Speaker 1: Wind Down with Janet Kramer and iHeartRadio podcast. This week's
Speaker 1: Thursday Therapy, We've got Matt Gutman. He is ABC news
Speaker 1: Chief National correspondent, a multi award winning reporter, and he's
Speaker 1: got a book out called No Time to Panic. How
Speaker 1: I Curb My anxiety and Conquered a lifetime of panic attacks.
Speaker 2: Let's get him on. How are you, Matt good?
Speaker 3: How are you?
Speaker 2: Thank you for coming onto wind Down?
Speaker 3: So excited.
Speaker 1: I'm excited because I have dealt with anxiety since I
Speaker 1: was nineteen years old and I'm forty now, so it's
Speaker 1: been just a journey, and so I love I love
Speaker 1: speaking to people that are open about talking about anxiety
Speaker 1: because just like when I was reading more about you,
Speaker 1: because I know who you are, obviously I've seen you
Speaker 1: on the news and everything that you've done, But you
Speaker 1: don't know what actually someone is going through. You just
Speaker 1: see who they are, you know, and what you might
Speaker 1: think they are.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: So the fact that you even said yourself like that
Speaker 1: you were privately dealing with anxiety for how many years?
Speaker 3: I mean with panic for twenty years? Yeah, anxiety my
Speaker 3: whole life, right, Like I just you know, I'm a
Speaker 3: little bit older than you are, and so maybe there
Speaker 3: was like a half or like quarter generational difference.
Speaker 2: But not by much. What are you forty five forty six?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Okay, But nobody talked about anxiety when I was young,
Speaker 3: Like they talked about depression. That was something that people
Speaker 3: were concerned about, but nobody like I don't remember hearing
Speaker 3: anxiety or maybe that was reserved for like you know,
Speaker 3: just like the most neurotic Jews, like, oh, they have anxiety,
Speaker 3: but nobody talked about it. It's like something that everybody experiences.
Speaker 3: Are many many people do?
Speaker 2: What was for you?
Speaker 1: What was the moment that you had your first that
Speaker 1: you can tie back? Because for me, have you done
Speaker 1: EMDR and stuff too?
Speaker 3: Do you know that's the one thing that I have
Speaker 3: not done. I've done everything I've done, like all the
Speaker 3: cognit to behavioral therapy, every pharmacological thing. I never did
Speaker 3: EMDR and I had a practitioner and I was like, eh,
Speaker 3: but I've heard it's great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it, big advocate for EMDR. But in
Speaker 1: your past, like, can you draw back that moment like
Speaker 1: where you think that anxiety was a coming from and
Speaker 1: then one was the first kind of panic attack?
Speaker 2: That you had.
Speaker 3: I mean, my first real panic attack was I think
Speaker 3: I had meaning while I was like super high achiever
Speaker 3: and put a lot of pressure on myself and like,
Speaker 3: I think my mom did too. So I went to
Speaker 3: a school called Williams College, which is a pretty fancy
Speaker 3: liberal arts college, and my essay to get in was
Speaker 3: about like a tongue in cheek thing about how my
Speaker 3: mom thought I was a prophet, and like, well, do
Speaker 3: you offer classes in being a profit or prophecy at
Speaker 3: Williams Because my mom thinks that I'm a prophet. So
Speaker 3: there was like a lot of press and I love
Speaker 3: my mom.
Speaker 2: It's a lot of pressure, A lot.
Speaker 3: Of pressure like it, but it was like super high cheap.
Speaker 3: I was captain of the football team, captain of the lacrosse,
Speaker 3: school council president, all aps, you know, is super hard charging,
Speaker 3: but I was also a disaster inside. And when I
Speaker 3: was school council president, you have to deliver, you know,
Speaker 3: a daily address to the school in front of the podium,
Speaker 3: and I would have these bouts of what I thought
Speaker 3: were nerves and I get very anxious and I kind
Speaker 3: of have tunnel vision and my mouth would get really dry,
Speaker 3: and these were all symptoms of anxiety or panic, but
Speaker 3: my first like sweating through my underpants. I'm molting into
Speaker 3: a werewolf. Something is taking over my body and I
Speaker 3: don't know what it is type of panic. Was giving
Speaker 3: my or defending my college thesis my senior year, and
Speaker 3: I remember I was wearing a turtleneck sweater, which is
Speaker 3: a really bad idea whenever you're giving an address, do
Speaker 3: not publicly wearing a turtleneck sweater. But I thought it
Speaker 3: looked like very cool lead you, like, you know, academic
Speaker 3: and intellectual, and so I remember going up there and
Speaker 3: sudden they're cats clawing at my neck and their feral
Speaker 3: cat like started itching and like I had tunnel vision,
Speaker 3: and my heart started to feel like it was bursting
Speaker 3: through my chest and I couldn't breathe, and my mouth
Speaker 3: went dry, and I had feelings of like complete loss
Speaker 3: of control. This is like classic panic attack, and I
Speaker 3: had no idea what was happening to me.
