Speaker 1: This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Speaker 1: Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites. I
Speaker 1: am your host Jen Kirkman. Today my guest is journalist
Speaker 1: and author Judith Horpe. But even though Judith herself has
Speaker 1: a fascinating life and career, Judith and I are going
Speaker 1: to be talking about Dr Claire Weeks because Judith wrote
Speaker 1: the definitive biography of Doctor Claire Weeks. It's called The
Speaker 1: Woman who Cracked the Anxiety Code. The Extraordinary Life of
Speaker 1: Doctor Claire Weeks. It came out in nineteen So where
Speaker 1: do I even begin? So let's begin with my guest
Speaker 1: to Judith Harsh's a journalist and author. She worked for
Speaker 1: the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and at the Australian Financial Review,
Speaker 1: where she covered politics, business and broader social issues before
Speaker 1: being appointed features editor and finally Deputy editor of the newspaper,
Speaker 1: a position she held for twenty years. She is again
Speaker 1: the author of the aforementioned book about Dr Claire Weeks,
Speaker 1: and Judith now lives in Sydney, Australia. Dr Claire Weeks
Speaker 1: is from Australia as well, and the story of how
Speaker 1: I came to read this book and my connection with
Speaker 1: Australia and how that just wonderful continent and is just
Speaker 1: all tied up in my tale of fear flying and
Speaker 1: anxiety recovery. But I tell that story to Judith on
Speaker 1: the podcast, so you'll hear that. But what I'm here
Speaker 1: to say is that Dr Claire Weeks, if you get
Speaker 1: no other book about panic attacks or anxiety, then get
Speaker 1: Dr Claire Weeks's books, because she is the o G.
Speaker 1: She is the original person to ever help people who
Speaker 1: were having panic attacks because she had them herself. And
Speaker 1: this is what's extraordinary about her story. And you'll hear
Speaker 1: Judith and I talk about it. But just to bring
Speaker 1: you up to speed, Dr Claire Weeks was born in
Speaker 1: nineteen o three. She was a general practitioner in Australia,
Speaker 1: but she went to college and was very genius in
Speaker 1: the studies of biology and evolution. She was granted so
Speaker 1: many fellowships where she studied all over the world, and
Speaker 1: she studied with really renowned people, and she basically was
Speaker 1: studying lizards and and I know you're going to think
Speaker 1: I'm about to say Lozard brain, but it's nothing to
Speaker 1: do with that, she was studying why, um, some creatures
Speaker 1: lay their eggs in water, why some lay their eggs
Speaker 1: on land, And so what she was studying is how
Speaker 1: have these creatures evolved. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: she discovered and proved is that environment has a lot
Speaker 1: to do with the evolution of something, and so later
Speaker 1: she would use that theory about you know your own
Speaker 1: personal environment, you're living environment at home, your work environment,
Speaker 1: you're social environments where you you know where you actually
Speaker 1: live in the world informs if you have panic and
Speaker 1: anxiety and informs how well you're able to deal with
Speaker 1: it or not. Yes, genetics play a component, but she
Speaker 1: didn't believe that was the entire story, and she's completely right.
Speaker 1: So basically she just sort of followed her heart and
Speaker 1: went from being this biologist and then finding the work
Speaker 1: not that interesting, and then she thought she would be
Speaker 1: a singer and help people with their breath work because
Speaker 1: she thought singing was science. And then she became a
Speaker 1: travel writer, which the timing of it was terrible because
Speaker 1: she was encouraging people to take trips to Europe and
Speaker 1: then Hitler invade in Poland and you know how that went.
Speaker 1: And so she decided to go back to school again
Speaker 1: and study being a general practitioner, and when she had
Speaker 1: her own practice, she began noticing that people weren't actually ill,
Speaker 1: that they were suffering from nervous system disorders which was
Speaker 1: causing them to have anxiety or panic. And that's what
Speaker 1: I love about her. She wasn't saying, oh, it's all
Speaker 1: on your head, but she was saying, your nervous system
Speaker 1: is out of whack. And you know, there wasn't the
Speaker 1: word agorophobia back then. Eventually that word was coined and
Speaker 1: she used it in the title of one of her books.
Speaker 1: But she was basically helping people who were agoraphobic, people
Speaker 1: who had had a panic attack maybe in a store
Speaker 1: or in a certain you in a car, and then
Speaker 1: they avoided. Right, that's most people's in instinct to not
Speaker 1: panic or feel anxiety is ill. Just avoid the place
Speaker 1: I was when I felt it last, even though you
Speaker 1: know that it's not the car that gave you anxiety,
Speaker 1: but that you had anxiety in the car. So maybe
Speaker 1: if you don't go near your cars anymore, that will
Speaker 1: help and you eventually your life gets smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1: And what Dr Claar Weeks did that was brilliant that
Speaker 1: people have improved upon it, and she gets very little
Speaker 1: to no credit for it. Is we all know about
Speaker 1: fight or flight. Yes, animals do this too, and it's
Speaker 1: from our ancestry and we used to be running around
Speaker 1: foraging for our food blah blah blah. So while it's
Speaker 1: perfectly normal when faced with something that could eat us
Speaker 1: or something that could kill us, you know, whether it's
Speaker 1: a soldier with a gun or a plane that's crashing,
Speaker 1: or you know our ancestors um I had to deal with,
Speaker 1: you know, wild animals. It's it's perfectly normal and it's
Speaker 1: what we're supposed to do to fight or freeze, are
Speaker 1: going to flight in danger. But what Dr Claire Weeks
Speaker 1: was trying to teach people is that, but that's not
Speaker 1: usually what causes us to panic because panic is different
Speaker 1: than fear. Panic almost evolves what she called the second fear. So,
Speaker 1: first fear is this thing that stimulates you to go
Speaker 1: into fight, flight or freeze. The second fear are your
Speaker 1: thoughts about how your body now feels, your thoughts about
Speaker 1: the anxious sensations that you're feeling. And now you've worked
Speaker 1: yourself up and you think you're having a heart attack,
Speaker 1: and the first thing that was scaring you that's not
Speaker 1: even a thought anymore. But it all happens so quickly
Speaker 1: that it's hard to understand when it's happening that you
Speaker 1: have basically almost made a choice to have the second fear. Now, Obviously,
Speaker 1: in a case of a panic attack, you don't have
Speaker 1: to have a soldier pointing a gun at or you
Speaker 1: don't have to be in a plane that's crashing. You
Speaker 1: can just be sitting at your desk at work. You
Speaker 1: can be laying in bed at night. You can have
Speaker 1: a panic attack that puts you into fight or flight,
Speaker 1: and again, that is just your nerve system doing its thing.
Speaker 1: Who knows why it's doing it right, It could be
Speaker 1: a million reasons, going back to childhood trauma. It could
Speaker 1: be you were upset at work today and you stuffed
Speaker 1: your feelings down, or just could be who knows, your
Speaker 1: nervous system is just going off. Because the point is
Speaker 1: in the moment, and we've talked about this a lot
Speaker 1: on the podcast, In the moment you need to handle it,
Speaker 1: and in that moment, you don't need to go back
Speaker 1: to your childhood. In that moment, you need to employ
Speaker 1: the parasympathetic nervous system. You need to be doing something,
Speaker 1: not to fight it, and not to even try to relax,
Speaker 1: which is the same as fighting it, but to accept it,
Speaker 1: let it pass through you and move on. And that
Speaker 1: was the big thing with Dr Claire Weekes was except
Speaker 1: that the panic attack is happening to you, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean accept it. You love it. Oh my god, we're
Speaker 1: going to have them every day. It's great. There's nothing
Speaker 1: I can do about it. That's so much she's saying.
Speaker 1: She's saying, it's here, Let it pass through you. It
Speaker 1: will go away quicker, and it will go away in
Speaker 1: a more real way because you're not sort of hanging
Speaker 1: into it and like re um adrenalizing yourself. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like the cycle is fear adrenaline, fear adrenaline, fear adrenaline.
Speaker 1: And when we fight the panic attack and act like
Speaker 1: we need to stop this from happening, because it's bad
Speaker 1: to have one right. When you act like the panic
Speaker 1: symptoms are going to kill you and you fight them
Speaker 1: because you're fighting for your life, you're going to make
Speaker 1: it worse. You're just making more adrenaline and you're responding
Speaker 1: to fear as though the fear is correct. But if
Speaker 1: you let it pass through you, you're showing yourself, Oh,
Speaker 1: this literally cannot kill me. I mean, I don't like
Speaker 1: how it feels, but you will not prolong it, and
Speaker 1: then after a while, you will learn not to fear it.
Speaker 1: So if you have a panic attack and you're fearing it,
Speaker 1: and you're fearing it, and you're fighting it because it
Speaker 1: just feels so abnormal, it feels like you're dying, and
Speaker 1: you don't want to dies, you fight it. You fight it,
Speaker 1: you fight it. When that battle is finally over, and
Speaker 1: it can sometimes feel like an hour, and it can
Speaker 1: even be an hour in the sense that you're not
Speaker 1: going to panic straight through for an hour, but it'll
Speaker 1: come in waves. You will not want that to happen again,
Speaker 1: and you will fear it happening again, so that if
Speaker 1: it happens again, you will respond the exact same way.
Speaker 1: And then because you fear one happening again, you might
Speaker 1: avoid going to certain places. So that what's her point is,
Speaker 1: if you let it pass through you, you will learn
Speaker 1: not to fear them, and that's where the recovery is.
Speaker 1: Like people are going to just willing nellly have a
Speaker 1: panic attack sometimes because we're just made up of nerves
Speaker 1: and we're nervous system, and so sometimes the nervous system
Speaker 1: just like goes offline for a second, does something weird.
Speaker 1: But if you don't fear it, then you are free.
Speaker 1: Because it's the fear that keeps us panicking and it's
Speaker 1: the fear that keeps us from living our lives right again,
Speaker 1: fear would lead to avoidance. But if you say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm not afraid of having another panic attack. I mean
Speaker 1: I don't feel like having another one, but I don't
Speaker 1: fear it, well, then you're free. So then if one happens,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh this thing, you know when you let
Speaker 1: it pass through you. So again it's like you might
Speaker 1: still feel fear or when you're having that panic attack,
Speaker 1: but you're not going to fight against it. Like our
Speaker 1: body is always trying to keep us alive. Our body
Speaker 1: is not always right, you know. It's like we're a
Speaker 1: dog when they're barking at your friend that's coming over
Speaker 1: and you're like, no, no, no, this person is safe,
Speaker 1: Like this is not an intruder, but they're gonna respond
Speaker 1: to everyone coming through the door like it's an intruder
Speaker 1: because on the time that it is one, that's how
Speaker 1: they're going to keep you safe. Our nervous system does
Speaker 1: the same thing. It starts freaking out, and then we
Speaker 1: respond like a dog. We get afraid of what our
Speaker 1: nerves are doing, and so we fight it because we're
Speaker 1: like thinking we're in danger, We're going to die, so
Speaker 1: we fight it. We're like fighting for our life the
Speaker 1: way you would be if you were drowning or something
Speaker 1: or someone was trying to bury you, you know, and
Speaker 1: we should know better because we're not dogs, right, and
Speaker 1: so we know there's no need to fear this. These
Speaker 1: sensations literally cannot kill us. So what I liked about
Speaker 1: her is she kept it really simple. You know. Um,
Speaker 1: she treated a lot of people that had tried psychoanalysis
Speaker 1: and all of these things that didn't work. And I'm
Speaker 1: obviously not saying that therapy doesn't work, but in the
Speaker 1: moment of panic and anxiety, it's really about using the
Speaker 1: mind to combat the nervous system so that we can
Speaker 1: then use our physical body to help calm us down.
