Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Matt Gutman - Chief National Correspondent at ABC News | How to Overcome Crippling Anxiety

Transcript

Matt Gutman - Chief National Correspondent at ABC News | How to Overcome Crippling Anxiety · Success Story with Scott Clary

0:00
I had like hundreds of panic attacks on air over the years.
0:03
A panic attack actually lasts anywhere from 15 seconds to 90 seconds.
0:07
That is the period of panic.
0:08
But a panic is your brain assessing a threat.
0:11
Definition about panic attack is your brain registering a threat
0:16
and telling your body it's in trouble.
0:17
Your heart starts going fast.
0:19
You start breathing heavy that sometimes your greatest weakness becomes an asset.
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40% of all the patients who turn up at our nation's ERs,
0:28
complaining of heart failure, heart attack, they're having a panic attack.
0:33
Panetic is the maximal expression of fear.
0:36
I describe panic as the orgasm of anxiety.
0:40
The medicine itself helps relieve anxiety.
0:43
Your fear is very likely never going to happen.
0:46
Welcome to Success Story. I'm your host, Scott Clary.
0:50
The Success Story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network.
0:54
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1:57
All right, Matt.
1:58
Thank you for coming on.
1:59
I appreciate you.
1:59
Appreciate your time.
2:00
It's going to be a lot of fun.
2:01
And we're going to teach people a lot.
2:03
And I think it's very useful.
2:05
Everything you put into this book that you sort of discovered over your life
2:10
is not discussed enough, which I think is why this is going to be a really good show.
2:15
So I just want to start it here, even the name of the book,
2:19
how I curved my anxiety and conquered a lifetime of panic attacks.
2:23
When did you first realize that you were having panic attacks?
2:28
The question of when I first realized that I was having a panic attack versus
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when I first actually had a panic attack are two very different things.
2:35
So the first time I had a panic attack,
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well, I probably had many ones.
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I was school council president.
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High achiever at high school, like great grades, school council president,
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captain of the football, captain of the cross,
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you know, had to be very intense.
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And I would do these presentations in front of the school every morning.
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And I realized that I just got so nervous.
3:01
And I was like, pit in my stomach and then couldn't really speak straight.
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But the first time I had like a underpants wedding mind rattling like
3:13
earth shaking panic attack was defending my college thesis,
3:19
senior year in college, the very end of college.
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So I was like, it wasn't even graded.
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It wasn't mandatory.
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I didn't have to do it.
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There was nothing writing on it.
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And yet when my name was called to go to the podium and speak in front of my
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classmates and the faculty at the political science department,
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I felt like I was molting into a werewolf.
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Like, yeah, my heart felt like it was just being ripped from my chest.
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I couldn't breathe.
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I had tunnel vision.
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I was shaking.
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I felt like the floor was falling out.
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I was at this white knuckled grip on the podium.
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Because I was like, I was going to fall down.
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I could remember a thing I said.
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I couldn't see anybody in the crowd.
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It was a pretty humbling experience.
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But you know, already by then, I was so good at compartmentalizing that as soon as it ended,
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I'm like, I had fucked that I've never, I don't know what that was.
4:09
That was the most horrific experience of my life.
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But I'm not going to think about it again.
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I'm going to put it in this place and I'm not going to deal with it.
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But then whatever that experience was,
4:20
started to happen again once I started doing radio for ABC and then TV.
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And it wasn't until I was in my 30s, like mid 30s that I finally realized,
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like this thing that happens to me that makes me have this incredibly painful and miserable
4:39
experiences, a panic attack, and I'm having, I had like hundreds of panic attacks on air over
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the years.
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And I wasn't quite sure what it was.
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I just knew I didn't like it.
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So can you describe a feeling of a panic attack versus stage fright?
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Because I think a lot of people can totally understand what you went through when you're
5:00
doing presentations in school and then also when you're defending your thesis.
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And now I'm curious just thinking back to when I step on stage, it's gotten a lot better.
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But when you start to go on stage, you start to get stressed out, you start to feel your heartbeat,
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your mouth gets dry.
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These seems like classic signs of just stage fright.
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But obviously it's not just stage fright.
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It's taking it a step further.
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So what defined your panic attack like when you were doing ABC?
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Well, I think it's, I mean, so what happens when you go on stage?
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You just, you feel like, and then what happens?