Speaker 1: We thought you were probably my first panic attack. I'm like,
Speaker 1: I'm dying. I'm having a heart attack and I'm dying.
Speaker 3: Well, which is super common, right, Like you know, forty
Speaker 3: percent of everybody who goes to the er complaining of
Speaker 3: chest pain in the United States is having a panic attack.
Speaker 3: And fifty eight percent, almost two thirds of all the
Speaker 3: people who checked themselves in where cardiac issues at the
Speaker 3: er are either having panic or anxiety. Wow, that's how
Speaker 3: chronic it is in the US, and that's how or
Speaker 3: diagnosed it is. And most of those people are sent
Speaker 3: packing back home not being told that it was anxiety.
Speaker 3: They're told, Okay, you know, we can tell you, we've
Speaker 3: done the EKGs. You're not having a heart attack. We
Speaker 3: don't exactly know what it is. Only some of them
Speaker 3: are actually told this is anxiety related. You're okay, you
Speaker 3: don't have to come back if those exact symptoms persist,
Speaker 3: if you you know, I don't want to let anybody
Speaker 3: think out there that if they are having a heart
Speaker 3: attack that they should not go to right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, still go to the doctors if you feel, yeah.
Speaker 3: The problem is. And it's like in the intro to
Speaker 3: my book, is that you know I interviewed this woman
Speaker 3: named Kelly croppol Or, who is the a nine to
Speaker 3: one one operator for seventeen years. Jennen. She was like
Speaker 3: she had done everything, she had heard every possible call
Speaker 3: you could imagine, and she was never in her seventeen
Speaker 3: year career, able to discern the difference between someone who
Speaker 3: was having a panic attack given the symptoms, and someone
Speaker 3: who was having a heart attack. To her, it sounded
Speaker 3: the same. It's chest pain, shortness of breath, sweating, trembling, shaking,
Speaker 3: tunnel vision, feelings of impending death. Like all of the
Speaker 3: symptoms are so closely linked. And there's actually a reason
Speaker 3: for that evolutionarily. And I know you just recently did
Speaker 3: a podcast about the good anxiety, right, yeah, and there is,
Speaker 3: like there's really good science behind it, and that is
Speaker 3: your body is trying to let you know that whatever
Speaker 3: behavior you're doing at that time is a threat or
Speaker 3: is scary to it, and so it's trying to tell
Speaker 3: you in the most powerful, possible memorable way not to
Speaker 3: repeat that behavior. So for some people it's not you
Speaker 3: don't always want to listen to that anxiety. It's not
Speaker 3: always the good.
Speaker 2: Anxiety, right exactly.
Speaker 3: You just have to like figure it out. But you know,
Speaker 3: public speaking is something that we have to do in
Speaker 3: our society, so there are ways of getting over it.
Speaker 3: But basically, yeah, a panic is like the evolution tionary
Speaker 3: way your body is trying to tell you to avoid
Speaker 3: a certain behavior and to make it memorable.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had a panic attack when you were
Speaker 1: on air?
Speaker 3: Hundreds of my problem. I just want to tell people
Speaker 3: what a panic attack is, right. So a panic attack
Speaker 3: is your brain telling your body that it is in threat, right,
Speaker 3: and it is essentially the stress response. And it's that
Speaker 3: same thing that you'd feel when you're driving on the
Speaker 3: freeway to downtown Nashville and there's a pile up in
Speaker 3: front of you, and your body just jumps into action
Speaker 3: and you feel like the loosening of your teeth kind
Speaker 3: of you feel that jolt of adrenaline, and you feel
Speaker 3: the bubbling in your stomach. It's the same kind of thing,
Speaker 3: and your body wants you to remember it, and your
Speaker 3: body basically would prefer you having a thousand false alarms,
Speaker 3: which is a panic attack, so long as you don't
Speaker 3: miss the one real alarm, which is the pile up
Speaker 3: on the freeway or the interstate. So your body's kind
Speaker 3: of rig to protect you in that way, even though
Speaker 3: a panic attack is massively uncomfortable. But I didn't know
Speaker 3: any of this at the time. So, like after college,
Speaker 3: and men are really good at this, I compartmentalized panic
Speaker 3: attack talking about my thesis and Jenna like, I know
Speaker 3: a lot of people experience this too, but like that thesis,
Speaker 3: the thesis was graded, the talk was not like it
Speaker 3: wasn't even mandatory. There was nothing riding on my performance,
Speaker 3: and yet I felt that I was inadequate and that
Speaker 3: everything was writing on it, and I put so much
Speaker 3: pressure on myself that I had this panic attack when
Speaker 3: there was nothing riding on it, and so I put
Speaker 3: it away because I'm really good at compartmentalizing stuff, and
Speaker 3: I didn't deal with it. And then I started to
Speaker 3: do print reporting, and I moved to Israel and I
Speaker 3: was covering the Palestinian uprising there in the early two thousands.