Speaker 1: And again, she keeps it super simple. So she was
Speaker 1: concerned with the severe long term effects that anxiety and
Speaker 1: panic disorders had on the lives of your patients, and
Speaker 1: she noted that patients did not necessarily suffer from anxiety
Speaker 1: problems because they had flawed personalities of traumatic childhoods. The
Speaker 1: problems were caused by the patient having a habit of
Speaker 1: fear avoidance made worse or caused by a very responsive,
Speaker 1: sensitized nervous system. She was critical of both Freddy and
Speaker 1: approaches and attempts of behaviorists to desensitize their patients using
Speaker 1: relaxation and breathing techniques, but because again she she felt like,
Speaker 1: that's fine, I mean, relax and breathe in your own
Speaker 1: spare time. But when you're panicking to tell your body
Speaker 1: to relax is again you are trying to deny these
Speaker 1: sensations that you're feeling. And the sensations won't kill you.
Speaker 1: If you let them through, they'll become less threatening. So
Speaker 1: she liked to call all of this nervous illness. And
Speaker 1: it wasn't because she was afraid to use the word anxiety.
Speaker 1: You know, it actually brought me fully around again to
Speaker 1: thinking of why do we even call it anxiety and
Speaker 1: anxiety disorders and this and that. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's so many different diagnoses of anxiety, but and of
Speaker 1: course there are situations that are different from the others,
Speaker 1: but overall, in general, we're talking about panic attacks. Just
Speaker 1: stay with that one for now. It really is so physical,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not in Judith and I talked about
Speaker 1: this like, I'm not even a fan of the words
Speaker 1: mental health because it doesn't even mean because there's not
Speaker 1: necessarily emotions that we're talking about. These are physical reactions
Speaker 1: and then behavior isn't I mean, it's all it's all
Speaker 1: to do with the mind and everything. But I'm really
Speaker 1: which people understood that panic attacks are such a physical thing.
Speaker 1: And I don't really have the words, but I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to say that if we take care of our
Speaker 1: body and our nervous system, that first that will affect
Speaker 1: our brains, right, And that's why another one of my
Speaker 1: heroes from long ago, who wrote um an invented progressive
Speaker 1: muscle relaxation is and I'm forgetting his name even though
Speaker 1: he's a hero of mine, but that's how my brain
Speaker 1: works or doesn't work sometimes, And let me just look
Speaker 1: it up because I can't. I can't do him this way.
Speaker 1: Progressive muscle relaxation. Oh dr Edmund Jacobson, that's right. You know.
Speaker 1: He was like, do that to relax instead of have
Speaker 1: a drink or something like that, and he found that
Speaker 1: it lowered so many things in the human body, like stress,
Speaker 1: intension and high blood pressure or whatever. So anyway, big
Speaker 1: fan of Dr Claire Week's. What was so cool about
Speaker 1: her is when she started treating patients, she'd go to
Speaker 1: their homes. She was very eccentric should people move in
Speaker 1: with her? There was this um undertone in the book
Speaker 1: of like was she a lesbian because she had this
Speaker 1: best friend that she lived with, and she every relationship
Speaker 1: which she was in with a man she would end
Speaker 1: and but it just doesn't like nobody really knows. I
Speaker 1: mean I think she was. But um, so you'll hear
Speaker 1: me not get into that with Judith because they're just
Speaker 1: too much to talk about, but you will hear us
Speaker 1: mentioned that she lived with her best friend and I
Speaker 1: don't want you to think that I'm like an idiot,
Speaker 1: you know, like um, but she was very ahead of
Speaker 1: her time in the sense that, you know, she was
Speaker 1: very anti like housework, and in the sense that she
Speaker 1: felt like a lot of women were feeling trapped in
Speaker 1: a gorphobic because you know, they were housewives and didn't
Speaker 1: have a choice. I mean, not that like being a
Speaker 1: housewife necessarily is a bad thing, of course, but she
Speaker 1: meant if if these women didn't even have choices and
Speaker 1: they were feeling a gorphobic, and then the men go
Speaker 1: and they deal with their anxiety by getting drunk after work,
Speaker 1: and now you have to deal with the drunk husband.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of patients moved in with her,
Speaker 1: is my point. I just think that is so funny.
Speaker 1: And then eventually, you know, in her sixties and seven,
Speaker 1: I mean, she wrote these books in her late fifties,
Speaker 1: and in her sixties and seventies, she was touring the
Speaker 1: world because she was becoming a bestselling author in many
Speaker 1: different countries. She was traveling to America to go on
Speaker 1: late night talk shows. I mean, she was quite active
Speaker 1: and getting more and more famous until she was in
Speaker 1: her seventies because this was the only thing helping anxious
Speaker 1: people who had had no language for this, and they would,
Speaker 1: you know, fly to Australia to meet her and just
Speaker 1: cling to copies of their books and just say you
Speaker 1: understand me. And so she's really quite magical and I've
Speaker 1: talked my god long enough about her. Let's just get
Speaker 1: into my episode today UM with my fabulous guest, Dr
Speaker 1: Judith Horne, and as we talked about who I wish
Speaker 1: could have been a guest on this show, Dr Claire Weeks,
Speaker 1: why did you want to write a book such a
Speaker 1: detailed and well research book about Dr Claire Weeks. Well,
Speaker 1: there's probably a number of aspects to that question. But look, firstly,
Speaker 1: she just had such a profound impact on me that
Speaker 1: I never forgot the gift she gave me of understanding.
Speaker 1: And um, I just couldn't believe. I came across when
Speaker 1: I was very young, my twenties, and she was so helpful,
Speaker 1: and I kept thinking, why does this woman not have
Speaker 1: more recognition in Australia. And of course there was no
Speaker 1: Internet back then, you couldn't sort of research someone easily.
Speaker 1: I just was aware that, you know, there is sort
Speaker 1: of obviously her books were on sale, but I couldn't
Speaker 1: work out why she had no um, you know, there
Speaker 1: was no Clerqus to her. There was Austrata didn't seem
Speaker 1: to realize they had had this person who was so
Speaker 1: incredibly helpful. Well, I didn't know how widely helpful she was.
Speaker 1: But I was a journalist and I became a long
Speaker 1: form editor, and I was very aware of how rare
Speaker 1: the gift of writing, actually really good writing and clear writing,
Speaker 1: writing that changes things, writing that changes the way people
Speaker 1: think and live is rare. And I thought, this woman
Speaker 1: has got it to me. And that was from a
Speaker 1: professional point of view. So when I decided to step
Speaker 1: back from journalism, um, I was into my sixties, and
Speaker 1: I thought, I'd rather I've been working on a long
Speaker 1: form journalist enough that I'd really be interested in doing
Speaker 1: something longer myself. And I thought, what I you know
Speaker 1: I can get. I have to be very passionate about
Speaker 1: a subject I want to write it. I won't want
Speaker 1: to sit down and write, so that wouldn't interest me
Speaker 1: at all. So I came up. I certainly thought of her.
Speaker 1: One night, I was sitting with a glass of white
Speaker 1: wine in my hand and ruminating on what I could
Speaker 1: write about it, and her name jumped into my head,
Speaker 1: and I thought, that's it, that is it. She is it.
Speaker 1: But she's surely been written about. I cannot be the
Speaker 1: first person. I won't have been the first person. So
Speaker 1: but a little bit of research turned up that amazingly,
Speaker 1: no one else had written her biography. So that was
Speaker 1: the first step where where I was really thrilled with
Speaker 1: the idea. And then I thought, but I'm I believe
Speaker 1: she's good because I've had a lifetime for assessing writing
Speaker 1: to confirm my really personal experience of her gift. But
Speaker 1: I better test that. So I found on a little
Speaker 1: Wikipedia entry of reference to an American psychiatrist called Dr
Speaker 1: Robert DuPont, who was very well known for his work
Speaker 1: in them. He was called the Drugs are Helping you
Speaker 1: know stem that tired of drug addiction in the seventies
Speaker 1: as presidential advisor, so he had a really quite illustrious background,
Speaker 1: and I noticed he was very affirmative about her her
Speaker 1: work and spoke very highly of it. But he was
Speaker 1: the only one. So I got his email. I emailed
Speaker 1: him and honestly, overnight overnight came back this email and
Speaker 1: in the header said, I am the guy you want.
Speaker 1: I would give you all the help you need. This
Speaker 1: woman has never been recognized. I'm here to do anything.
Speaker 1: And he was just incredible. So the next day I
Speaker 1: had you, are I think a confirmation? I think, yes,
Speaker 1: this woman is really significant, and I think your instincts
Speaker 1: absolutely right, and I will help you. And at that
Speaker 1: point I just literally never looked back. For five years
Speaker 1: I worked on that book, which, as you say, has
Speaker 1: a lot of the search in it, but it was
Speaker 1: a joy. Well, what I appreciate that you're talking about
Speaker 1: her from a writer's perspective is the reason her books
Speaker 1: were so successful, beyond the fact that she was the
Speaker 1: first person to talk about what we now know as agoraphobia,
Speaker 1: panic attacks, and anxiety, is that she herself experienced it.
Speaker 1: But as you're saying, beyond that, as a writer, you
Speaker 1: know she wrote it. Beyond just that she wrote it
Speaker 1: in first person. A lot of it was taken from transcriptions,
Speaker 1: according to your book, of actual conversations she had with people.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it is the way she wrote that you
Speaker 1: feel as though she's writing to you. Oh, that's that's
Speaker 1: absolutely right. It's she's talking to And the books are
Speaker 1: written in the first person. They open with if you
Speaker 1: are sitting down reading this book, now, you will have
Speaker 1: no trouble concentrate. And you may not have been able
Speaker 1: to read in newspaper, but this book you will be
Speaker 1: able to concentrate on. It's true, you'll be able to
Speaker 1: read it from beginning to and deny remember doing that
Speaker 1: myself because it's written in the first person, but it's
Speaker 1: written with such an intimate knowledge of what the reader
Speaker 1: is going through that that, of course for the reader,
Speaker 1: no one had ever shown such intimate knowledge of what
Speaker 1: they thought was such bizarre internal life. They are disturbing
Speaker 1: internal life they had that they were just totally captivated.
Speaker 1: And I think if you happen to pick up the
Speaker 1: book while you're feeling anxious, it is a way of
Speaker 1: arresting that it engages you directly. You don't feel like
Speaker 1: you're reading some theories or that you're outside of it.
Speaker 1: It's it's very calming. And so, did you ever have
Speaker 1: anxiety in your life? Is that why she is someone
Speaker 1: that meant so much to you? Yes? I did, I did.
Speaker 1: I was in it was rather was in my early twenties. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's probably maybe I was an anxious child,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember it being a major issue as
Speaker 1: a child. But in my in my late teens and
Speaker 1: early twenties, it's the sort of leaving home period, you know,
Speaker 1: where you're dealing with the world and a few a
Speaker 1: few slightly disastrous combinations. I were not disastrous. They were
Speaker 1: wonderful in some ways and bad and others. But I
Speaker 1: became a journalist in the National Press Gallery, um, and
Speaker 1: you know that was I was covering their Stralian Federal
Speaker 1: Parliament every day. And I had studied politics, and I
Speaker 1: thought this job was just absolutely fantastic and I thought
Speaker 1: it was a privilege to get up every day and
Speaker 1: cover um, these significant affairs of the world and so
Speaker 1: so um. But it was a very demanding life. I mean,
Speaker 1: being a daily journalist is pretty hepped and hut. And
Speaker 1: I also there was a lot of partying in that thing.
Speaker 1: You know, it was a very male atmosphere. There are
Speaker 1: a lot of late nights, you know, it was. And
Speaker 1: I got I got sick at some stage. It was
Speaker 1: just I had a particular medical issue with that was
Speaker 1: that was a very minor one, but it led to
Speaker 1: her a bit of a hemorrhaging and as a consequence,
Speaker 1: I got very run down. I went back to work
Speaker 1: too early, um, and I got heart palpitations. And it's
Speaker 1: a classic story. She got her panic attack started the
Speaker 1: same way, and you know, I was already run down.
Speaker 1: I was tired. I was having these late nights. I
Speaker 1: was working too hard. I was over excited. That was
Speaker 1: this extraordinary febrile atmosphere. They had sacked the government of
Speaker 1: the day, the Governor general at sacking was a big scandal,
Speaker 1: illustratus in the seventies. So all these things considered, I
Speaker 1: ended up very, as she would say, living on my nerves,
Speaker 1: and the actual palpitations terrified me. So I'd go to
Speaker 1: cardiologists and they'd say, well, look, it's quite from the
Speaker 1: normal range, so there was nothing wrong with me. And
Speaker 1: then that crucial step occurred where you sort of become
Speaker 1: frightened of yourself. You know, no one can reassure you.
