomplished yeah yeah people often think it's crazy when I you know well you know what did you take out of it and I'll say things like I hate that I went through that experience but I would do it again tomorrow if I wound up here and I think it's really hard to put your brain around that when you are in the struggle because you're seeing it in through your current lens but when you get to the other side this is what's waiting it's not just me see it's not just me here's another person telling you the same thing yeah I so appreciate you sharing that so what happened on the days when like now you got to get out the door and you're every you said for 60 days I got up five six times a day and I did things that I was afraid to do how did you these are the common questions so I'll do I'll ask them preemptively please when your brain is screaming at you to not do this how did you do it I mean I kind of know what you're gonna say but people need um well it's a battle that you get better at at winning over time because and I don't know if battle is the right word but it's a situation that in the beginning let's say you do five exposure therapies in a day um in the beginning you might only get through three of them yeah you know and the and you might actually have you know panic attacks but you know through that experience you you realize oh I you know I'm fine I felt super uncomfortable I had a panic attack I went on a walk and for a moment I had to sit on a curb so I could catch my breath or I was driving and I had to pull over for a second because my hands were getting numb those were all things I experienced yeah we're going to the gym but over time I I the pack that I would try to make with myself is never abandon a situation not on my terms so if I was at the gym or I was on a walk or I was driving okay if you need to take a little break that's fine but then get right back into it yep and only complete the exposure therapy once you are in a state where you feel at peace where you say I I did what I needed to do and I'm going to come back to it later today or I'm going to do it again tomorrow yeah super it's going to be hard guys I mean listen it's it's tough tough work it'll feel like the hardest thing you've ever done but you know I incremental incremental I mean in the beginning it was going to my mailbox um going to get my mail uh then it was like one I would do one walk around my my apartment complex then I'd walk to go see my friend and then I I'll never forget it was like a huge deal for me to walk there's like some stores that are half a mile from where I live going there was like oh my god I'm never going to make it and you know did it then it was like going back to the gym I had essentially forbade the gym I thought I would never I was like oh yeah I'm never going to work out in a gym again I go five days a week now so it's just incremental and understanding that if you do experience fear if you experience panic if you start to feel like you're disassociating if your hands get shaky or tingly or all those symptoms that you're going to be okay it's just that you're you're retraining a bad you you downloaded a bad program and you retrain yeah yeah you're right what you're really doing is writing a better program next to it and then that becomes the one that runs so what makes it tricky is that the old program is still there we don't erase it and that's why sometimes you hit those bumps like I'm guessing you weren't on a straightforward trajectory you just got better and better and better every day without limit should you did you have you must have days where you struggle yes there were days and and I and I don't know if it was you that talked about this I'm I assume it was but it was either you or somebody else that said that those setbacks once you're like seemingly deep into recovery those can feel the scariest because it's like you thought oh I'm way past this thing and all of a sudden it's like in those movies when someone's having a nightmare and then they think they woke up from the nightmare and then they're like in another nightmare yeah that's what it feels like when you're get when you feel like you're kind of getting far along in recovery but again it's one of those things that you've you've definitely talked about this where you where if I experience panic now which I you know I experience anxiety I experience my heart races sometimes yeah I just let it do what it's going to do and then I immediately go on with the rest of my day and I just don't I don't let it change the course of of how I'm gonna go through my day and I don't know if it was you that talked about this but it was it's the analogy that I heard somewhere I might have been you so apologies if it was but it was it was like the like the stock market basically yeah day by day it goes up and down but if you look at the stock over time it's like oh it it was heading in a direction that was up yeah and and I look back at where I was a year ago and yes I have good days sometimes I can't sleep sometimes I'm struggling with XYZ anxiety related but if I look at where I was a year ago I mean it almost makes me emotional because I'm like wow I've come leaps and bounds from where I was yeah and I think you start to get I mean listen you are in a high pressure job there's probably a thousand guys just waiting to do your job they would love to work for the people you work for so I get that sort of pressure but that's real that's external anxiety like yes it's a pressure filled situation where you have to perform can you tell the difference now like oh I'm really anxious going on this shoot but I'm anxious because it's a high pressure situation as opposed to I'm anxious because I'm breathing hard and that makes me more anxious can you see the difference now I can and when I can't see the difference I remind myself that that's just my brain playing tricks on me you know because when you are experiencing like when I do get a little bit of confusion about what kind of anxiety am I experiencing right now is this just something like work related or is this is this something else I you know it can get a little fuzzy when you're like in an anxious moment but I always I just say let's just get through this feeling and then on the other side when we're in a better spot we can rationally think about what it is we're going through but but yeah of course I do take more stock lately in my life I meditate more on my journey and I think that you know and again you've talked about this there's a lot of literature and podcasts about like lifestyle adjustments that you can make to you know whether it's journaling meditating all of these things anything that allows you to go inward and reflect on difficult emotions and feelings I think is very valid and super important and it will help