Speaker 3: Then I covered the war in he and Afghanistan, and
Speaker 3: I went to Syria and Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. I
Speaker 3: was all over the Middle East covering wars and conflicts,
Speaker 3: and I was okay. And then I started doing ABC
Speaker 3: Radio and I realized that words started to magically disappear
Speaker 3: from the paper I was reading off and my hands
Speaker 3: would tremble, and there was sort of the telltale signs
Speaker 3: of whatever terrible experience I'd had in college and then
Speaker 3: came back to the US, and I realized that I
Speaker 3: was having these bouts of quote unquote nerves more frequently
Speaker 3: when live on air and on television, and over the years,
Speaker 3: I had them hundreds of times, hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: panic attacks on air, and the brutal irony of it
Speaker 3: was that the EPs, the executive producers of the shows
Speaker 3: were like, oh, man, Guvernment really has so much energy
Speaker 3: on air. I love him live, Let's put him on
Speaker 3: live more. Because I was literally like pooping my pants.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm having a full on panic attack, which
Speaker 3: is like a surge of a right on it. So
Speaker 3: I am zinging with energy and lifeblood. But it's massively
Speaker 3: uncomfortable and painful and just it sucked. But it kind
Speaker 3: of like helped me get where I was, ironically and
Speaker 3: where I am today, because it seemed like I was
Speaker 3: just so full of energy, but what was happening was
Speaker 3: we're panic attacks, and that just like it continued until
Speaker 3: January twenty sixth, twenty twenty, when.
Speaker 2: I like, that's when it stopped. In twenty twenty, No,
Speaker 2: that's when I had a reckoning.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, was it because you had more time to or
Speaker 1: was it because everything was falling apart around you and
Speaker 1: the world and everything happening, that you were able to
Speaker 1: kind of look more inside because I think there was
Speaker 1: so much reflection during that time, because it was so
Speaker 1: noisy but yet so quiet in our homes that we
Speaker 1: had to kind of face what was our internal loudness?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I had to face this internal loudness.
Speaker 3: And it was just before the pandemic actually started. And
Speaker 3: you know, I've been all over the world for ABC.
Speaker 3: I've reported now from like sixty countries, forty eight states
Speaker 3: or nine states. I still haven't done North Dakota, but like,
Speaker 3: I've been everywhere, and I've done a lot of things.
Speaker 3: And I was home actually on January twenty sixth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and I got a call from my boss and she's like,
Speaker 3: and I live in Los Angeles in an area called
Speaker 3: Encino and Calabasas, where Kobe Brian's helicopter went down is
Speaker 3: only like ten miles away, and suddenly there is this
Speaker 3: global story happening in my backyard. And the boss is like, hey,
Speaker 3: I need you to get to Calabasas asap. We think
Speaker 3: Kobe Brian's helicopter went down, and we think his daughter
Speaker 3: Gianna and maybe some of the other we're not sure
Speaker 3: who's on there. We've got to get you there a SAP.
Speaker 3: So I jetted out and during our first live special
Speaker 3: report on Kobe's death, I made a critical reporting error.
Speaker 3: And I'd had something very similar happen to me when
Speaker 3: I was twelve and my father was forty one, so
Speaker 3: basically the exact same ages as Kobe and Gianna. My
Speaker 3: father was killed in a plane crash and he was
Speaker 3: exactly it was forty two and three months when it happened,
Speaker 3: and I had just eclipsed his age, and so my
Speaker 3: whole life, Janna, I thought. And I'd lived life with
Speaker 3: like blazing speed. I got married, I had kids, I'd
Speaker 3: been to war, I fallen in love in Argentina, I had,
Speaker 3: you know, jumped from airplanes, swam with sharks, you know,
Speaker 3: been shot at. I'd packed everything that I possibly could
Speaker 3: into the forty two years because I thought, well, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to live past forty two. That's going to
Speaker 3: be a natural terminus of my lifespan. And then once
Speaker 3: it happened, I was like, oh what now, And I
Speaker 3: didn't And that was just before the Kobe crash happened,
Speaker 3: and so I was in this weird like you mentioned
Speaker 3: that that headspace. I was in that weird headspace when
Speaker 3: this happened. And then finally the thing I'd feared most,
Speaker 3: which is losing control while live on television, yeah, and
Speaker 3: making a critical mistake happened and ABC suspended me for
Speaker 3: a month. I had to make a decision with my life,
Speaker 3: like I had been miserable in my job because of
Speaker 3: the panic attacks for years. I told my wife about it,
Speaker 3: and she's like, you know, babe, if this makes you
Speaker 3: so unhappy, we'll downsize. We'll change jobs. Dude, do whatever