Speaker 1: And it's that crucial turning point where you start to
Speaker 1: fear your symptoms. And once you do that, instead of
Speaker 1: just saying, you know, I had a late night heart palpitations.
Speaker 1: A bit weird for someone who's fit in my age,
Speaker 1: but you know, stuff happens. Instead of doing that, you
Speaker 1: start interrogating it all the time. You know, maybe they'll
Speaker 1: come back, you know, why am I getting them? Maybe
Speaker 1: I really do have a bad heart. They haven't picked up.
Speaker 1: And once you go down that path, you're sort of
Speaker 1: alarming yourself. You've become frightened of your own symptoms. And
Speaker 1: that was her two of her huge, simple, simple but
Speaker 1: hugely important ideas. That you you you first get sensitized.
Speaker 1: Anxiety is a sensitization process, and that you can be
Speaker 1: sensitized not just by heart palpitation. It can be a warrior, rumination,
Speaker 1: a problem as well, ashame of disgrace, something this except.
Speaker 1: But the process kickstarts sensitization, so you are receptive to
Speaker 1: what she would call tricks of the nerves. And then
Speaker 1: the next step if you become frightened of your symptoms.
Speaker 1: So once you're sensitized and then you're frightened of your symptoms,
Speaker 1: you are absolutely primed to suffer from I don't know,
Speaker 1: I could be panicky tacks. It could be chronic anxiety.
Speaker 1: She wouldn't divvy it up and give it a label,
Speaker 1: but you are really primed for high anxiety. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back. What I loved about her book and what
Speaker 1: I'm gathering from your experience writing about her, is she
Speaker 1: just put one ft in front of the other, took
Speaker 1: the next step, took risks, life unfolded in front of her,
Speaker 1: and with each weird little coincidence, it led her down.
Speaker 1: The next thing that led her to become this person who,
Speaker 1: as you say, cracked the anxiety code. And I'm in
Speaker 1: the spirit of the weird little coincidence is my story
Speaker 1: is that, you know, I had undiagnosed anxiety and panic
Speaker 1: attacks as I was a kid first manifested and fear
Speaker 1: of flying. But had all the physical symptoms, the hard palpitations,
Speaker 1: the but but for me it was more of that
Speaker 1: very distressing de realization, depersonalization in a in a panic attack,
Speaker 1: but ultimately the fear of the fear of the fear
Speaker 1: of the symptoms. And throughout my life I feel I
Speaker 1: have wasted a lot of time in my thirties and
Speaker 1: early forties with God bless her, but with the therapist
Speaker 1: who kept wanting to go back in childhood, go back,
Speaker 1: go back and back. And the only things that helped
Speaker 1: me were, you know, looking at things on my own
Speaker 1: outside these sessions. And I had to fly to Australia
Speaker 1: and that was you know again, I had a fear
Speaker 1: of flying my whole life. I stopped flying for a
Speaker 1: long time and then I had to start again because
Speaker 1: it was part of my job and I was flying
Speaker 1: around America and for some odd reason. I remember saying, uh, okay,
Speaker 1: I can fly around America as needed for my job.
Speaker 1: I'll take a little bit of Chlanic. And that, by
Speaker 1: the way, never helped squash the anxiety completely or panic.
Speaker 1: It was enough to make me feel like I wasn't
Speaker 1: going to explode, but it was just my nerves on
Speaker 1: fire the whole time. And I said, but I'll never
Speaker 1: be able to fly to Australia, for example, that was
Speaker 1: my boundary, no Australia. And I got this work opportunity
Speaker 1: to go to Australia, and if I didn't go, it
Speaker 1: would have been absurd. It was free, it was first class,
Speaker 1: it was with my coworkers, it was a job I
Speaker 1: was on. I would have had to just not go
Speaker 1: to work that week. And something told me, well, it's
Speaker 1: really ironic that you could just keep obsessing over how
Speaker 1: you're never going to Australia. Now even opportunity you have
Speaker 1: to go. And the flight was pretty scary, but I
Speaker 1: got through it. But anyway, I was looking for things
Speaker 1: to listen to on the plane and I found her
Speaker 1: thing passed through panic and honest to god, it didn't
Speaker 1: dawn on. Yeah, it didn't dawn on me until I
Speaker 1: read your book about her that she's Australian. I wasn't
Speaker 1: thinking about her accent. Well, to me, it's an accent.
Speaker 1: It's not like the book started with Hello, I'm Australian,
Speaker 1: and you know, I cracked the I didn't know who
Speaker 1: she was. I same thing that that most people thought was, Oh,
Speaker 1: she's just some self help woman. I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: And but it really helped. And then of course I
Speaker 1: put it away for a while and then began my
Speaker 1: love fear with Australia. I started to go every year.
Speaker 1: I would live there three months a year for a job.
Speaker 1: I flew by myself there. I even comforted a nervous
Speaker 1: flyer whom I didn't know, that sat next to me.
Speaker 1: And it got to the point where, you know, I
Speaker 1: overcame my fear of flying through a lot of different things,
Speaker 1: one of them was her clear weeks. But it was
Speaker 1: just so funny that specifically became Australia was like where
Speaker 1: I went every year, and when the plane would land,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't even want to get off the plane because
Speaker 1: I felt like the seventeen hours had just flown by
Speaker 1: and I had another movie to watch and so long
Speaker 1: story even longer. When I was starting this podcast, I
Speaker 1: wasn't thinking about her, and I ordered a book on Amazon.
Speaker 1: I thought I was ordering a book about a bunch
Speaker 1: of women that were doing coding as spies in World
Speaker 1: War two, like to bring down the Nazis and something
Speaker 1: with the word code. And I put it into Amazon
Speaker 1: and I ordered your book. But I meant to order
Speaker 1: this book about women world War two. No, And so
Speaker 1: your book comes to me last year and I'm like
Speaker 1: the woman who correct the anxiety code. Huh oh, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to order this, but I'll just keep it.
Speaker 1: Maybe I'll read it someday. So I have it on
Speaker 1: my bedside table. And then during this podcast, I'm interviewing
Speaker 1: this guy who, out of the goodness of his heart,
Speaker 1: just helps people with anxiety with this podcast, and he
Speaker 1: talks a lot about um Clear Weeks and so he
Speaker 1: mentioned her a few times in our interview and I said, wait,
Speaker 1: I know that name. She's did the pass through panic
Speaker 1: and the Float and Accept and he said yeah. I said,
Speaker 1: you know, she was the first help I really got
Speaker 1: with panic. And then that night I looked my bedside
Speaker 1: table and I went, wait, this is about Claire. It
Speaker 1: just it was so weird. I don't I mean, it's
Speaker 1: not that weird story, but and then we found you
Speaker 1: and you agreed to come on the show. But I
Speaker 1: just felt like, especially at this time in my life
Speaker 1: with doing the podcast and realizing how many different types
Speaker 1: of anxiety and quotes I'm talking to people about and
Speaker 1: how many people still to this day, I don't know
Speaker 1: what to do about it and they come to me
Speaker 1: and I'm always like, I'm just a comting with a podcast,
Speaker 1: you know. But in a way it is. It helped
Speaker 1: remind me that it's more simple than even I was
Speaker 1: making it even recently, which is that you know, the
Speaker 1: whole therapy thing and go into your past that she said,
Speaker 1: it's interesting, it's not really necessary right now for what's
Speaker 1: going on, and it all starts with fixing your nervous
Speaker 1: system and the thoughts come. So that's just my long
Speaker 1: story about there's just something kind of magical about you know. Look,
Speaker 1: I just have to say every biech of this book
Speaker 1: is in Touched with Magic from the from the moment
Speaker 1: I got that first, I'm the guy you want from
Speaker 1: Dr Robert DuPont. You know, the passionate people have you
Speaker 1: come across these weird coincidences. I'll just tend your briefly
Speaker 1: one and then we can get onto the actual issues.
Speaker 1: I suppose. But but when I wrote the book, it
Speaker 1: was sent off to be endorsed by a very well
Speaker 1: known the straight and broadcaster called Lee Sales is very good.
Speaker 1: And Lee had agreed to read my book, and she
Speaker 1: had agreed to read someone else's book. She was only
Speaker 1: doing two books for the year, and she picked mine
Speaker 1: and this other book by a well known Australian musician
Speaker 1: called Claire Bowditch, who wrote had written her memoir. Anyway,
Speaker 1: she reads my book in manuscript form, she puts it down,
Speaker 1: she sends the endorsement off, and next minute I get
Speaker 1: a text from her saying I'm sitting here freaking out.
Speaker 1: And of course she then contacted me and she said,
Speaker 1: I put your book down. This is the one who's
Speaker 1: got a full time job every night interviewing politicians, and
Speaker 1: she just does this. You know, she's she's she's a
Speaker 1: great contributor and helps other people, and she just was
Speaker 1: looking at these two books and she can lie great
Speaker 1: to do it and make time in her very busy love.
Speaker 1: She put my book down. The next book she picked
Speaker 1: up from a woman who was a different generation from me,
Speaker 1: twenty years younger, had dedicated her memory too, none other
Speaker 1: than doctor Clear Weeks. Now you have bear in mind
Speaker 1: Lisas had never heard of Clear Weeks before she picked
Speaker 1: up my book. She puts it down, and she picks
Speaker 1: up the second manuscript, which is dedicated to the memory
Speaker 1: a Clear Weeks. Clear Weeks died in nineteen ninety. Her
Speaker 1: first book was written in nineteen sixty two, and a
Speaker 1: forty year old musician was writing about her life being
Speaker 1: saved by Clear Weeks when she was in her twenties. Um,
Speaker 1: you know these little coincidences. I've forgotten most of them
Speaker 1: because my brain is getting older. But it was almost
Speaker 1: She's not religious, Clear Weeks, but I felt like every
Speaker 1: night again, I thought, you're up there, you're up there.
Speaker 1: You're pulling these strings to the coincidences that we're really touching,
Speaker 1: really touch and if anyone's pulling strings, it's her. But basically,
Speaker 1: and I've got all this from your book. But at
Speaker 1: age eighteen twenty eight, she made academ of History on
Speaker 1: the way to get her doctorate, first class honors degree
Speaker 1: in science, first woman to do that um at the
Speaker 1: University of Sydney, and she was aiming for a Rockefeller
Speaker 1: fellowship that she would further her studies in England. And
Speaker 1: she gets the sore throat. Then she has an operation
Speaker 1: it's botched and she's told she has tuberculosis and sent
Speaker 1: to live in a sanatorium for six months by herself.
Speaker 1: And she comes from a big family. She's in her
Speaker 1: early trentiesia that's right, yeah, And you know, then the
Speaker 1: doctors come to her, oh, sorry, misdiagnosis, good to go,
Speaker 1: and she writes about and you've write about that. When
Speaker 1: she left, that's when the heart palpitation started and she
Speaker 1: was convinced it was a serious heart condition and she
Speaker 1: was terrified that the doctors had made a mistake and
Speaker 1: maybe something was wrong with her heart. She was overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: She went to live with a friend who was married
Speaker 1: to a doctor and her you know, she said, this
Speaker 1: was the turning point in her life. Her heart was
Speaker 1: racing and she didn't know yet then that fear was
Speaker 1: managing her heart beat and she was in this vicious cycle.
Speaker 1: So life goes on and she's studying her specialty, which
Speaker 1: is evolution, and she works with this and and there's
Speaker 1: such a great theme of feminism and women's rights in
Speaker 1: this book. That is unfortunate in a way because she
Speaker 1: was in a time when you know, she was up
Speaker 1: against it in terms of society not taking her seriously
Speaker 1: and expecting her to be a housewife. But she worked
Speaker 1: with um Launcelot Harrison am I saying that right. He
Speaker 1: was a professor of zoology, and he saw women as
Speaker 1: equals in life and in work, and his wife was
Speaker 1: a feminist, and he invited her to go on this
Speaker 1: rugged expedition into unexplored terrain where they would study wizards,
Speaker 1: and that helped, you know, with what became like her
Speaker 1: lasting reputation and zoology. But I just found that interesting.
