Latest / Bye Bye Panic / “I’ve been anxious for so long I literally don’t know how to live”

Transcript

“I’ve been anxious for so long I literally don’t know how to live” · Bye Bye Panic

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had so much anxiety in my body that it felt like my nervous system was on fire.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I could feel my body overheating almost like a phone that was working over time in the background.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I had been dealing with chronic physical symptoms, fear, panic attacks for so long that I stopped knowing what normal even felt like.
• 0:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had to stop working because of the bodily symptoms.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had to move back to my parents house.
• 0:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't cook for myself.
• 0:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: I even lost a lot of weight.
• 0:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: I lost over 40 pounds.
• 0:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the panic attacks got so bad that I stopped leaving my house for a year.
• 0:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if you are experiencing anything like this, I wanted to make a video to give you hope.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because when I was going through this, I genuinely thought my life was over, like I was too far gone.
• 0:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: But that's not true.
• 0:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And after helping people around the world as well, not just my own isolated story, I've realized no one is too far gone.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I want to go over three things in this video.
• 1:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: How bad it really got for me?
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because a lot of people watching are going to recognize themselves in that part, I want to go over the biggest mistakes that I was making that kept me stuck longer than I needed to.
• 1:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And finally, I want to share with you how I started rebuilding my life, even when I didn't feel ready.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: because I think that was the part that many people feel is impossible.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: So first I want to share with you how bad it really got for me.
• 1:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this is where I feel a lot of people talk about their symptoms being the worst part.
• 1:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that is true, right?
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it's the dizziness, the panic attacks, the chronic bodily sensations, the thoughts, whatever you're experiencing, we often think that is the worst part of it.
• 1:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's true to a degree.
• 1:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: But for me, what was even worse than that was the fact that I had been struggling for so long,
• 1:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: that I began losing hope.
• 1:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: I find that a lot of people when they first fall into this, when they're dealing with these symptoms, there's like this hope that this is like a temporary thing to get fixed.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's even enthusiasm of like, okay, I'm dealing with this.
• 2:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Let me go to the doctors.
• 2:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, this didn't help, let me try this, let me try that.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you're thinking you'll just have like, you know, that magical fix.
• 2:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then, you know, you'll be good to go.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then this will be a story, which is, hey, there's just one time I was really sick and turned out it was this.
• 2:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what happens every time is that anytime you try something new and it doesn't work, you start realizing more and more that, okay, nothing can fix this.
• 2:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like maybe I am this way.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this is like a permanent thing.
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that feeling of hopelessness that feeling of despair is sometimes more intense than the symptoms itself.
• 2:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: I remember when I first fell into this, I started off by going to urgent care.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Trying to figure out what was going on there.
• 2:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: Then I went to primary care.
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: and they said everything was fine.
• 2:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then I started going to the specialists, and I thought maybe the specialists could figure it out.
• 2:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe this was some like medical issue that was like really rare that I needed to figure out.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'd go to neurologist, I'd go to GI doctors, I'd go to sleep specialists, I went to psychiatrists, I went to therapist, basically whatever symptoms I was feeling, I would go to that specialist.
• 3:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And every time I did, I didn't really feel like I got the answer I needed.
• 3:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And many times I actually felt neglected.
• 3:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And this happened for so long that I went $30,000 in medical debt because I didn't have insurance.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I was coming from Canada and I lived here in the U.S., I didn't have health insurance, so everything was out of pocket.
• 3:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the longer this happened, the more I hope I lost.
• 3:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And over time, the pain of being wrong,
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: became greater than the potential of being right.
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: I never had any part of me that had any sort of ideation of wanting to end all this or anything like that.
• 3:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: I had a big zest for life, and I still do now.
• 3:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when I was going through this journey, I remember the pain in the discomfort was so intense that I remember thinking I can't keep going like this.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like the pain of living was just too hard.
• 4:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I remember thinking, oh my God, you know, what if I'm dealing with this until I'm 60?
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: What if this is a life sentence?
• 4:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's a really hard life.
• 4:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I can deal with that.
• 4:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you're going through this at any part or you feel like there's parts of the story that's resonating with you, I wanna share with you what kept me stuck.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I wanna tell you,
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: why kept me stuck and how to break through that.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this isn't something that's isolated to me, right?