Speaker 3: you need to do. She was very supportive, And I've
Speaker 3: been thinking about getting out of TV news because, like,
Speaker 3: it sucked. I hated the experience of having not only
Speaker 3: to experience the panic attack, but anybody who's got anxiety
Speaker 3: out there or experiences panic knows that the anticipatory anxiety
Speaker 3: of having a panic attack is as bad as the
Speaker 3: actual feeling of being in one in the moment. And
Speaker 3: she's like, do what you gotta do. And you know,
Speaker 3: suspension has a way of opening up your schedule. So
Speaker 3: during the month that I had to like twittle my
Speaker 3: films and like beat myself up and not sleep and
Speaker 3: hate myself and feel guilty for the mistake I made
Speaker 3: and any pain I caused this poor family. You know,
Speaker 3: Kobe Bryant's the patron saint of Los Angeles. Like the
Speaker 3: guy was a hero to so many. Aside from being
Speaker 3: a great basketball player, he was like massively philanthropic and
Speaker 3: great for this city and like just a good person
Speaker 3: and so like I was like, okay, what now. So
Speaker 3: I had a buddy who was on the lacrosse team
Speaker 3: in high school who'd now become a yoga instructor and
Speaker 3: breath coach, breathwork coach, and so was like he'd been
Speaker 3: telling me for so long to do breath work, and
Speaker 3: I'm like, oh, I have a bread or what is
Speaker 3: this meditation to voodoo brews?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And then I went and did it because I
Speaker 3: had time. And I was like, you know, sitting in
Speaker 3: this room in Venice, California, which is like the crunchiest
Speaker 3: hippiest place, and what was it called like serenity or
Speaker 3: sanctumy called sanctum like weeked of Petuli, And I'm like whoa.
Speaker 3: I go in there and I lie down on my body.
Speaker 3: Lane Jaffe, who was just a fantastic practitioner and breathwork coach,
Speaker 3: just starts telling us, like gets us in the spirit
Speaker 3: in the head mode, and you know, if people have
Speaker 3: ever done holotropic breath work, it's kind of like this.
Speaker 3: You're breathing in twice belly chest out, and you're doing
Speaker 3: it over and over and over again, and eventually what
Speaker 3: happens is you're going to hyperventilate, and that means you're
Speaker 3: taking in too much oxygen and you need carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: to break down oxygen. So what you're doing is depriving
Speaker 3: your body of oxygen. So the oxygen rich blood goes
Speaker 3: to the center of your body or core, and the
Speaker 3: rest of your body starts to go numb, and so
Speaker 3: people get lobster claws, and like I started locking up
Speaker 3: like this, and my legs locked up, and you go,
Speaker 3: if you keep going into an altered stake and you're
Speaker 3: not taking drugs, you're not on anything other than living
Speaker 3: and changing the pH balance in your body, it's nuts.
Speaker 3: And suddenly, like I'm lying there on the floor with
Speaker 3: a bunch of total strangers and I started sobbing, you know,
Speaker 3: really crying in a way that I hadn't done in many, many,
Speaker 3: many years, probably since my father died, like thirty years
Speaker 3: before that. And I'm crying and crying and Lane comes
Speaker 3: and he holds space like he just presses all my legs.
Speaker 3: It's like, I'm here, but keep going, like he doesn't
Speaker 3: say that, but that's what he's saying. And it was
Speaker 3: an amazing cathartic experience weeping in front of these people,
Speaker 3: and then they were like so massively supportive. And I
Speaker 3: went back and did it again the next week and
Speaker 3: cried again, and it was just wonderful, and I realized that,
Speaker 3: you know, so the panic is a symptom of something
Speaker 3: else that I've got to go find. I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is, but I threw myself in it like
Speaker 3: I would throw myself into any other reporting project or investigation.
Speaker 3: And that's like in my own everybody's got to find
Speaker 3: the modality that works for them. For me, it's like,
Speaker 3: all right, I have an objective. I am an investigative reporter.
Speaker 3: I am going to go report the crap out of
Speaker 3: whatever this thing is that's bothering me. And that's how
Speaker 3: actually actually not how the book started yet, because I
Speaker 3: was just trying to fix me. But this is how
Speaker 3: the journey started. And I know journey is like a
Speaker 3: cliche term at this point, but that's what it was
Speaker 3: for me. It was like three and a half years
Speaker 3: of trying everything other than the MDR to like figure
Speaker 3: this out.
Speaker 1: Sure, in your book, no time to panic. What is
Speaker 1: one of the best tips that you think you've put
Speaker 1: in there for people to help overcome this panic anxiety
Speaker 1: order disorder?
Speaker 3: Listen, I'll put it into a couple of categories. The
Speaker 3: first category is like, and you know everybody is everybody
Speaker 3: is different.