Speaker 1: Her first kind of lucky break in a way is
Speaker 1: having to live alone in that santatorium, which you know
Speaker 1: she she ruminated on her she had too much time alone.
Speaker 1: She had already had heart palpitations by that stage. But
Speaker 1: it just shows you and you will know Jen that
Speaker 1: you know, it starts with one thing, but anxiety can
Speaker 1: take many different forms that can invade the body and
Speaker 1: the mind and be very invasive and have all of
Speaker 1: these different sort of symptoms and people they can mind
Speaker 1: and body, and people feel that they're out of control,
Speaker 1: they're going a bit mad. So it starts with one thing,
Speaker 1: but then then it sort of morphs into something big
Speaker 1: and scary. That's people just get basically invade. Basically is look,
Speaker 1: it's quite simple. They're invaded by fear. They're terrified, but
Speaker 1: they don't understand what they're terrified about, so then they
Speaker 1: conclude they're mad. So it sort of goes around in
Speaker 1: a nasty circle. So then I mean, she gets this
Speaker 1: lucky break, and I'm not lucky. She's brilliant, but still
Speaker 1: luck involved in that. You know, one of the very
Speaker 1: few men that saw women as equals wanted to take
Speaker 1: her under his wing, and she studied with him and
Speaker 1: continued her study. I'm just putting it very simply on
Speaker 1: lizards and and other reptiles, and the audience may think
Speaker 1: I'm going to lizard brain, and I'm not, but just
Speaker 1: for her the studies of and its way over my head.
Speaker 1: But I sort of basically understood that certain reptiles that
Speaker 1: laid eggs and others that didn't, and it was all
Speaker 1: kind of was invitation. It's it's it's the whole How
Speaker 1: did we get how do we get to human birth?
Speaker 1: When did When did laying eggs? It was about cracking
Speaker 1: the mystery of birth. Really, how did we go from
Speaker 1: egg laying to life bearing? And she was looking at
Speaker 1: this intermediary lizards do both, so they were a perfect
Speaker 1: specimen to study. So I mean interestingly, a lot of
Speaker 1: the early psychologists started as biologists, So she started with
Speaker 1: the organism of the body. Well it's interesting too because
Speaker 1: what she I think ultimately came to was it was
Speaker 1: environment that determined how certain things evolved, not just something
Speaker 1: in the genetics, which then later became her biggest thesis
Speaker 1: for anxiety, which I think is why she doctor her doctor. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's right, it was her doctor started off with the
Speaker 1: way in which the cold weather, the environment shaped retaining
Speaker 1: the eggs and the growth of the placenter and so on.
Speaker 1: So yes, it was fascinating. It really was incredible, and
Speaker 1: you could see I found that fascinating with the book
Speaker 1: to trace back how her ideas, her ideas actually evolved,
Speaker 1: and she started with as a biologist, as zoologist with
Speaker 1: with evolution, that's where she started. Anxiety bites will be
Speaker 1: right back after a quick little message from one of
Speaker 1: our sponsors, here she is studying evolution, and it's beautifully
Speaker 1: as though it's being scripted, setting her up for what
Speaker 1: she will later the revolutionary in which is the mind
Speaker 1: body connection with anxiety. I just I just get fascinated
Speaker 1: reading the book because I go, oh my god, what
Speaker 1: if she hadn't gone on the trip, what if she
Speaker 1: hadn't done as we would never have had her. Well, well,
Speaker 1: then then you have the other wonderful bit of serendipity,
Speaker 1: which is where when she's on that study tour with
Speaker 1: Lancelot up in the Barrington Tops, in the remote mountains
Speaker 1: and outside Sydney in the twenties, this is the nineteen twenties.
Speaker 1: Bear in mind, she meets on that trip a friend
Speaker 1: of Landslot Harrison who has brought along, who's a geologist
Speaker 1: at the time, called Marcel or Rousseau, who's a war
Speaker 1: who's a war hero from First World War, and it
Speaker 1: was meeting him, I mean, apart from the fact that
Speaker 1: she she would have seen the fight or flight instinct
Speaker 1: in lizards because she chased them and they demonstrate fight
Speaker 1: or they don't demonstrate fight so much as they certainly
Speaker 1: demonstrate flight. And so she's working with lizards and then
Speaker 1: she meets him, and it's when she arrives in London
Speaker 1: to take up the rock Fellow Scholarship that she's completely wrecked.
Speaker 1: She's left the sanatorium, she's gone back to finish a doctorate.
Speaker 1: She finished a doctorate, even through she's worked through this
Speaker 1: dreadful anxiety. But she arrives in London and she's on
Speaker 1: the point of collapse, she thinks. And who turns up
Speaker 1: to meet her there but the friend she went on
Speaker 1: the study trip in Australia with the war hero Marcel
Speaker 1: Or so happens to be in London. He turns up.
Speaker 1: She says, she calls him John in the book, Oh John,
Speaker 1: I feel I feel just absolutely dreadful and I can't
Speaker 1: go on. And he said, what's wrong, And she explained,
Speaker 1: she's got this terrible heart population she's invaded by this
Speaker 1: nameless dread and she feels completely besides anyway, whatever she
Speaker 1: says to me and says, oh, well, that's nothing, that's
Speaker 1: just like we soldiers had that in the war. And
Speaker 1: she said, what do you mean. He said, it's fear.
Speaker 1: He said, you're you're, you're, you're just letting you just
Speaker 1: have to float past the fear. And she said that
Speaker 1: was a got at moment. You may not have been
Speaker 1: frightening myself. Yes, your symptoms are from frightening yourself. You
Speaker 1: just have to float past them. Now. How amazing to
Speaker 1: have the experience of that lab of fear World War
Speaker 1: One come to her, delivered by another scientist who also
Speaker 1: did a science degree, who could see the connection between
Speaker 1: the mind and the body and understand it in a
Speaker 1: way that I might add if I hope I'm not
Speaker 1: getting hit of myself here subsequently gets lost in psychology,
Speaker 1: like we forget the body. We stick with the mind,
Speaker 1: and we just lose the body. And there's a separation.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's scholars who said that, not just me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's my favorite part of the book is when Marcel,
Speaker 1: who she calls John, says to her, and I quoted
Speaker 1: you here. Um, he told her that her distress and
Speaker 1: racing heart were nothing. Quote, those are only symptoms of nerves.
Speaker 1: We all had those in the trenches. And yeah, he
Speaker 1: said her heart was programmed by fear. And then that's
Speaker 1: when she realized the whole time she'd been doing it herself.
Speaker 1: But John explained to her or Marcel that in war
Speaker 1: an actual dangerous situations soldiers, hearts raced, but then the
Speaker 1: hearts continued to race after the threat had passed, and
Speaker 1: then that was priming them for panic, and their fear
Speaker 1: really only felt overwhelming in their body, and so the
Speaker 1: mind then concluded that something was terribly wrong, which continued
Speaker 1: to feed the fear and which we'll get into in
Speaker 1: a minute. So she says in the book that you
Speaker 1: wrote that, Um, she went to bed that night and
Speaker 1: she laid there calmly and said, Okay, I'll just go
Speaker 1: to sleep palpitating if necessary. And she says, once she
Speaker 1: stopped engaging with her symptoms, her heart be went to
Speaker 1: normal and the whole thing cleared up. And the way
Speaker 1: she put it was her fear was bluffing her, and
Speaker 1: so she stopped fighting and went to acceptance and she
Speaker 1: at that point, within a month, felt that she had
Speaker 1: been cured. And what I love about it is the
Speaker 1: word acceptance has actually really bothered a lot of people
Speaker 1: that you know, they've they've listened to this podcast and
Speaker 1: we've talked about this before, and I can't say it enough.
Speaker 1: It doesn't mean accept it and love it and be like,
Speaker 1: oh i've panic attacks, I'm going to keep having them.
Speaker 1: It's it's like accepted in the moment, like let it
Speaker 1: overwhelm you. And as she says, even try to make
Speaker 1: it scarier if you can. That's quite a clever idea
Speaker 1: of hers. I thought, I remember reading that, thinking that's British.
Speaker 1: She'd say, see if you can make it worse, See
Speaker 1: if you can make it worse, you know, and because
Speaker 1: you know your mind is not going to do what
Speaker 1: you think, so it's really just the most clever way
Speaker 1: of getting it to go away. She says, I don't
Speaker 1: have a doctor weeks method. I'm using nature's way. And
Speaker 1: really this is the simplicity of it. We have a
Speaker 1: sympathetic nervous system and a parasympathetic nervous system, and her
Speaker 1: books just explain the nervous system. And this is what
Speaker 1: I think is just missing so much in psychiatry and psychology.
Speaker 1: Before we get to individual differences, how people brought up,
Speaker 1: what might have been their own biological inheritance, how they're
Speaker 1: treated as children, what they're experence, we all need to
Speaker 1: understand our nervous system. This should be fundamental, you know.
Speaker 1: And the fact is people are getting tricked to she
Speaker 1: said by the idea that you know your your sympathetic
Speaker 1: nervous system is actually, if she said, quite unsympathetic, it's
Speaker 1: you can't control that. I mean, if if a tiger
Speaker 1: comes at your brick falls out of the sky, you
Speaker 1: know you will move and dark and run and you
Speaker 1: won't think about that. You've got no control over that.
Speaker 1: And normally the normal body, after the dangers passed, the
Speaker 1: parasympathetic nervous system moves in to slow the heartbeat, settle
Speaker 1: the gut, stop the I don't know post barring all
Speaker 1: the different things. It's actually working on the body. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the body settling itself down. And the panicked anxious
Speaker 1: person has forgotten that mind body and is using the
Speaker 1: mind is now feeding the body, and that is uniquely human.
Speaker 1: And that's where we're now going to get quite complicated.
Speaker 1: And where I think she was right at the cutting
Speaker 1: edge of science is her idea of first fear and
Speaker 1: second fear. The first fear is that ducking we do
Speaker 1: from the brick or running from the tiger. We don't.
Speaker 1: We can't control that. We do it autumn radically. The
Speaker 1: trouble starts when the other we've got the fear in
Speaker 1: the brain, is not is not just one thing you've got.
Speaker 1: You could call that a dumb alarm if you like.
Speaker 1: That's what she would call first fear is like the
Speaker 1: dumb alarm goes off. You don't think about it, You
Speaker 1: just run, You just dunk. But then there's a moment
Speaker 1: where you're where the human brain, which can think and
Speaker 1: reflect on things, goes Oh my goodness, I just got
Speaker 1: invaded by this shot of adrenaline. Now, let's say you
Speaker 1: get it randomly. You're really over tired, you're in a
Speaker 1: supermarket queue, and you've had an operational we've had a
Speaker 1: terrible worry that's been consuming you. Suddenly you get a
Speaker 1: jolt of adrenaline that you would normally get when there
Speaker 1: was a tiger, except you in a supermarket cure. Now
Speaker 1: what happens there is the other bit of your brain,
Speaker 1: the second figures what was that. I didn't control that,
Speaker 1: it just came, it arrived. I must be going mad.
Speaker 1: Oh no, I might get that feeling again. And at
Speaker 1: that point you add second fear to first fear, and
Speaker 1: that's what perpetuates it now, and that's why it's so
Speaker 1: clever and so in a way scientific and medical her
Speaker 1: simple formulas. They sound simple, but they're based on scholarship,
Speaker 1: which is, acceptance is designed to make your parasympathetic nervous system,
Speaker 1: which normally comes you down, which gets totally sidelined by
Speaker 1: the panic cycle. But you coause you're staying in a
Speaker 1: continued state of fear. You're frightened of yourself. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you acceptance, which she calls not enduring or putting up with.
Speaker 1: But to walk towards that tiger, like, let yourself walk
Speaker 1: towards that tiger in your head, just let it burn through.