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Like, how does it end?
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How does it subside?
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For me, I think that after I go on stage, about five minutes in,
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I get too distracted by the thing that I'm speaking about and then I forget about the stress.
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But in the 30 seconds before somebody calls my name to go on stage, or even
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in a, the most ridiculous example is when somebody is going around the room and asking people
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to introduce themselves.
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Totally.
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Pretty sensitive.
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You're bracking.
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That's ridiculous.
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It's stressful.
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It's horrible.
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But then you start to speak, but I need five minutes to speak before I forget about it.
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So here's the thing, the problem you're hitting the nail in the head.
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The problem for me was that I also get over it within five minutes and most people,
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and I bet you get over it even quicker than that.
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A panic attack actually lasts anywhere from 15 seconds to 90 seconds.
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That is the period of panic, right?
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The rest of it is anxiety.
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It's your body getting over this very unpleasant experience that it just had.
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But a panic is your brain assessing a threat.
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Holy shit, they're coming around the room.
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And I have to come up with something clever to say about myself other than my stupid name
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and where I'm from, but I have to like sound intelligent.
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And they're coming around all got them two people away.
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Your brain is assessing a threat, a social threat.
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That is very real, right?
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Because people judge us upon our behavior and our performance.
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And the problem for me in my line of work is that often my presentation on air
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is about 15 seconds, maybe 30 seconds, sometimes longer.
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So I am like existing in that full nut kick of panic for the full time that I'm on air.
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I didn't know any of this at the time, but that's what I was living through all the time.
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And when it was the longer the performance on air, if I had to talk for a minute or three minutes,
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the easier it would be for two reasons.
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One, your panic is already subsided.
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Your adrenaline is washed through your system.
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You're beyond the actual panic stage.
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And two, the longer you have to talk as you do during your talks to crowds,
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the less need for perfection there is, right?
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If you talk for 15 seconds, like we often do on national television,
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on network TV and it's a pretty short thing, you're expected to be pretty damn near flawless,
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right? You've got to hit that perfection.
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If you talk for five minutes, I mean, nobody
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cannot make a single verbal mistake in five minutes.
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You do an um or a ha or a repeater word.
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But in the 15 seconds that we perform on TV or 30 or a minute,
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it's got to be pretty near perfect.
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So all that was getting into my head.
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So the longer I got to speak, the less I felt of the panic symptoms.
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Except in that first time in doing the college thesis in which I felt like it lasted the whole time.
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I don't even know like it was a very, I feel like I had barrel cats attacking my neck.
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And they're just like, because I was wearing a turtleneck sweater because I thought it was
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professorial or smart looking.
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And I was like, I'm dying the cats.
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No, I'm just thinking about all those like, I like to reenactment by the way.
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Wearing a turtleneck to speak on stage sounds like for me an absolute nightmare.
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But that is like the first thing I tell people, never wear stuff.
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I mean, if we have to wear a tie fine, but do not wear a sweater turtleneck.
9:06
No, never. For me, I got my I got my uniform on stage.
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I got my v neck. I got my blazer.
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I got my jeans.
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I'm very comfortable.
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And actually, this is a big this is a big strategy from because if I overheat
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or if something's not quite right, it seems to just add on to the to the
9:20
shit show that's happening live in real time.
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And I mean, when you describe it like that, it sounds like any time anyone ever has stage fright,
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it's just a panic attack or or or maybe your nerves that are not a full on panic attack,
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right? People can feel you there is nervous and then there's a panic attack.
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So the definition about panic attack is your brain registering a threat and telling your
9:48
body it's in trouble. The way it tells and possibly going to be attacked.
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And the way it does that is by is a cascade of chemicals, a bunch of messages being sent.
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I'm not going to get into the whole thing of it because it's boring.
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But basically your adrenal glands begin to admit adrenaline.
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Your heart starts going fast.
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You start breathing heavy.
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Some people feel shaking, trembling, sweating.
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People feel like they can't breathe suffocation.
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There are feelings of derealization and pending death.
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Feelings of loss of control.
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All of that is included in the suite of symptoms.
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And some people can experience some of them.
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Sometimes people can experience almost all of them.
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I had a lot of them. I never thought I was going to die during one.
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But it definitely had like loss of control was a huge thing for me.