Speaker 2: Sure, what works for one person might not work for
Speaker 2: the other.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I'm not a psychologist, and I don't think
Speaker 3: a psychologist is a perfect fit for every patient. But
Speaker 3: I know what worked for me. I am someone who
Speaker 3: does things in the extremes, right like I have been
Speaker 3: covering conflict in war for twenty four years, right Like
Speaker 3: I am drawn to that place where life is closest
Speaker 3: to death and where people are experiencing often the worst
Speaker 3: days of their lives. For me, the intensity of being
Speaker 3: there and trying to tell their stories is what gets
Speaker 3: me going and what keeps me in this business. And
Speaker 3: I'm drawn to it in the US as well, and
Speaker 3: that's just part of what I do. So for I
Speaker 3: was so good and had become so good an expert
Speaker 3: in fact, in compartmentalizing and saying, Okay, whatever is the
Speaker 3: symptom of this panic or whatever is the underlying disease
Speaker 3: quote unquote of my panic. I'm going to put that
Speaker 3: to the side because I'm really good at that, and
Speaker 3: I couldn't access it even in talk therapy, which I've
Speaker 3: been in for many many years. Couldn't access it with
Speaker 3: just talk therapy. I needed Jennet to get out of
Speaker 3: my right mind in order to access it. So for me,
Speaker 3: psychedelics were very, very helpful because I needed to get
Speaker 3: out of Matt Gutman in order to examine Matt Gutman's
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: I was going to do I was going to try ayahuasca,
Speaker 1: but I'm so I hate not being in control that
Speaker 1: I was like, I just can't do it. I just
Speaker 1: I literally It's why you know, I've been drunk once
Speaker 1: in my life. Like, I don't do drugs. I don't
Speaker 1: like to feel out of control. It's the fear for me,
Speaker 1: it's always my anxiety is like the fear of kind
Speaker 1: of the unknown right, So like I'm afraid the plane
Speaker 1: might crash when I'm on it.
Speaker 2: I'm afraid, you know, I'm going.
Speaker 1: To get stuck in Italy when we go on our honeymoon,
Speaker 1: and it's going to be a disaster. Like I fear
Speaker 1: the unknown coming up. And that's what always kind of
Speaker 1: holds me captive with my anxiety now a days. But
Speaker 1: it's I just for some reason, I couldn't do it.
Speaker 1: And then again, like it says it works for I've
Speaker 1: heard amazing things about psychedelics for that, I just I
Speaker 1: just can't do it.
Speaker 3: I needed to lose control. I understand why you are.
Speaker 3: And worrying is like one of the greatest evolutionary traits
Speaker 3: that primates apes, great apes humans had ever developed, Like
Speaker 3: we learned. The reason you're sitting there with your MacBook
Speaker 3: on your lap and you know, a really nice microphone
Speaker 3: and we're able to communicate two thousand miles away from
Speaker 3: each other is because humans created were worriers. We got
Speaker 3: scared sooner, and we developed technologies to be able to
Speaker 3: make our lives easier or to be able to alleviate
Speaker 3: some of our worries, from fire to the wheel to
Speaker 3: wireless technology to the iPhone, right, Like all of this
Speaker 3: is because humans were trying to alleviate their future concerns.
Speaker 3: So anxiety has been like the greatest invention ever in
Speaker 3: the history of the planet. It just doesn't feel good always, but.
Speaker 2: It's very helpfulful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had to lose control, right the only way
Speaker 3: I could find healing is if I found a way
Speaker 3: to lose control, and if I was essentially conscious or like,
Speaker 3: if I had control over my mind, I wasn't going
Speaker 3: to let go.
Speaker 1: I heard a therapist tell me recently on here actually
Speaker 1: that you should you should do the thing that worries
Speaker 1: you and have your anxiety because then you realize it
Speaker 1: didn't kill you. So she's like, like, I am so
Speaker 1: fearful of being because my mind is triggered from PTSD
Speaker 1: from being trapped when abuser was trying to kill me,
Speaker 1: and so I don't like to feel trapped. So when
Speaker 1: I'm on the expressway and it's I will not go
Speaker 1: on there if it's traffic, because if I feel stuck,
Speaker 1: I will go a full blown panic attack. Like no
Speaker 1: matter if I'm on medication or not or worked on
Speaker 1: it a million times in the MDR, it's just my
Speaker 1: body will just like freak out. And so she's she's like,
Speaker 1: she's like, go do it at five pm rush hour.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I just I don't want to. I literally
Speaker 1: don't want to.
Speaker 2: I would just take the side streets. It's fine.
Speaker 1: But that's how that's how someone had said to do that.
Speaker 1: But I'm like, I don't want to feel it, you know,
Speaker 1: I know I'll be fine. That's the thing at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, Like now I know, Okay, it's
Speaker 1: just anxiety. I will be fine, Like I'm not gonna die.