• 4:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because you could easily say, hey, Sean, you came out of this, that's great, but you might be an isolated situation.
• 4:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to give you frameworks and principles that will help you that we have used on people around the world, and this has helped them.
• 4:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I want this to be a very practical video for you.
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so point number two is the biggest mistakes I made that kept me stuck longer than I needed to be and they were multiple things that kept me stuck, but I think one of the biggest things that kept me stuck
• 4:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: was not recognizing soon enough that what I was dealing with wasn't a physical issue and wasn't a mental issue because when we think anxiety, we think it's a mental issue, right?
• 5:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: What I was actually dealing with was a nervous system issue.
• 5:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when it's a nervous system issue, it's not your body, it's not your mind, it's both.
• 5:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it wasn't that my nervous system was broken or anything.
• 5:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's just that the issue was with the nervous system.
• 5:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And what had happened?
• 5:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: is that my nervous system had become very sensitive to stress.
• 5:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the concept around this is the concept that I wish I would have learned sooner, which is sensitization.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: When your nervous system deals with prolonged levels of stress, your nervous system responds by becoming more sensitive to that stress.
• 5:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is a survival advantage.
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so what happens as a consequence is that small things
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: will cause your nervous system to respond in an exaggerated way.
• 5:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so this is why you'll notice that basic things that you used to do, like, go into the grocery store hanging out with friends or just, you know, working whatever, all of a sudden your body will overreact.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: you might get panic attacks, you might get intense physical symptoms, you'd be getting thoughts, and this will happen all the time.
• 6:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so you're thinking, hey, there's nothing wrong.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Everything's fine.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what kept me stuck was thinking that there was something medically wrong that wasn't being found and not realizing soon enough that what I was dealing with was nervous system sensitization.
• 6:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you want to know more about this, this is what this whole channel is about.
• 6:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you want to read about it, the book that really helped me was a book by a doctor named Dr. Claire Weeks, and the book is called Hope and Help for Your Nerves.
• 6:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, this book was a huge part of my healing journey.
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: And now, here's the ironic part about this.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: So when I was dealing with symptoms whenever it was like really surfacing up, I actually got the book of my hands pretty early.
• 6:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you know what's interesting.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I read through that book.
• 6:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: It made a lot of sense, but I actually didn't believe it applied to me.
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: I thought, okay, yeah, that makes sense, but what I'm dealing with is not anxiety.
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm dealing with something else.
• 6:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the second thing that kept me longer in the cycle than it needed to be was that I felt like I was unique.
• 7:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that what I was dealing with wasn't what we call anxiety or what I was dealing with was a physical issue.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why I had difficulty believing it is because I viewed anxiety as like a personality flaw.
• 7:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when doctors were telling me it was anxiety, I was saying, I don't have anxiety.
• 7:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm just feeling this way.
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: That's why I'm responding this way.
• 7:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you felt this way, I promise you you'd feel the same way.
• 7:31
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you'd respond the same way.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what I didn't realize is that when we were using the term anxiety, it was referring to your nervous system being sensitized.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that was a massive gap for me because once I understood that, once I understood, okay, the issue isn't a medical issue or a personality flaw, what I'm dealing with is a nervous system that's stuck in protection mode.
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: And it's been stuck in this mode because of the chronic stress that's been happening for so long.
• 7:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, what I need to do is, you know, reverse that, help my nervous system desensitize.
• 8:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once I realized that, I realized it wasn't a personality, fly, realized it wasn't a physical issue, but what was keeping me stuck was my behaviors around it, which was how I was responding to my symptoms.
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why I took me a long time, and the reason why I'm out of taking you a long time to realize this too is because we look at our bodies like the medical model does.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: The medical model separates the mind and the body is two separate things.
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right?
• 8:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: You have a bodily issue.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go to your doctor.
• 8:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Some things on your mind.
• 8:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: Go to a therapist.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: But when you're dealing with a nervous system, is sure you're not dealing with either or.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily a physical issue and it's also not a mental issue.
• 8:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's kind of in between.
• 8:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the last thing that I think really kept me stuck in the cycle was that I measured how well I was doing based on how I was feeling.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So if I was feeling intense anxiety or if I was feeling intense physical symptoms, I was doing something wrong.
• 8:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Something was not right.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: I should fix this.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 9:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: I went into fixed mode.