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I'm like, I've no control. That's why I like describe it as is turning into a werewolf.
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Because it feels like you have no control over something very critical that's happening in your body
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at the time. And like there is something that is visceral.
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And it's not just in your head what's happening to me is physical.
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I'm feeling it and I'm having a physical reaction.
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I'm sweating through my pants, going pale.
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I'm trembling like this is very, very real.
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I can't breathe all that stuff.
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So as you go through your career, you sort of just push this to the side.
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You push that you just assume this is like the cost of doing business.
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Basically, that's what that's what you assume.
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So what was the moment where it sort of came to a peak and it was no longer ignorable?
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So the irony is, Scott, that sometimes your greatest weakness becomes an asset.
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So I didn't know this at the time, because I didn't even know I was fully
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having panic attacks. I called it nerves in my head.
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I got nerves, but it's okay.
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But I was having such a physical reaction that it made me like zing with energy.
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And so when I started in TV in 2010, I did a print reporter and a radio reporter.
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And so when I started actually doing TV, people are like, holy cow,
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Matt Guppen really punches through the TV.
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It's got so much energy.
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They're like, I do have energy.
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But I'm also having the panic attack and basically shitting my pants.
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So you're watching people were watching me be like,
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and the executive producers loved it.
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So like, yes, put Guppen on live more.
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Like, no, no, don't put Guppen on live more, no more live.
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But that's what was happening.
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So I was getting sent to do all these assignments and everything that was live.
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It was kind of this very strange irony.
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And I learned to start dreading going live because I felt this way.
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On the other hand, in some ways, it was the secret to my success.
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Because, you know, I really brought it.
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So it's that funny combination for me.
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Sorry, I was going to say it can happen.
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I was going to just tell you a quick story just to provide some context.
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So why this is actually such an important conversation for me.
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And I want to just sort of hear as it progressed in your life.
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But just to get some context to listeners and just to give you context for,
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you know, where I come from.
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So I actually had one of these about a year ago.
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And I've always had this stage fright.
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But this was in a grocery store.
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So this was not in front of an audience.
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And I'll tell you exactly what happened.
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I got, I'm walking through Publix.
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Yeah, super maddening.
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Yeah, super market chain in in in South Florida.
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I hadn't had a lot to eat that day.
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And got on a whim on a whim.
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I go to the blood pressure machine.
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I'm like, I haven't gotten a blood pressure check in a long time.
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I haven't gone to the doctor.
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So I put my arm in the blood pressure machine.
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And I check my blood pressure.
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And I'm a big guy.
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I used to play sports.
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I'm always trying to be healthy.
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But I'm always like, I want to watch my diet.
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I want to make sure that I'm not, you know, eating garbage.
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And I look at my blood pressure.
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And I can't remember if it's good or not.
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So I start to Google on my phone.
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Is this a healthy blood pressure?
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And it's like, and then the first Google result is it's a little bit high.
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And as I walk away from the blood pressure machine,
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I start to feel my heart racing.
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I start to feel that I'm getting cold sweats.
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I start to feel like I texted my girlfriend.
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I said, like, I think I'm having a hard time.
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I'm manifesting all this shit in my head.
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And I couldn't, I couldn't keep grocery shopping.
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I couldn't do anything.
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I actually had to sit down at the front.
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And I had to get a friend come and pick me up.
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Because I actually thought I was having a heart attack.
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And it was all manifested completely in my head.
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And then I actually drove to ER.
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Got all the EKG stuff done.
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And obviously nothing, nothing at all.
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Nothing in your blood.
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No, no sign of anything wrong.
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But dude, it felt so real.
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It felt like I was, like, that was the worst
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feeling I've ever experienced in my life.
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And it felt like a heart attack.
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But that was my one experience that actually made me
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realize that these things are not,
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these things are not messing around.
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They're not just nerves.
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So yeah.
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You know, there's a reason people, first of all,
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I'm just sorry that you experienced that.
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Because it's terrifying and it's miserable.
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And then you feel shame about it afterwards.
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Right?
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Then people feel embarrassed.
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Well, oh, I should have known it wasn't a heart attack.
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I, blah, blah.
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But I mean, one of the things that,
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so when, and we'll get to where your previous question went.
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But one of the reasons I wrote this book
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is not because I wanted to write a book at the start of it.
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I wanted to fix me because I had similar episodes as you did.