Speaker 3: Have you done cognitive behavioral therapy, I mean that's what
Speaker 3: it sounds like she was advising as a form of that.
Speaker 1: But I've done I've done versions of it. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: I've done and where you know, I would talk through it,
Speaker 1: have the anxiety. But she was saying, like, physically, go
Speaker 1: do it, like get in the car, get in a
Speaker 1: jam packed freeway.
Speaker 2: And I was like them, good.
Speaker 3: So, typically, you know, exposure therapy, cognitive behavior of therapy
Speaker 3: CBT is a little bit more gradual, like most therapists
Speaker 3: are not going to throw you into the pit of
Speaker 3: the thing that you fear most immediately. They would say, okay,
Speaker 3: is there a side street that typically has worse traffic.
Speaker 3: You know that, like the lights back up and you
Speaker 3: get a little bit slower. Try that first, then go
Speaker 3: don't go into like the peak of rush hour. Try
Speaker 3: three pm or seven pm, and then work up to
Speaker 3: the five pm rush hour like gridlock. The other issue
Speaker 3: I have with CBT is that I think it's kind
Speaker 3: of male centric, and it tells us the basic premise
Speaker 3: is that the thing you fear is unreasonable. The problem
Speaker 3: with that is the thing you fear, Janna and the
Speaker 3: thing that I feared were not only reasonable, they happened.
Speaker 3: You were trapped by a person who has tried to
Speaker 3: kill you, Like you've experienced your biggest fear, and so
Speaker 3: you're cognitively certain, well, that thing can happen. I can
Speaker 3: become trapped, and I have been trapped. So to brain
Speaker 3: out of it, to tell your brain that it's unreasonable
Speaker 3: to fear that thing is crazy, and same with you.
Speaker 3: Like I feared losing control on air, and then I
Speaker 3: lost control on air and I said something that was
Speaker 3: wrong and badly wrong and may have hurt people and
Speaker 3: certainly hurt my career for a period of time. But
Speaker 3: like my worst fear about panic actually happened, which is
Speaker 3: why I felt like, Okay, this is a big deal.
Speaker 3: I need to treat it as if it's a big deal,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to do everything that I need to
Speaker 3: do and I'm going to throw put my head through
Speaker 3: the wall to get there. That was just like the
Speaker 3: mental contortion that I had to get to in order
Speaker 3: to work towards healing. But again, like different modalities work
Speaker 3: for different people.
Speaker 1: Sure, what is the biggest takeaway that you want for
Speaker 1: people when they read this book?
Speaker 3: Okay, So like, first of all, it's knowing what panic is,
Speaker 3: which super helped me, you know, and no Time to Panic.
Speaker 3: That the title is sort of like you know, has
Speaker 3: double meaning. One is like I got time to panic,
Speaker 3: Like I got to live life, my work, I want
Speaker 3: to be with my kids, want I don't want to
Speaker 3: be riddled with anticipatory anxiety. And the other part was
Speaker 3: like this is not the time to panic, Like I
Speaker 3: do not want to be panicking now. And so I
Speaker 3: learned a couple of things. First, I went into this
Speaker 3: crazy jag on evolutionary psychology, like I couldn't understand why
Speaker 3: it was the humans panic to begin with, Like how
Speaker 3: could this be evolutionarily beneficial. Right. The bottom line is
Speaker 3: that your brain doesn't care if you suffer or not.
Speaker 3: It wants you to live. And the founder of evolutionary psychiatry,
Speaker 3: Randy NeSSI, was like, no, panic is one hundred percent normal.
Speaker 3: Your body would prefer you having one thousand panic attacks
Speaker 3: as long as you don't miss an actual stress response,
Speaker 3: right that pile up on the freeway. So you don't
Speaker 3: miss the pile up on the freeway and you're alive.
Speaker 3: Your body doesn't care, So a panic is normal. It's okay.
Speaker 3: You're not like some weird kink in the human genome
Speaker 3: if you have panic attacks. Because I thought I was two.
Speaker 3: The period of panic is fifteen to ninety seconds, and
Speaker 3: that interesting, the period in which your brain is assessing
Speaker 3: a threat fifteen to ninety seconds, and after that you're
Speaker 3: still feeling something, and that's cortisol finishing its work through
Speaker 3: your system, and a drenalones already passed through. You're feeling
Speaker 3: anxiety after that, and all of us can deal with anxiety.