Speaker 1: You totally accept the horrific fear that's burning through. Once
Speaker 1: you do that, that's the path through to the end
Speaker 1: of pack, because that's when it gives your body a
Speaker 1: chance to stop pumping adrenaline, to keep the adrenaline cycle going,
Speaker 1: because you're re adrenalizing yourself all the time unless you
Speaker 1: learn a bit of acceptance or a lot of acceptance,
Speaker 1: I guess in some people's case. Well, as she says,
Speaker 1: it's simple but not easy, and her uh timeline of
Speaker 1: what to do is face except float, let time pass
Speaker 1: and flow is I suppose that the word she uses
Speaker 1: for let yourself have the panic attack, but they're like,
Speaker 1: don't try to stop it. Well, first of that's right exactly.
Speaker 1: She mean trying to get your whole body into a
Speaker 1: state where you're giving yourself distance on the experience and
Speaker 1: you're not refeeding it that and that's what I think
Speaker 1: a lot more work could be done, and it is
Speaker 1: being done. Joseph lad In in New Yorkers dancer Marter's
Speaker 1: work on the two circuits of fear in the brain.
Speaker 1: You know, people need to understand that there is a
Speaker 1: dumb alarm um that is the fight, you know, the
Speaker 1: shot of adrenaline you get when you when you have
Speaker 1: genuine fear but something genuinely dangerous situations. But sometimes there's
Speaker 1: you get that randomly and that's where the problem starts.
Speaker 1: But we need a bit more understanding on that, you know,
Speaker 1: it needs and she explains it really simply by first
Speaker 1: and second fear and hardbreak. That's cycle. But it's really
Speaker 1: at the cutting edge. And I think the issue of
Speaker 1: practice is important too. I think if you look at
Speaker 1: her as saying, you know, again putting aside or you
Speaker 1: can go and have psychotherapy, and I'm not saying that's
Speaker 1: not extremely useful for people have individual issues. But there's
Speaker 1: a simple tool kit that everybody needs that they can practice.
Speaker 1: And the brain gets trained in certain ways, and she's
Speaker 1: trying to untrain the brain in a way and say,
Speaker 1: there's a different way. The way you're pattern in your
Speaker 1: response is a bad pattern. Let's read pattern it, which
Speaker 1: is a scientific way can be prifped of bringing the
Speaker 1: body back into peace by and you've got to practice it,
Speaker 1: and you get setbacks, but that's not the end of
Speaker 1: the world. That's another chance to practice it. So it's
Speaker 1: a life tool kid, if you like. So people can
Speaker 1: and and then it's simple, and then it doesn't go
Speaker 1: into dark places that says there's something specially troubled about
Speaker 1: you or me. There may be about some people have
Speaker 1: very difficult and different circumstances, but for most of us
Speaker 1: who have anxiety, it's it's pretty simple in some ways.
Speaker 1: It really is. And it it doesn't matter why it happened.
Speaker 1: It just matters that it is and how we're going
Speaker 1: to react to it. And you know, I have a
Speaker 1: few things on my mind. I I've talked to, of course,
Speaker 1: many neuroscientists. I did talk to Lisa Feldman Barrett on
Speaker 1: the show, and I love how she pulls apart the
Speaker 1: myth of that we have this lizard brain and there's
Speaker 1: almost this morality involved with when we quote lose control,
Speaker 1: and that's not true. And this is you know, mythology
Speaker 1: from Plato and it's really simple and clear Weeks had
Speaker 1: touched on this that our brain is constantly predicting based
Speaker 1: on our memories so that it can keep us alive.
Speaker 1: So you know, um, in the good sense, I'm walking
Speaker 1: across the street, I almost get hit by a car.
Speaker 1: My brain knows, oh, wait a minute, this has happened before.
Speaker 1: This is a bad example, but um, I'm gonna have
Speaker 1: you jump back from the car. Okay, great, But now
Speaker 1: we can train our brain the wrong way. Right, So
Speaker 1: if I'm on a plane and I'm starting to get
Speaker 1: arousal of anxiety sensations, my brain can go, oh, I
Speaker 1: know what we did last time this happened. We panicked,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to do that again. And that's that's
Speaker 1: what we do to keep you safe. And now, unlike
Speaker 1: a lizard, I get to think and and stop, or
Speaker 1: at least be aware. It's hard to think in a
Speaker 1: panic attack. But I think that that's what clear Weeks
Speaker 1: is saying with the first and second fear. Like I've
Speaker 1: had so many therapist say to me personally in sessions, Oh, well,
Speaker 1: this fight or flight is from when we were cave people,
Speaker 1: and it's an old evolutionary thing. But they never talk about.
Speaker 1: But the difference between us, even cave people, us and
Speaker 1: lizards or reptiles. Yeah, it's the second fear. They don't
Speaker 1: have that. So if a lizard panics because something's coming
Speaker 1: and he runs away, he's not, then I don't think
Speaker 1: constantly going what if that happens again? It's just if
Speaker 1: it happens again, he run again. Is that right? Well,
Speaker 1: the thing is that this is the survival instinct. It
Speaker 1: shouldn't even be I mean, Joseph Ladom makes a very
Speaker 1: good point in a way, it shouldn't be called fear.
Speaker 1: It's a it's it's like a dumb alarm. It just goes.
Speaker 1: It's not an emotion. It's not an emotion. It's not
Speaker 1: at all what it is. But what it is is
Speaker 1: it's a huge full body experience. You know, after you
Speaker 1: know a tiger has come at your you've just jumped
Speaker 1: away from a car, you think of what your body
Speaker 1: is doing. Your heart is pounding, you. Your head feels
Speaker 1: like it's going to explain what we can all have
Speaker 1: different But it's extremely physical. If you have a panic attack,
Speaker 1: it's extremely physical. So the first fight or flight dumb
Speaker 1: alarm that goes off is a full body experience. It's
Speaker 1: designed to get you ready to jump out of danger
Speaker 1: or run. So you're every organ is engaged in that
Speaker 1: process of preparing your body to fight or to flee.
Speaker 1: So it is in the body. And this is what
Speaker 1: lot of I think people when they talk about you
Speaker 1: know things about you know, what happened in your past,
Speaker 1: all that contributed, yes, to the stressed person you may be,
Speaker 1: But it doesn't solve the problem of what you do now,
Speaker 1: which is that you are consumed with these awful feelings
Speaker 1: in your body. And it's visceral. It feels a panic attack.
Speaker 1: Isn't some thought some idea that oh my god, it's
Speaker 1: it's a visceral Your whole body you want to run away,
Speaker 1: You want to get out of that plane. When you're
Speaker 1: frightened on you just want to be out of there.
Speaker 1: Your whole body is trying to So she understood that
Speaker 1: and understood how important the bodies, um and the minds.
Speaker 1: Then and her thing was she was known as as
Speaker 1: understanding the mind body connection. How then the mind could
Speaker 1: refeed that initial dumb alarm and it could restart it
Speaker 1: by fearing it. So what you're doing is your your
Speaker 1: fear in your own body. Because the feelings you get
Speaker 1: on that plane, they're all inside you, and you are frightened.
Speaker 1: You're going to get them again every time you get
Speaker 1: on that plane. So it's what she was clever realizing
Speaker 1: is it's less I'm probably not making myself as clear
Speaker 1: as I could, but it's less about the thing outside
Speaker 1: the spider. You think you're frightened about the plane. You thing,
Speaker 1: it's more of what's happening inside you that you're frightened of.
Speaker 1: And she's trying to address your attention to the insides.
Speaker 1: And what she's saying is that inside of you that
Speaker 1: you're frightened of it. You think it's the plane or
Speaker 1: the spider it, but actually you're frightening yourself because you
Speaker 1: are bringing your symptoms to yourself. So you have a
Speaker 1: role in this, and I've got to And then she says, look,
Speaker 1: this is how the body works, This is how the
Speaker 1: mind contributes to it. This is called your nervous system
Speaker 1: and you are now frightened of it, and you are
Speaker 1: not ill, in her opinion, until you become frightened. It's like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what horror movie this is, but there's
Speaker 1: a horror movie that's like the whole is coming from
Speaker 1: inside the house. And I always think that when I
Speaker 1: think about there's like the hall is coming from inside
Speaker 1: the house. That's good. That's good. That's good. We'll continue
Speaker 1: the interview on the flip side of a quick message
Speaker 1: from our sponsors. You know, I had a therapist tell
Speaker 1: me once and they were dead wrong. Her big thing was,
Speaker 1: we're going to solve your panic attacks if you can
Speaker 1: remember what you were thinking the moment before you started
Speaker 1: to panic. And so in her mind, if I could
Speaker 1: keep a diary of everything I was thinking the minute
Speaker 1: before I panicked, then we could find out what I
Speaker 1: was thinking. And I was like, I literally am usually
Speaker 1: thinking nothing. It's physical. No, I know, but there's got
Speaker 1: to be. And what she should have been asking is
Speaker 1: what do you think while you're panicking or right after?
Speaker 1: What are the words you're telling yourself during the second fear?
Speaker 1: And so people I know that listen to this podcast
Speaker 1: and right and they'll say no, no, no, but my
Speaker 1: panic attacks are so bad they come out of nowhere.
Speaker 1: And then they keep this or they keep going, or
Speaker 1: they blah blah blah. And it's like because it happens
Speaker 1: so seamlessly. Um. The second fear, which is the what ifs,
Speaker 1: it just sort of seems like it's part of the
Speaker 1: first fear. Well, that's what she says, it does. And
Speaker 1: also the first fear, of she points out, can come
Speaker 1: out of nowhere because your sensitized bear in mind, you've
Speaker 1: been worried, fretting, or you've had an operation as she had,
Speaker 1: and I lost blood at something you know, you warned down.
Speaker 1: And it is electric in its fierceness. And this again
Speaker 1: is why people who read her book when oh my god,
Speaker 1: the first person who understands me, you know, like you saying,
Speaker 1: psychologist doesn't quite get me. She says, the panic can
Speaker 1: be electric in its fierceness and savagery. It can feel
Speaker 1: so terribly real, and yet there is nothing to be
Speaker 1: frttened off, So that is in itself terrifying. So then
Speaker 1: you are terrified because you've thought about why you feel
Speaker 1: this way, and you feel so ghastly, So it becomes
Speaker 1: the circle, and all you're doing is it's fear adrenaline.
Speaker 1: Fear adrenaline. Now, it's not easy to break that sune call,
Speaker 1: but it sometimes it's quite since some people find it.
Speaker 1: Once they understand, they're cured immediately. But you know the
Speaker 1: reason she has so many people saying, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I get people writing to me still and they all say,
Speaker 1: she saved my life. She saved my life because she
Speaker 1: was the first person to say, you know, stand back
Speaker 1: and not start delving into what could be special about
Speaker 1: you and your problems. She's saying what's common about you
Speaker 1: and your humanity, what's common to the body in the mind,
Speaker 1: about nerves and nervous illness. Well In in the part
Speaker 1: of the book that you wrote about her first and
Speaker 1: second fear, um, this is again I'm reading your book
Speaker 1: to you. But Weeks didn't regard first fear as a
Speaker 1: mental state being beyond conscious control. She wrote about the
Speaker 1: fear adrenaline cycle. She described it as a flash. The
Speaker 1: first fear easy enough to identify as the survival response,
Speaker 1: and the second fear that was more of a challenge
Speaker 1: to describe. What is it? Um? It's usually a what
Speaker 1: if followed by catastrophic thought, and the second fear is like,
Speaker 1: I can't take it. I gotta get out of here.
Speaker 1: I might make a fool of myself. But she said
Speaker 1: that second fear invoked another brain process and human beings,
Speaker 1: and that is of conscious emotion, which is a more
Speaker 1: recent evolutionary development. And so, like you said, the sensitized person,
Speaker 1: they get that fear, it's electric and then comes the
Speaker 1: thoughts what if, what if this happens? What if that?