you process whatever line of work you're in it certainly helped me to process some of those really tough difficult scary feelings I have about like my job and those kinds of things yeah and I think it's so interesting to hear like yeah you're right you got to do that you have scary feelings about your job about your performance about adequacy whatever it happens to be we all have our things but first you have to put out the fire and you have to not be afraid to walk to your friends house then you can go you know inward and meditate on your feelings and right out life stuff just life shit because we all have life shit and sometimes these anxiety disorders take that away from us we they they block us from working on that stuff because we're just afraid of being alive for a little while so right and I you know I was doing therapy while I was simultaneously doing all of my exposure therapies I was going to see a therapist which in a way was kind of like an exposure therapy for me going yeah it was it felt really scary to go talk to someone I didn't know yeah but what I will say was although there was things that helped me in therapy and I'm super grateful for this wonderful man that I was talking to it was 100 the work that I was putting in in the real world getting out there exposing myself to things that felt tremendously difficult and scary that those were the days where I felt the change happening within myself yeah but that's incredibly valuable work that you did at the same time so maybe the therapist wasn't working specifically on the anxiety disorder but when you can do all of that stuff at the same time which is freaking hard work man the value in that like I'm sure that they complement each other as you do in those both of those things at the same time and many times right yeah so well done man so I so now you have a better grip on just sort of like life anxiety versus disorder anxiety which is great I mean where are your challenges still um that's a really good question I think where are my challenges yeah see when somebody has to think about their challenges that's a good thing yeah yeah man because because really I feel now that um I almost don't even look at challenges as challenges I just I think about I think about all scary things now as that's something I have to go towards because it's uh I look at it as an opportunity yeah that's great whether it's an emotional thing or a career thing I don't I try not to because it's this concept of like if you think of it like it's this challenge then you're sort of saying to yourself where I am right now is not enough or I'm not adequate where I where I stand and I feel like I try to just I try to just feel like what's the best way to phrase it like yeah like where I am right now is okay and that I don't have to try to project super far into the future of my well-being like where we are today is fine yeah you know I love that that's a really healthy outlook you know so I think this is where this is where people tend to get a little bit tripped up so let's sort of wrap it up by talking about you know just a small little subject courage because courage is the part that where most people fall down so when you have to start doing those scary things and you're still at a point where you're just worried about your heartbeat and your dizziness and your breathing and all that stuff where does the courage come from and then I'll tell you so it's not a trick question people ask me and they want to know what how do I do it but but just how do I do that and at some point you run out of steps there's no more steps I can teach you you know on how to be brave so what was it at some point there's a moment of decision what did it look like for you there's there's I'd say I have a few answers one is something you've talked about where I said I got to the point where I was so sick like I would break down in tears because I would feel like my life was passing me by and you get to a point where you go from fear to like to sort of feeling a bit angry and and I I distinctly remember saying either you're gonna fucking kill me or or I'm going to live my life but whatever happens I have to do something yeah like I have to just push forward because my life is passing me by and this is the one life that I get yeah you know and I was I was I was sick of feeling like I was missing out on some of the best moments potentially of my life yeah another place I pulled courage from was there were so many people in my life that I thought had never experienced moments of fear whether it's people I work for like the rock and these big celebrity people or like my dad or my best friends and when I started to explain to them that I was essentially on this journey to sort of recover from panic attacks they all sympathized and said wow man that's really brave of you like I've experienced those kinds of I've experienced fear I've experienced anxiety and so I was I was like I was pulling courage from those conversations because I realized that it's something that just everybody is everybody experiences fear yeah for some people it becomes really acute and it becomes panic attacks but just just sort of understanding that that is a common a very common thing I mean if you look on any YouTube video about panic attacks there's like 10,000 comments of people I've I'm experiencing this that so I I felt like I was pulling courage just from the common experience of so many different people and then yeah like you said it's just you run out of you you sort of just run out of excuses to make for yourself and and you sort of just you hit that point and I think you probably heard hundreds if not thousands of people talk about this where you're just you're done you're done living your life on the sidelines yeah for me I mean I can relate to you better come and fucking kill me because I'm done with this now like I literally remember getting to that point and kind of saying that being coming very defiant and very like put my jaw out come on hit me harder like at some point I think what it comes down to and what I hear you're describing is the pain of staying still is worse than the pain of moving forward the pain of the moving forward is painful because it's scary and hard work but the pain of not moving forward now outweighs that so then you move forward right because fear is is to me a lot less scarier than regret I think yeah I would agree with you in a big way because then you know the regret of not because every time you bail out of it something you know you you you cancel you just run home you escape it feels good in the moment but then there's the repercussions two hours later when it's like another day another day wasted another day that I missed it so I get it I get it I appreciate it and I appreciate that you acted on that and you