Speaker 3: We deal with it on a regular basis. So I
Speaker 3: tell people like, just know, you can get anybody can
Speaker 3: get through fifteen to ninety seconds, Like we can get
Speaker 3: through that, and the rest is anxiety. That's cake, right,
Speaker 3: Like we all live with anxiety. So if you can
Speaker 3: get through the fifteen to ninety seconds, that's all the
Speaker 3: actual panic is. The next thing is there are ways
Speaker 3: to try to prevent having a panic in the first place,
Speaker 3: like forget dealing with it acutely. When you're in the
Speaker 3: midst of a panic, everybody wants the new pharmacological trick,
Speaker 3: or tell me what kind of psychedelic I need to take,
Speaker 3: or what's the feenine or whatever additive that I need
Speaker 3: to put in my coffee that'll make me better. The
Speaker 3: trick is like, be kind to your body, right, don't
Speaker 3: drink that extra cup of coffee before you have a presentation.
Speaker 3: Coffee will give you like if you have too much caffeine,
Speaker 3: it will help trigger a panic attack. Get your exercise,
Speaker 3: eat right, take a walk, breathe air, like all the
Speaker 3: stuff we know that we should be doing. That is
Speaker 3: kind of kinder and gentler to our body. We should
Speaker 3: be doing and reduces the incidence of panic and anxiety.
Speaker 3: That's science. We have all the chemicals we need, and
Speaker 3: you're talking to a guy who has tried every psychedelic chemicals.
Speaker 3: But I have all the chemicals that I need in
Speaker 3: my own body in order to adjust myself right. I
Speaker 3: take a five minute walk and I get a dose
Speaker 3: of serotonin, which is what I would take when I
Speaker 3: did seventeen years or eighteen years of taking an SSRI,
Speaker 3: an antidepressant. Ste Like, you have that in your body
Speaker 3: and you can secrete it when or you can get
Speaker 3: it going with the hormone going in your body. When
Speaker 3: you take a five minute while sunshine, you get endorphins,
Speaker 3: which is indogenous morphine, the morphine your body creates naturally
Speaker 3: by going for a run or exercising hard for thirty minutes.
Speaker 3: You get oxytocin by crying, by letting yourself cry, which
Speaker 3: is not a terrible thing, or by hugging a loved
Speaker 3: one chest to chest, like when you actually nuts, you know,
Speaker 3: the guy hug.
Speaker 1: It's like me and my fiance we have we do
Speaker 1: as was it a five six second kiss and a
Speaker 1: like a fifteen second hug, Like that's what they say
Speaker 1: it gives you. It does, Yeah, it makes your brain waves.
Speaker 2: All My wife and.
Speaker 3: I have a thing. Whether they're like you know, like
Speaker 3: there's like the the fifty percent hug and then the
Speaker 3: seventy five percent, hug in the eighty five and then
Speaker 3: like sometimes you need one hundred percent, which is like,
Speaker 3: just like you said, the fifteen seconds of fully embracing,
Speaker 3: not like the pad, but like in each other. And
Speaker 3: that's the science of it. You're releasing oxytocin, which is
Speaker 3: the bonding hormone, and if feels are really good and
Speaker 3: it helps, okay, And once you're if you're in a
Speaker 3: panic attack, there are a couple of mindfulness techniques that
Speaker 3: that I like or if I feel it coming on. Uh,
Speaker 3: And luckily I've been pretty panic free for a few
Speaker 3: years now since doing the book. But what I like
Speaker 3: and I do anyway, is a five senses routine.
Speaker 2: Love that one?
Speaker 3: You know that one?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was like one thing I noticed in the room
Speaker 1: right now that I don't notice? What do I smell?
Speaker 1: What do I hear? What do I taste? What was
Speaker 1: the other one?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: So I do five things that I see, and I
Speaker 3: pick things that are like like you kind of did,
Speaker 3: either vibrant or things I might not notice. So I'm
Speaker 3: looking around and you can the good thing about this
Speaker 3: is that nobody has to know you're doing a mindfulness technique.
Speaker 3: It's not like you're tapping yourself weirdly that people do.
Speaker 3: It's not weird, but yeah, you think or you know,
Speaker 3: I do a beaded meditation thing where I I have
Speaker 3: a string and I go down beats and I do
Speaker 3: it my imagination. But you can do this one like
Speaker 3: and people are thinking you're completely with them, just standing.
Speaker 3: So five things you see, four things you hear, and
Speaker 3: you have to isolate the sounds around you, which is
Speaker 3: fantastic because it really takes your mind off of panic.
Speaker 3: And the beauty is your brain's just not that great
Speaker 3: at focusing on multiple things at once, so when you
Speaker 3: start finding and isolating sounds, that's when the symptoms of
Speaker 3: panic start to abate because your brain just can't cut it.
Speaker 3: Three things you feel like, I feel the shoes on
Speaker 3: my feet, I feel my pants on my legs, I
Speaker 3: feel my butt in my seat. Then you can do
Speaker 3: a feel more if you want. Two things you smell,
Speaker 3: which is often hard for me, and one thing you taste,
Speaker 3: and just like you go five, four, three two.
Speaker 2: One, Yeah, no, I love that one. I think it's
Speaker 2: I think it's so good.