Speaker 1: What if I'm dying? And then they become more concerned
Speaker 1: with the physical feelings of panic than they were with
Speaker 1: the original danger. Oh, this plane feels like it's crashing,
Speaker 1: or my heart's racing, it's like and then the two
Speaker 1: fears feel as one, as we were just saying. And
Speaker 1: so her acceptance and floating as you write, was meant
Speaker 1: to short circuit that cycle. So it's almost like in
Speaker 1: those moments thinking of it as I've got a short circuit,
Speaker 1: this electricity that's inside of me. It's it's you can't
Speaker 1: even rationalize it intellectually, it's it's just sometimes even knowing it, Oh,
Speaker 1: the second fear has come in, could sometimes for me
Speaker 1: be enough to start to calm down. Well, you've got
Speaker 1: to get distance on that. You've got to give yourself
Speaker 1: a bit of distance on that first fear and not
Speaker 1: engage with it. And I think that's where acceptance means
Speaker 1: you stopped. Or she what she wrote in the margin
Speaker 1: somewhereas don't fight. In other words, it's paradoxical, but you
Speaker 1: must not fight fear. If you continue to try and
Speaker 1: pull yourself together, try and relax, fight the fear. That
Speaker 1: she would say that is just completely wrong. It goes
Speaker 1: against what the body needs. The body needs to release
Speaker 1: to yield. That's the only way forward, and that's where
Speaker 1: things like Buddhism and yoga and things like that come
Speaker 1: in in a you know, she was not at all
Speaker 1: as far as I could find. I didn't see any
Speaker 1: huge Eastern influence on her because she was a scientist.
Speaker 1: She was talking about the body, in the mind and
Speaker 1: the nervous system. But that but that's where Buddhism and
Speaker 1: yogur and things are based on engaging the nervous system
Speaker 1: in the right way that keeps it the emotional regulation
Speaker 1: more ordered and not disordered. And so many people have
Speaker 1: been treated so strangely and irrelevantly for anxiety over the
Speaker 1: years where they could have had it, had it quite
Speaker 1: simply explained to them, and even if they continued to
Speaker 1: need discussion and help and advice, they could go on
Speaker 1: to have that, but they would at least have the
Speaker 1: foundations for understanding that there's no real mystery here about
Speaker 1: why they feel so totally bizarre, you know. But she
Speaker 1: also talked about it's it's hinted out a little bit
Speaker 1: in your book. I mean, I'm not hinted at, but
Speaker 1: it's it's talked about a little bit that our brain
Speaker 1: habits are entrenched in memory, and that gets back to
Speaker 1: that the brain is predicting what to do to keep
Speaker 1: us safe, and so fear is a habit. We'll look
Speaker 1: so much look first and second fear, as I say
Speaker 1: Jesse would do. Is written brilliantly about this, very contemporaneously,
Speaker 1: about the two circuit trees in the brain and how
Speaker 1: if we got proper and better names for them, um,
Speaker 1: we would have a better way of understanding anxiety, which goes.
Speaker 1: But I wrote to him, I said, this is like
Speaker 1: first and second fear of that clear we's talked about.
Speaker 1: She tried to explain how you should understand your brain
Speaker 1: and fear in the brain. Habit is so important, and
Speaker 1: she is trying to teach you a new set of habits.
Speaker 1: And I think it's no surprise, Jen, that I came
Speaker 1: across the information time and time again that from people
Speaker 1: have spoken to and people have seen other people who
Speaker 1: have benefited from her books. Everyone's got copies of her
Speaker 1: books that are all sort of dog eared, and they've
Speaker 1: been read. And and that's because, and I guess it
Speaker 1: goes back to why people have psychotherapy, but because if
Speaker 1: it's helpful, people need to learn new habits. And they
Speaker 1: have to go back to her books, and they have
Speaker 1: to listen again, and they have to practice again and
Speaker 1: again the way, and and and she says you will recover,
Speaker 1: you will get better if you exactly follow this. Now
Speaker 1: that can sound like a mad cult, but all she's
Speaker 1: doing is saying, you know, is all she is doing
Speaker 1: is saying, Look, this is the way your body works.
Speaker 1: If you give your body a chance to follow these
Speaker 1: simple rules, you will break the cycle of fear and adrenaline,
Speaker 1: and you will allow your body to heal itself and
Speaker 1: your mind to heal itself. And I think that that
Speaker 1: was and all of these things were so ahead of
Speaker 1: their time, and they're still Frankly, the idea of acceptance
Speaker 1: therapy and the idea of the whole nervous system is
Speaker 1: coming back into vogue in a bit because we need
Speaker 1: to be able to manage our nervous systems, and first
Speaker 1: to manage them, we need to be able to understand them.
Speaker 1: And you know, yes, there are contributors. As you said,
Speaker 1: it could be you had a very difficult childhood, or
Speaker 1: you had particular circumstances, or you have a biological tendency
Speaker 1: towards sensitivity or whatever um And I don't I'm no
Speaker 1: expert on any of that, but it's really it's really
Speaker 1: a case of practicing new habits and understanding that mind
Speaker 1: body connection in a useful way that can It may
Speaker 1: not mean you're free for you, it's not going to
Speaker 1: be a magic talisman. And then she never get stress
Speaker 1: or a tension in your life, but it gives you
Speaker 1: a tool, kid to deal with it. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: like she said, I'm reading your book to you again.
Speaker 1: Her idea of a cure was that panicking again was
Speaker 1: an almost inevitable part of recovery. So you have to
Speaker 1: learn how to cope with the panic itself. You have
Speaker 1: to panic without panicking and not be afraid of it.
Speaker 1: So you know, in other words, if you're recovered, you
Speaker 1: can say I'm cured, and someone would say, well, what
Speaker 1: if you panic again? You go, I don't, I don't
Speaker 1: care if I panick again. Well that's that's the cure,
Speaker 1: not that I'm never going to panick again. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a very I think that's a very very important point because, um,
Speaker 1: you know that is again it comes back to acceptance.
Speaker 1: It comes back to the idea that you know, look,
Speaker 1: who's going to welcome having another panic attack. Everyone's going
Speaker 1: to go, oh yeah, I still want to run away
Speaker 1: from it. But what she's saying is, look, if you
Speaker 1: do get it again, you know it's you've been there.
Speaker 1: You know there's a way through it, and you know
Speaker 1: the way to the other side of it. And so
Speaker 1: I think that that is just so hugely confirming, and
Speaker 1: there are lots of people for her. Her books have
Speaker 1: basically taken away the worst of the panic by simply
Speaker 1: understanding it. I think in any once you find out
Speaker 1: it's not unique to you, it's like, oh, you know.
Speaker 1: And she was one of the first people that talked
Speaker 1: about that that inner voice that that can see do
Speaker 1: you lock your ban your before and again this brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliantly combining in some ways sort of um simple wisdom
Speaker 1: and and and advice with the science of it. I mean,
Speaker 1: the inner voice is a great concept of hers that
Speaker 1: you can and and and also hope and confidence. She
Speaker 1: knows and we all know the U and we all
Speaker 1: know when something makes you feel confident or you feel hopeful.
Speaker 1: I think how you feel in your body when you
Speaker 1: feel hope or confidence, You feel great, you know, And
Speaker 1: it's about feeling in that wide sense of the word feeling,
Speaker 1: feeling in the mind and body. You just feel great.
Speaker 1: And she knew that so often people didn't offer hope,
Speaker 1: and what she was offering her readers was, look, you
Speaker 1: feel as though you're a bit mad and you and
Speaker 1: you're overwhelmed and bewildered and totally distressed. But look, sit
Speaker 1: down and I'll talk you through it. It's quite simple.
Speaker 1: It's not necessarily easy, but it's straightforward. And um so
Speaker 1: I that was such a relief to people and so
Speaker 1: incredibly useful. And I just feel that that simplicity and
Speaker 1: basic understanding of the mind and body gets so overly
Speaker 1: complicated by by by people unnecessarily so who are trying
Speaker 1: to help other people. And you know, I think she
Speaker 1: just really was unique in a way in being able
Speaker 1: to explain this. And people don't understand the herod. A
Speaker 1: lot of people who do use her ideas today just
Speaker 1: don't understand on you know, whose shoulders they rest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I love that she said intelligent, aupful people can
Speaker 1: be disturbed by their own thoughts. I just you know,
Speaker 1: that's so important to remember, and you know, so just
Speaker 1: to like rush through. I just some of those fun
Speaker 1: things about her life. You know, at one point she says,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm going to give up this, you know, studying,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna be um a singer, and she travels
Speaker 1: to Europe with her friend Elizabeth Coleman, and and then
Speaker 1: for her it was like, well, I'm going to teach
Speaker 1: singing lessons as well, and there's the science of singing.
Speaker 1: And you know, she didn't end up making it as
Speaker 1: a singer, really going for it, went back to Australia.
Speaker 1: But I love that notion that everything she did was
Speaker 1: sort of just still creeping along towards the becoming a
Speaker 1: writer about anxiety. You know, she knew then how much
Speaker 1: breathing can change the nurse system, and thought, you know,
Speaker 1: i'll help singers with the song is singing as a science,
Speaker 1: and she's right about that. But you know, thinking of
Speaker 1: how many more people she helped than singers is wild.
Speaker 1: I know it is. And also she had another really
Speaker 1: interesting idea that I wish could be developed by somebody.
Speaker 1: She had the side of glimpsing. You know, she would
Speaker 1: say to people, especially people who had depression, which I
Speaker 1: note she called depletion. She saw a depression before anyone
Speaker 1: else did. They would now call it rather more grandiosely
Speaker 1: as a comal depression and anxiety morbidities. You know, she
Speaker 1: just said, look, you know, if you have adrenaline pumping
Speaker 1: along from you for long enough, you're going to get
Speaker 1: depleted and you're going to end up with depression. And
Speaker 1: that makes so much sense to call it depletion, you know.
Speaker 1: But she had this idea of glimpsing, and that is,
Speaker 1: no matter how bad you feel, and you know people
Speaker 1: in certainly in particularly depression, can feel just unspeakable, try
Speaker 1: to glimpse, even if it's only just a few seconds
Speaker 1: a day, try to glimpse another way of good glimpse.
Speaker 1: I've probably forgotten because it's so long ago since I
Speaker 1: wrote about glimpse glimpsing. But the idea was just to
Speaker 1: glimpse something better, glimpse a change. And I think that's
Speaker 1: so powerful because you can in bad times glimpse the
Speaker 1: idea of feeling different or better times, and that little
Speaker 1: thing is changing. That gives your body a little shot
Speaker 1: of something else other than just adrenaline and misery. And
Speaker 1: is it has a retraining purpose in a way. Getting
Speaker 1: back to this idea of retraining your responses, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back a few things, just really quick. About her,
Speaker 1: you know, she she had her own chemical imbalance theory,
Speaker 1: and I I'm sure she'd been happy to know that
Speaker 1: I agree with her. But that nervous illness comes first
Speaker 1: and the chemical imbalance in our brain follows. So if
Speaker 1: you fix again, it's the same thing, to fix the
Speaker 1: nervous illness, and the chemical imbalance will right itself. It's
Speaker 1: not like, oh, people with anxiety, they were born with
Speaker 1: this chemical imbalance. I mean, you know, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: if you're fretting and anxious and then you're depleted, which
Speaker 1: can make you depressed, it will mess up the serotonin
Speaker 1: in the dopamine in your brain. But if you fix
Speaker 1: all that, then it comes back. It's not inherently like
Speaker 1: you didn't have these chemicals when you were born, because again,
Speaker 1: we can't test that so well. It is. It's so
Speaker 1: simple in a way, isn't it too? You are a
Speaker 1: mind and of body. You can't separate them. So she
Speaker 1: met this Marcel, and you know, they ended up being engaged,
Speaker 1: and then she had to make this decision, which was
Speaker 1: she decided she loved medicine more than the idea of marriage,
Speaker 1: and she broke off the engagement chose medicine. He ended
Speaker 1: up marrying a really good friend of hers. And but
Speaker 1: I find that, you know again, environment, not just her
Speaker 1: home environment or what was directly next to her, but
Speaker 1: the world as her environment informed so much of her
Speaker 1: understanding of anxiety. And I love how much for her
Speaker 1: gender played into it that. You know again, people were
Speaker 1: talking about a gor phobia, and she didn't embrace that
Speaker 1: word as you as you talk told us in the book, um,
Speaker 1: because it's you know, agoraphobia to her was not a
Speaker 1: fear of leaving the house or wide open species. It's
Speaker 1: people who are afraid of what's inside themselves and we're
Speaker 1: going to panic. When I can just interrupt there a
Speaker 1: little bit, what just to say that it is interesting.