• 9:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to save your mode.
• 9:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: I need to save this.
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's happening?
• 9:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Right.
• 9:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And if I had moments of feeling good, I thought I was out.
• 9:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the answer to this was that I couldn't trust my feelings.
• 9:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't trust this sensations.
• 9:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't trust my symptoms.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not now at least.
• 9:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: Not while my nervous system was sensitized.
• 9:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I just couldn't trust it.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Over time as I got better, as my nervous system decensitized, then you can trust your feelings, then you can trust your intuitions, but at this moment you couldn't.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because I was following my feelings a lot, I was kind of going in this role or a coaster.
• 9:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: where things would be good, things would be really bad.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Things would be good, I think I'm out.
• 9:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Oh no, things got really bad, you know?
• 9:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I dealt with a lot of unnecessary suffering if I just hadn't followed my feelings and stuck with the principles.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Now, as I realized all of this, I want to share with you what I did to regain my life because if I couldn't follow my feelings,
• 9:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: If I couldn't follow how I was, you know, what my symptoms were in that moment.
• 9:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: So what I needed to do was I needed to make the choice of making life more important than how I felt.
• 10:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: That didn't mean I disregarded how I felt or that, like, you know, I didn't acknowledge it.
• 10:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I made an active choice that once I understood what was happening, that I was going to focus on regaining my life.
• 10:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason why this worked is because a lot of people think, okay, I need to fix my problem first, then I can go back to living.
• 10:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: But actually,
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: With this, it's the reverse.
• 10:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: You focus on life and then the symptoms go away on their own.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: You need to live as a prerequisite in order to heal on the journey.
• 10:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so most people look at this as like, you know, going over, you know, getting over the flu.
• 10:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: Okay, you wait, you stay home, you get better, then you go back to work.
• 10:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: But this is different.
• 10:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: You go back to living and part of that retrains your nervous system.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: That, hey, there is no threat.
• 10:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't handle stress.
• 10:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Here's the methodology to handling stress and then the symptoms go away.
• 10:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: And once I started doing that, that was a journey in itself.
• 11:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: There was a journey of understanding what was happening but then there's also the actual journey, where you're re-gaining your life, where your de-sensitizing your nervous system.
• 11:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when you're going through the second part, when you're going through the actual journey, you're gonna have moments of doubt.
• 11:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're gonna have moments of confusion,
• 11:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: You're going to have moments of wondering am I going the right direction am I not and so what I would recommend if you're going through this is to find a tribe of people that are actively healing on the journey and the problem is with the internet is while there's great information there's a lot of misinformation
• 11:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And there's also a lot of amplified voices.
• 11:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you will hear a lot of people on the internet that have been stuck with this for, you know, a year or six months, five years, 10 years.
• 11:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you start thinking, oh my God, so many people go to this, they don't get out of this.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is this gonna be me?
• 11:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: But what you don't realize is that the people that actually get better, they're not on the forums.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not posting about it.
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not asking in the comments.
• 12:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're living their life.
• 12:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're not even watching these videos, right?
• 12:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why?
• 12:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Problem is solved.
• 12:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so the biggest thing is finding people that I've gone through this, because it normalizes what you go through, because you know how isolating this feels, right?
• 12:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: And number two.
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It gives you hope because you start seeing that people are getting out of this and that getting out of his actually pretty normal.
• 12:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not that big of a deal.
• 12:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: And that gives you permission to do the same.
• 12:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so because I was going through this journey and I was going through it alone.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the world was such a different place.
• 12:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know what?
• 12:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: Ten years ago around the time I was dealing with this longer actually.
• 12:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I first fell in the cycle was over ten years ago.
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: that, you know, you're in such a great opportunity because there are more resources, there are communities that are really focused on solving this one problem.
• 12:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So this was what really helped me regain my life, which was going with the feelings, choosing life, and finding your tribe.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so if you want to find your tribe and like really be a part of
• 13:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: a group of people, a team, a method, a system that helps people with only this problem helping them get out of the cycle.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can check the link down below and learning more about the recovery program that we have.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Regardless of what you choose, I want you to know that this is in a life sentence and it doesn't matter how far you've gone, you can always get out.
• 13:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you want to know how to heal your nervous system by essentially doing nothing, make sure to check out this