Speaker 1: I've done that many times in my room when I
Speaker 1: was alone and I felt I was scared or whatever,
Speaker 1: I would do that one a lot. I also to
Speaker 1: my therapist, she said, uh, when you when you don't
Speaker 1: give it power, Like for me, usually I would hold
Speaker 1: it in and my my best friends wouldn't even know
Speaker 1: that I'm having a panic attack. But she's like start saying, like, hey,
Speaker 1: I'm having a panic attack right now. She's like, you
Speaker 1: give it less power. And that's been something that's been
Speaker 1: helpful because then people can either you know, try to
Speaker 1: be like, oh, like is there anything, just to know
Speaker 1: that like you're not alone in the situation, that someone
Speaker 1: they may not understand what you're going through, but they
Speaker 1: can at least be there for you one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: That is so. And I didn't learn that until twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two. So I'd been dealing with panic for twenty
Speaker 3: two years before I finally admitted to someone in the
Speaker 3: moment and this was like doing an interview. It was
Speaker 3: the first time I've ever had in a panic attack
Speaker 3: just talking to someone, and I just I just come
Speaker 3: from a cognitive behavioral therapist. It's like, just as you said,
Speaker 3: you know, you take you defang it by naming it,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I'm sorry, I just need a second.
Speaker 3: I'm having a panic attack. I've never had this before.
Speaker 3: And then like five seconds later, I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 3: I'm back. Yeah, I'm so powerful.
Speaker 2: Yeah I love that.
Speaker 3: The last full on panic attack I had in May
Speaker 3: of twenty two, so yeah, like that's your one hundred
Speaker 3: percent right, and that is so powerful. I'm kind of curious, like,
Speaker 3: how often do you experience panic?
Speaker 1: I don't as much anymore. Mine now is just more
Speaker 1: of the fear of things like when I go travel
Speaker 1: and when I'm not with my kids. I have more
Speaker 1: anxiety when I travel.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: I just had a third so you know, and older
Speaker 1: and hormones and so I'm trying to level it back out.
Speaker 1: I've been off medicine now for a few years, and
Speaker 1: I was on for nineteen years or something, but I
Speaker 1: was on lexebro Okay, yeah, but I got off of
Speaker 1: it and you know, doing all the tips and tricks,
Speaker 1: and truly was when I got divorced that my anxiety stopped.
Speaker 1: But then now it's come back in just different areas
Speaker 1: of my life. But I've been managing to can just
Speaker 1: control it better and feel I feel pretty good of
Speaker 1: where it's at right now, it's just more of the
Speaker 1: unknown fear stuff. But you know, that's where I just
Speaker 1: go back to him, like, all right, what is the
Speaker 1: worst that can happen? And why even you know, put
Speaker 1: that on such a beautiful memory that will be you know,
Speaker 1: had in a couple months, or you know, like I
Speaker 1: just don't need to do that because the reality is
Speaker 1: it's probably going to be fine. You know, my kids
Speaker 1: will be fine, We will be fine, and it's you know,
Speaker 1: and kind of take it by the day, not by
Speaker 1: the future totally. But I do have one very sidebar
Speaker 1: question then we'll wrap it up because I just and
Speaker 1: you probably hate this question. You don't even have to
Speaker 1: answer it if you don't want. But I've always been
Speaker 1: so interested to ask a news correspondent person what their
Speaker 1: thoughts on the morning show is and how accurate it is,
Speaker 1: Like do you watch it or are you like I
Speaker 1: hate it.
Speaker 3: It's not I've never watched it. Okay, I've heard obviously
Speaker 3: a lot about it, but I've.
Speaker 1: Never sure Okay, just because you're like I don't want
Speaker 1: to see what I live or you just the dramatization
Speaker 1: of it, or.
Speaker 3: This is going to sound really obnoxious. But I just
Speaker 3: don't watch a lot of TV. It's like the cop
Speaker 3: kids go Barefoot. Sure, so we watch very very very
Speaker 3: little TV. And it's like, you know, I've got two kids,
Speaker 3: I've got this insane job with weird hours, and so
Speaker 3: like I put the kids to sleep and often I like,
Speaker 3: I read a page of a book and I'm out,
Speaker 3: I'm boring. So it's okay, it's like it anyway. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so I watch it. But yeah, but okay, I think
Speaker 3: there is I mean, having heard a lot about it,
Speaker 3: you know, there are certain elements that are true. There
Speaker 3: are certain elements that are are not, that are dramatized,
Speaker 3: and sure there's a lot of drama.
Speaker 2: It is a lot of drama.
Speaker 3: People people have drama exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, Matt, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 1: Everyone go get no time to panic. How I curb
Speaker 1: my anxiety and congret a lifetime of panic attacks, Matt,
Speaker 1: thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Was fun.