Speaker 1: She did write a book called Agraphobia, and I've forgotten
Speaker 1: had a long enough, but that was the publishers. Agrophobia
Speaker 1: had become very trendy as a concept. And look, she
Speaker 1: did she didn't know people suffered from something called agrophobia,
Speaker 1: but she saw anxiety. She didn't she didn't chop it
Speaker 1: up into different disorders like as as other general anxiety disorder.
Speaker 1: And you know, she treated O c D. She treated
Speaker 1: a lot of these things. She they were, they manifested
Speaker 1: themselves differently, but she saw the commonality in them rather
Speaker 1: than the differences in them. And she was very unified
Speaker 1: in her theory. And I think that's where it is
Speaker 1: coming back to a bit in thinking instead of chopping
Speaker 1: everything up, seeing what's common about them as well as
Speaker 1: what's different. I knew it's it in the book that
Speaker 1: you know, back when she was doing this work, Um,
Speaker 1: the D s M had not there was no anxiety,
Speaker 1: panic attack, agoraphobia. Yet there weren't twenty seven different ways
Speaker 1: you said of slicing anxiety there was no words for it.
Speaker 1: And what's been an interesting journey for me hosting this podcast,
Speaker 1: as I was very insistent for a while on you know,
Speaker 1: let's name it so that we can do something about it.
Speaker 1: But again I think I'm back in the clear weeks
Speaker 1: thing where it's like, that's fine if you know, there's
Speaker 1: no shame, so we can name. But it's the nervous system,
Speaker 1: so it doesn't matter if you are agoraphobic or um
Speaker 1: social anxious. It's all the same solution. Dal And called it.
Speaker 1: There are good things about species and good things about lumpers.
Speaker 1: In other words, some people spit everything down and find
Speaker 1: special things about individual areas and other people have coherent
Speaker 1: lumping ideas where they like to see the big picture.
Speaker 1: And there role for both. But let's face it, it's
Speaker 1: it's very important to find the commonality in a lot
Speaker 1: of these conditions that I think, you well, let's at
Speaker 1: certainly not so much important as it's possibly more useful
Speaker 1: to see what's common to them than treat you know
Speaker 1: them all is being distinctly different problems. It's like talking
Speaker 1: about people with all these disorders when at at heart
Speaker 1: they're very anxious, and that anxiety is a very human thing,
Speaker 1: and they've and they've learned bad patterns and they've come to,
Speaker 1: as she would say, they've become tricked by their nerves.
Speaker 1: And if you do that, if you once you become
Speaker 1: tricked by your nerves, you will perpetuate this really disturbing
Speaker 1: process in your mind and your body. And it's not
Speaker 1: because you have some special inadequacy or badness or whatever
Speaker 1: that is causing this. It's just a very human, very
Speaker 1: human problem. And and and it's a it can be
Speaker 1: understood and it can be treated. What I love about
Speaker 1: what you said about what was a gooraphobia, but really
Speaker 1: just this nervous system issue is she did think more
Speaker 1: women suffered it from it, but she said it's a
Speaker 1: cultural problem, not a gender problem. So to her, it
Speaker 1: was like a woman's life at home lends itself to
Speaker 1: this anxiety orgoraphobia, but a nervously ill man can have
Speaker 1: the same symptoms, but he's got a different life. And
Speaker 1: she was saying, you know, city bound executive didn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then but the wife might be home because societally
Speaker 1: she's just stuck. This is where she's told she has
Speaker 1: to be. And then you know, then the men go
Speaker 1: out drinking to cure their nerves and they come home angry.
Speaker 1: And now there's a way. So there is so much
Speaker 1: environmental um that is, you know, different now. And uh
Speaker 1: I thought that was fascinating that there was a gender
Speaker 1: component to it. And she really hated housework and she did,
Speaker 1: she did absolutely, and she was spoilder in her life
Speaker 1: because she lived with members of her family and she
Speaker 1: had her partner, Beth Coleman the Penis. They all thought
Speaker 1: she was a genius and everyone did all that. Everyone
Speaker 1: else did all the housework Claire Claire hated it, but
Speaker 1: she see, she also saw all those practically. The book
Speaker 1: was not only sort of medically and scientifically ahead of
Speaker 1: its time, but it was also sort of hugely practical
Speaker 1: in the suggestions it made for people. Because she had
Speaker 1: this idea of occupation. And she'd say, look, if you
Speaker 1: don't like housework, you do do anything. It finds something
Speaker 1: else to do that you like. It could be in
Speaker 1: those days that women didn't have many choices, but you
Speaker 1: could do anything. And she used to say, just look,
Speaker 1: you know, just paint the door red, but but get
Speaker 1: off that bed and and and be occupied. She saw
Speaker 1: a real value in inoccupation that lying inert on the
Speaker 1: bed was just not the way to go. And that's
Speaker 1: why she didn't see the idea of relaxation as hugely
Speaker 1: useful as a concept in itself, because you had to
Speaker 1: pass through you have to move forward with the panic.
Speaker 1: If you see what I mean, it's like if you're
Speaker 1: fighting it or trying to relax, trying to relax is
Speaker 1: so unrelaxing um acceptance is not easy, but that's the
Speaker 1: way to go rather than trying to relax, and her
Speaker 1: telling a housewave, you know, do something, do anything else.
Speaker 1: I really feel like that tight in with her theory
Speaker 1: that a lot of people with that kind of anxiety
Speaker 1: did have self esteem problems. And so if you do
Speaker 1: something that you go, oh, I can't look at what
Speaker 1: I did, it increases your self esteem even if you
Speaker 1: get over your you know, you pass through your panic
Speaker 1: once that you can actually have that and say, oh,
Speaker 1: I overcame that. You know, it was she was like
Speaker 1: teaching people to build to build up, build up. That's
Speaker 1: what build up this by building up good habits of
Speaker 1: living too. She was quite funny about parenting as well.
Speaker 1: It didn't make me laugh. She would say, you know,
Speaker 1: and when when Christmas is coming, and she said children
Speaker 1: are raised to be too, you know, she said, the
Speaker 1: way you raised is important, she said, instead of saying,
Speaker 1: you know, Christmas is going to be here in a
Speaker 1: few days in sand will be turning lots of presentship,
Speaker 1: so just say it's rather amusing. You know, there's another
Speaker 1: ten days before Christmas, so that gives you lots of
Speaker 1: time to go and do other useful things. She was
Speaker 1: rather pious about all of that, but you could see
Speaker 1: what she was getting at, which was, you know, you
Speaker 1: just don't sort of unnecessarily have to rev everybody up
Speaker 1: because interestingly, and I don't know about you, Jim, but
Speaker 1: I think the other side to um, fear and anxiety
Speaker 1: is joy and responsiveness. I mean, you know, people's people.
Speaker 1: She used to say, I feel sorry for the person
Speaker 1: who has never had anxiety because they've never experienced the
Speaker 1: highs as well. You know, in that sense, she's identifying
Speaker 1: in a non pathological way, the slightly bipolar quality of
Speaker 1: the anxious state, which is it's capable of great joys
Speaker 1: and great responsiveness as well. Yeah, she was saying, you know,
Speaker 1: anxious people feel music more deeply and yeah, she feels
Speaker 1: bad for people that don't let and I think I
Speaker 1: would agree with that. So basically, you know, she goes
Speaker 1: out through all through these career changes, goes back to school,
Speaker 1: becomes a doctor, I mean just you know, a doctor
Speaker 1: seeing patients. And this is where right before she writes
Speaker 1: her book. For years, she starts noticing in her patients
Speaker 1: that they have nervous illnesses a k A. Anxiety, and
Speaker 1: she's she's letting them come to her house, call her,
Speaker 1: she goes to their how she spends hours with them.
Speaker 1: I think a couple of patients moved in. I mean,
Speaker 1: she must have been seen as such an eccentric and
Speaker 1: but it was because she studied, as you wrote in
Speaker 1: your book, she because she got to study these people
Speaker 1: for hours and look at all their different symptoms and
Speaker 1: find the common ground. Then she writes that first book,
Speaker 1: Hope and Help for Your Nerves, which you know was
Speaker 1: this best seller and then it became an international bestseller
Speaker 1: years later. It seemed like she had this I mean
Speaker 1: what she wrote the book in her sixties, so through
Speaker 1: her eighties she keeps it's almost like that it comes
Speaker 1: in waves. Right, She goes back to Australia for a
Speaker 1: little while. Then oh, the Make Douglas Show and Jack
Speaker 1: you know, Dick Cabot and Obviouslydden, all these like lite
Speaker 1: nat shows in America. One her on and she goes
Speaker 1: to American and she goes to the BBC. Robert DuPont
Speaker 1: told me that when he visited the White Plants Hospital
Speaker 1: in York where they had the first phobia clinic, he
Speaker 1: said that the queue of people around the block with
Speaker 1: their dog eared copies of her book lining up to
Speaker 1: thank her for saving their lives. And everyone, you know,
Speaker 1: should go on television programs. And I've seen quotes from
Speaker 1: producers who said they crashed the switchboard afterwards. The BBC
Speaker 1: had her on the mail. The post office couldn't handle
Speaker 1: the mail afterwards. You know, people felt seen, you know,
Speaker 1: to use her terrible cliche, seen and understood, you know,
Speaker 1: by this woman in a way that they just had
Speaker 1: never before. And it's remarkable because you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot is made of firsthand contact, but she was doing
Speaker 1: this through a book. You know, this is a book
Speaker 1: that was was giving bringing such huge relief and and
Speaker 1: and and literally I mean I was contacted the other
Speaker 1: day but recently by an American writer who's written a
Speaker 1: number of books on Hollywood, and he's writing his own memoirs,
Speaker 1: and he's devoting an entire chapter of his book to
Speaker 1: clear wakes. She saved my life, I said, you and
Speaker 1: everybody else says that. I want to read a quote
Speaker 1: from her that you put in your book. So this
Speaker 1: doctor DuPont, who started the you know, he's the founder
Speaker 1: of the it's the a A. I'm going to forget
Speaker 1: the American Associated franxiety and depression as the founder of that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: She So he was talking to her about panic and
Speaker 1: she mentioned, you know, that she did have occasional attacks
Speaker 1: of panic at night. And he expressed his sympathy, and
Speaker 1: she just went off and she said, quote, my boy,
Speaker 1: you may be good with drug problems, but you have
Speaker 1: no talent for the treatment of anxiety. What you call
Speaker 1: a panic attack is nothing but a few chemicals temporarily
Speaker 1: out of place in my brain. It means nothing to me.
Speaker 1: So your sympathy shows you don't understand the problem or
Speaker 1: the salute. Thus, I do not want or need your sympathy.
Speaker 1: It does not bother me. It is unimportant. She was
Speaker 1: so sassy, But I love that. That's why it's great
Speaker 1: and you can get a very clear picture that you know,
Speaker 1: and if you've ever had panic and you've worked woken
Speaker 1: up in a shock and you're invaded by that unexpected
Speaker 1: panic attack in the night, that if you could just
Speaker 1: go on, that's that's that thing again. That's different from going,
Speaker 1: oh my god, what's this? This is never gonna end.
Speaker 1: I'm never going to get to sleep again. You know,
Speaker 1: you can see what she's getting at with that statement, right,
Speaker 1: And she's trying to say, you know, I don't treat
Speaker 1: those thoughts as important. That's how I recovered, and so
Speaker 1: I can't be so precious about it, like, yes, I suffer,
Speaker 1: you know. Um. And lastly, I would just love this. Um.
Speaker 1: She was, you know, your book starts out and this
Speaker 1: really great, almost like a movie would open. You know.
Speaker 1: It's it's the later in her life and she's speaking
Speaker 1: at this con with all these psychiatrists and people are
Speaker 1: just you know, not taking her seriously because she was
Speaker 1: thought of her self, I thought of as a self
Speaker 1: help writer. And it wasn't until her third book that
Speaker 1: finally people started to show her some respect. But I mean,
Speaker 1: none of these people I feel I could do what
Speaker 1: she did. I mean the fact that Freud was can't
Speaker 1: you know, like the big thing when she started out.