know and you took action and you're sharing it man I you're I cannot thank you enough for doing that so oh my god man I mean listen like I said I don't know how I found your podcast but it there was a I just simply remember I had a dinner hang with some friends and this was when things were still really bad yeah and I came across your podcast and it was like it was the lifeline that I needed to just begin the journey and you know like you did with I'm forgetting her name Claire weeks Claire weeks yeah where you took her everywhere with you I took you everywhere with me man you were right there and and and you know in the last after a couple of months I got to the point where I said okay I can't take drew everywhere I go I gotta start doing some of this not with I gotta start doing some of this by myself yeah and and that you know and still sometimes I'm be honest with your audience base out there I have really difficult days and sometimes I'm like I have to I it's like I'll throw on one of the one of the podcasts just just to sort of like recalibrate and remember just to remember everything that I went through yeah and to remember like oh wait I did I already did all the reps I know what this is so you know again it's and I tell people it's like in Lord of the Rings when when Frodo he wears the ring and then at the end even though he does not wearing the ring anymore it's still it's still kind of stayed with them a little bit yeah I feel like anxiety once it sort of like stings you it never fully fully completely goes away you'll you'll always remember what those super scary panic attacks felt like but now you have the tools and you know that it's just this fleeting thing that is in the past for you love it man very good I appreciate that in a big way so um you have anything else you want to close with floor is yours no man I mean just I'm so grateful to to be on your podcast and um I think there was something that I wanted to say maybe you know before you let's throw one thing out real quick because I know I'm trying to anticipate what people are going to say so cruise did it you are hardcore boot camp 60 days did a lot of heavy lifting in 60 days that happened to be the circumstances and I admire what you did in a big way if you can't do it in 60 days because you can't do five exposures that's also okay I know that cruise is not saying you could you'll be better in 60 days just to clarify that if it takes you months and months because you can only do one or two a day that's totally fine it will go on whatever timeline you have so I just wanted to throw that out there oh and I appreciate you saying that because I know you know I don't have I don't have a family I don't have um I do work a lot but and I luckily like working for myself I was able to make that space yep but but yes I 100% agree with you that um it doesn't have to happen that fast it's still the same kind of work yeah but it is a great illustration of the mechanism at play wound up and let it go it can work that fast but right works the same in six months too right exactly so man dude thank you so much and uh it's it's weird it's like I don't want this to end because I'm just so grateful to be on your podcast man this is such a special thing for me if you have anything you want to add at any point just reach out that's totally fine and uh I will put links to cruise and all of his stuff in the show notes on here so if you're on my website at go to the anxious treat.com slash 261 for the show notes and I'll put all the links there or in the youtube description or the podcast notes wherever I'll get you over so if you guys want to check out cruise a good dude um thank you so much for coming and sharing I appreciate it man if you ever want to do a follow-up you let me know I would love to and I will I will let you know brother thank you very good all right guys I'll be back in a minute to wrap it up like you usually am okay we are back that was so much fun for me to do mostly because cruise is kind of a textbook recovery example so I'm not going to lie everything he said I just wanted to like fist bump him uh in some ways it's validation like see I told you this stuff works of course I would never say that although I just did but I always love when you get to see somebody else to talk about this and it's not just me or not just me and josh or the usual suspects you get a real person who actually did this stuff and applied it and did what he had to do and came out the other side and is back to living his life and enjoying it and following his dreams and man is he ever like what a cool job that is so if you want more on john brandon cruise otherwise known as just cruise just a super nice guy that's how everybody refers to him you can go to the anxious truth.com slash 261 I will have a full set of show notes for this episode on that web page and I will put all the links to his stuff including links to the video that he produced called do it scared the do it scared video is amazing it's incredibly inspirational I loved it so that's what prompted me to reach out and say dude you got to come on the podcast so I will link that also if you're just listening to the podcast look at the notes on your podcast player if you're on youtube look at the video description I'll have all the stuff in there and that's it that's episode 261 of the anxious truth in the books and another anxiety success story that I hope you have enjoyed you know it's over because the music that is as always after glow by my friend ben drake he wrote that song a few years ago inspired at least in part by things he's heard on this podcast and he's been kind enough to let me use it ever since in the closing credits sometimes in the opening credits so if you'd like to know more about afterglow and ben drake go to ben drake music.com and if you do tell him he said hello he's a good dude if you are listening to this podcast on apple podcast or Spotify or some platform that lets you rate or review the podcast leave a five star rating if you dig it if you really dig it maybe take a minute and write a review because it helps more people find the podcast and then we get to help more people which is why I started doing this to begin with if you're listening on YouTube watching on YouTube consider liking the video leave a comment if you have a question I answer YouTube comments at least twice a week subscribe to the channel hit the notification bell so that you know when I upload new episodes and that's it hopefully this has been really helpful I will be back next week with another podcast episode don't know what I'm going to talk about but I will be here and remember whatever you could do today to move in a forward direction toward recovery no matter how small counts so do it you'll be happy that you did see you next week