Speaker 1: But slowly people realize that really nothing he said about
Speaker 1: you want I stuck with your mom is going to
Speaker 1: help anyone with their anxiety. You know, she crucial, She crucially,
Speaker 1: which is a fascinating He he never treated the soldiers
Speaker 1: and World War too unlack a lot of his colleagues.
Speaker 1: He stuck with um. He stuck with his private clients.
Speaker 1: Um in I think I don't help much of this.
Speaker 1: I think was Vienna. But but I know he stuck
Speaker 1: with his private And but the people who treated the soldiers,
Speaker 1: they appreciated that fear was at the basis of the disturbance,
Speaker 1: not the fact that they had an neidable complex or
Speaker 1: some sexual And and and her teacher in the university
Speaker 1: college and who taught her about the nervous system. Again,
Speaker 1: her life all feeds towards her understanding. Graph Nellett Smith,
Speaker 1: who did treat soldiers in World War One, he couldn't
Speaker 1: stand Freud, and he said, he said, he said, he
Speaker 1: thought it was thinly veiled pornography. He's described him as
Speaker 1: a sexologist, and he just dismissed him. And he saw
Speaker 1: fear as being at the heart and he wrote a
Speaker 1: little pamphlet on that, which I'm sure she read. And
Speaker 1: she saw fear as at the basis of so much
Speaker 1: nervous illness. I mean not, she just didn't have much time.
Speaker 1: And look, you know, yes, she wasn't dismissing that childhood
Speaker 1: influences could play a role, but they were past now
Speaker 1: we had to deal with the here enough. But I
Speaker 1: think it was her identification fear rather than sex, that was,
Speaker 1: you know, profoundly important. I was just thinking about do
Speaker 1: you have any opinions on the term. You know, there's
Speaker 1: others it's may right now as mental health and here
Speaker 1: in this month, and people will say things like, let's
Speaker 1: normalize taking care of our mental health. And I think
Speaker 1: we're never going to get anywhere if we keep using
Speaker 1: the word mental because I feel like it's already a
Speaker 1: quote bad word. It's already thought of as an adjective,
Speaker 1: not a noun. I mean, wouldn't it be um an
Speaker 1: homage to clear weeks to call it our brain health
Speaker 1: or nervous system health or something. I'm absolutely with you, Jena.
Speaker 1: You know, I often ponder these ideas and about how
Speaker 1: even I can understand them. I feel really discomfited by
Speaker 1: a lot of I don't like all that stuff about
Speaker 1: mental health and mental illness. I mean when I said,
Speaker 1: don't mean it's don't get me wrong. Obviously I feel
Speaker 1: people need help. But again, it's like a notion about
Speaker 1: hygiene or good personal hygiene. It's it's good mental, last
Speaker 1: person's mental. I'll reach for the same words. But as
Speaker 1: you said, I think it was better to call it
Speaker 1: understanding your nervous system is a better way of joining
Speaker 1: us in our humanity. Not in a way just to
Speaker 1: make people feel better for the sake of it, but
Speaker 1: just that it's really important to see us all on
Speaker 1: a normal spectrum. I mean, that's not to say there
Speaker 1: aren't Maybe she wasn't dealing with psychosis of certain I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm not suggesting there aren't those terrible people don't have
Speaker 1: particular and terrible area that I don't know anything about.
Speaker 1: But it's not it's not manic depression, it's not as
Speaker 1: part and we're just talking about like obesic anxiety. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I haven't got a name gen. We'll have to know
Speaker 1: and we'll have to p one up. But I like,
Speaker 1: for now green, how they're nervous system. I think it's
Speaker 1: about that nervous system, because it is, it's in our
Speaker 1: body and our mind. And and let's get some and
Speaker 1: let's get that into the language of into schools explaining
Speaker 1: things about the mind and the body in a very
Speaker 1: simple way to kids, so that you know, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing could be taught, as I always used to think,
Speaker 1: you know, along with things like physical health. You know,
Speaker 1: you could just explain the base us of anxiety to
Speaker 1: children in a simple way that when they think they're
Speaker 1: feeling very different from other kids, you could start off.
Speaker 1: I just feel we need a very fresh approach to
Speaker 1: a practical approach to how you deal with these issues,
Speaker 1: rather than taking people into dark, individual complicated spaces that
Speaker 1: you know, maybe that's necessary for particular in particular cases,
Speaker 1: people have their own special difficulties, but we all have
Speaker 1: a commonality, and let's deal with that bit in an open,
Speaker 1: frank way rather than everyone um and then from that
Speaker 1: point people can go down whatever path they choose, but
Speaker 1: they've got a steadier foundation. I feel like that foundation
Speaker 1: is not there, as you say, it's treated as mental
Speaker 1: illness or a disorder or something like that. Whereas it
Speaker 1: just should be part of what we all understand about life.
Speaker 1: I agree. Thank you so much for coming onto my show.
Speaker 1: I just want to thank you to Jen that I've
Speaker 1: listened to your podcast. They're fantastic, they feel a real
Speaker 1: I feel. I listened to a lot of people. I'm
Speaker 1: in past part of writing the book, I've listened to
Speaker 1: lots and lots of different um speakers, and I really
Speaker 1: enjoy the way in which you bring in experts, but
Speaker 1: you are able to so intelligently communicate the issues to
Speaker 1: people in a really useful, practical way. That's rare and
Speaker 1: really helpful. I think, so thank you so much for
Speaker 1: having me. It was a pleasure and clear weeks. Wherever
Speaker 1: she is, can you hear us talking about her? I
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed my chat with Judith as much as
Speaker 1: I did. It was so wonderful And I miss Australia
Speaker 1: so much. If I have any listeners there, I haven't
Speaker 1: been to your beautiful, beautiful country in I think four years,
Speaker 1: and for someone used to go every year, it's so
Speaker 1: it makes me so sad um. But with my work
Speaker 1: schedules and everything, I don't know when I'm getting back there.
Speaker 1: But big hugs, big hugs for me anyway. So here
Speaker 1: are the takeaways for this episode about the life of
Speaker 1: doctor Claire Weeks. Dr Clear Weeks was the first person
Speaker 1: to treat people and write self help books about what
Speaker 1: we now know as agoraphobia, panic attacks, and anxiety. Doctor
Speaker 1: Weeks experienced panic attacks, which is why she was so
Speaker 1: successful at treating others with the same symptoms she had
Speaker 1: been there herself. Her books were so popular because she
Speaker 1: wrote as though she were talking to you directly from
Speaker 1: a place of understanding. Her first book is titled Hope
Speaker 1: and Help for Your Nerves. It's been translated in many
Speaker 1: languages and the title changes depending on what country it's
Speaker 1: being sold in. One version of this book was also
Speaker 1: known as passed through Panic. Cleare Weeks was aiming for
Speaker 1: a Rockefeller Fellowship to further her scientific studies of biology
Speaker 1: and evolution in England when she had a botched surgery
Speaker 1: for sore throat and was told that she had the
Speaker 1: highly contagious tuberculosis and was sent to live in a
Speaker 1: santatorium for six months by herself. When she got out,
Speaker 1: she began experiencing panic attacks on a rapid heart rate
Speaker 1: that she did not know was anxiety. She thought that
Speaker 1: she had a deadly heart condition. It was doctor weeks
Speaker 1: study as a biologist of reptiles and how they lay
Speaker 1: eggs that led her to understanding the environment affected their evolution,
Speaker 1: and that would later inform her hypothesis that an anxious
Speaker 1: person's immediate environment, more than generics generics genetics, determined their
Speaker 1: level of anxiety, or if they experienced symptoms of anxiety
Speaker 1: at all. When Dr Claire Weeks was on a study
Speaker 1: tour up in the Barrington Tops Mountains outside of Sydney,
Speaker 1: Australia in the nineteen twenties, she met a geologist named
Speaker 1: Dr Marcel A. Russo. He was a World War One veteran,
Speaker 1: and years later she ran into this old friend of
Speaker 1: hers again in London, and she was so anxious she
Speaker 1: was on the verge of a collapse. She told Marcel
Speaker 1: of her heart palpitations and her nameless dread. Marcel told
Speaker 1: her that soldiers felt that way in war, and he
Speaker 1: introduced her of the concept of floating past the moment. Claire,
Speaker 1: after talking to Marcel, realized that she had just been
Speaker 1: frightening herself with the thoughts she was thinking about her
Speaker 1: heart palpitations, which caused further symptoms. Claire changed her outlook
Speaker 1: on her heart palpitations and would go to bed and
Speaker 1: say to herself, I'll allow my heart to palpitate if necessary,
Speaker 1: and once she stopped engaging with her symptoms, it all
Speaker 1: cleared up. She described it as all of this time,
Speaker 1: her quote, fear had been bluffing her. Doctor Claire Weeks
Speaker 1: also recommends trying to make a panic attack worse during
Speaker 1: the midst of one. And my edit note here is
Speaker 1: because usually that stops it from getting worse. Doctor Claire
Speaker 1: Weeks used to say about her methods to float through
Speaker 1: panic attacks, I don't have a doctor Weeks method. I'm
Speaker 1: using nature's way. Her books simply explained the nervous system.
Speaker 1: Doctor Weeks said that acceptance of a panic attack is
Speaker 1: not enduring or putting up with one, but walking towards
Speaker 1: the fear. Let it burn through you. That's the path
Speaker 1: through to the end of panic. It gives the body
Speaker 1: the chance to stop pumping adrenaline. Trying to stop a
Speaker 1: panic attack just re adrenalizes yourself. Doctor Clare Week's timeline
Speaker 1: of handling a panic attack is to face except float,
Speaker 1: let time pass don't try to stop the panic attack.
Speaker 1: This is simple to do, but not easy because many
Speaker 1: people have a hard time telling their body to stop
Speaker 1: fighting because it can feel like you're giving into dying.
Speaker 1: Unlike lizards who can go into fight or flight when
Speaker 1: they're in fear, humans can stop and reflect. Claire says
Speaker 1: that we have the first fear, the exposure to the
Speaker 1: feelings of fear, even if they're out of the blue,
Speaker 1: and then the second fear, and that's thoughts that we
Speaker 1: think that end up scaring us in response to the
Speaker 1: panic attack, and now our anxiety becomes a out the
Speaker 1: second fear, and that part is preventable. Panic isn't an emotion,
Speaker 1: it's a full body, physical experience. Dr Claire Weeks felt
Speaker 1: that panic attacks were simply people fearing their own bodies.
Speaker 1: She said, you are not ill until you become frightened
Speaker 1: of your own nervous system. The cycle of a panic
Speaker 1: attack is simply fear adrenaline, fear adrenaline on a loop.
Speaker 1: Trying to quote relax during a panic attack isn't the
Speaker 1: way to get through one either. It's the same as fighting.
Speaker 1: The body needs to release to yield. It's similar to
Speaker 1: a Buddhist attitude. Even though Clear Weeks did not have
Speaker 1: any Eastern spiritual influence to Clear Weeks, being cured of
Speaker 1: panic attacks didn't mean that you never had a panic
Speaker 1: attack again, but instead that you didn't fear having one again.
Speaker 1: As always, if you want to read these takeaways, you
Speaker 1: can go to my website Jen Kirkman dot com click
Speaker 1: on Anxiety Bites. They should be eight there. Also, the
Speaker 1: link is in the show notes. The link to everything
Speaker 1: about Judith Horr is in the show notes. The link
Speaker 1: to this book is in the show notes, as well
Speaker 1: as to more information on Dr Claire Winks. And as always,
Speaker 1: leave a five star review on Spotify or Apple podcast
Speaker 1: that really helps more people find the podcast. And I
Speaker 1: will have one last listener email episode I think before
Speaker 1: the end of season one, so please send me an email.
Speaker 1: Anxiety Bites weekly at gmail dot com. You can ask
Speaker 1: any questions or give us any tips that you have
Speaker 1: for handling your anxiety. And don't forget Anxiety Bites, but
Speaker 1: you're in control. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.