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And I'm like, I'm broken.
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There's something underlying all this.
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I don't know what the hell it is.
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But I'm broken and I need to fix it.
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And if I don't fix it, I'm going to die.
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Like I, this is not sustainable.
15:48
I'm miserable.
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I hate my job.
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It's making me a miserable human being.
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This is not how I want to live.
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So I wanted to fix me.
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I honestly like, I love everybody.
15:57
But I was not thinking about helping others and writing a book.
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But it's about a year later,
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once I started doing the research.
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I mean, I was doing a research for over a year.
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And when I got so deep into the research that I realized
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that I'm not alone, that 40% of all the patients who turn up at our nation's ERs,
16:18
complaining of heart failure, heart attack,
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whatever you want to call it, they're having a panic attack.
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58% almost two thirds are either having some sort of either a panic attack
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or anxiety related symptoms.
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So that just gives you a sense of how epidemic it is
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that people conflate a heart attack with a panic attack.
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In fact, it's in the introduction of the book.
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I talked to this 911 operator I've known for years.
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And he did was a 911 operator for 17 years.
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You hear a lot of heart attacks.
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You also hear a lot of panic attacks.
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She was never despite the fact of being like so good at her job.
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She could not tell the difference between someone who was having a bona fide,
17:04
a heart attack, and someone who was having a panic attack
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because the symptoms so closely mirror of each other, shaking, sweating,
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that vice in your chest, the inability to breathe.
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This is exactly what a heart attack is.
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And we'll get to it a little bit later, but there's a reason for that.
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What the founder of evolutionary psychology, Randy Nessie, told me,
17:28
is that your body wants a panic attack to be memorable.
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It wants you to suffer because it wants it to be memorable
17:36
because it wants you not to repeat whatever behavior got you into that.
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And those are their big social reasons for that.
17:44
But basically a panic attack is your body pulling the fire alarm, a false alarm, right?
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It's saying, hello, I want you to pay attention right now.
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Pay big attention.
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Well, you're having a big experience right now.
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Pay attention and your body is also willing to have a thousand false alarms pulling that
18:04
fire alarm so long as you don't have a mist alarm.
18:07
A false alarm, maybe you go to the ER or once you get used to it like me,
18:11
you bird 50 calories sweating and like being frantic.
18:16
But a false alarm, but missing a real alarm, you're dead, right?
18:20
You're on the freeway, you're on the Julia Tuttle Parkway in Miami,
18:24
or whatever it is.
18:25
And there's a pile up in front of you.
18:27
You don't see it.
18:28
You crash into it and you're dead.
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But a false alarm, you're just burning 50 calories.
18:35
And it is massively common in America.
18:38
And unfortunately, they probably told you that you're probably having
18:41
some sort of anxiety or panic related episode, right?
18:44
Well, they had no idea what was going on, but yeah.
18:47
So the problem is, and a lot of people like you are not diagnosed,
18:52
they don't go home being told, hey, listen, you had a panic attack.
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This is how to deal with it.
18:57
Let me get you some help.
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Most people are sent home not being told what it is because physicians,
19:03
internations, ERs feel much more comfortable talking about physiological issues than
19:08
emotional or psychological issues.
19:10
So they don't feel like they should step into the psychological realm,
19:14
even though that's what's happening.
19:16
But what I want, like,
19:19
your listeners and viewers out there to come away with is that panic attack is normal.
19:26
It is just a way of your body signaling that it wants you to pay attention.
19:31
It's normal because we have half of Americans are going to experience a panic attack
19:37
in their lifetime.
19:39
What your body doesn't want is for you to have a mist alarm and they're short.
19:45
The panic is really the 15 to 90 seconds of your brain assessing the threat.
19:51
The rest of it is anxiety.
19:53
It's painful.
19:54
It's awful, but we live with anxiety every day and we can get through it.
20:00
Those are the broad parameters of a panic attack that a lot of people have.
20:07
And what you add is super common because people have stage fright, but people also have panic
20:11
when they drive a car.
20:13
I can't tell you how many people experience panic talking to a cashier at a supermarket.
20:19
That's like a big deal for some reason.
20:20
A lot of people have those interactions and can't cope.
20:25
Plains just in day-to-day life, it is massively common.
20:30
Sorry, long-winded answer.
20:32
No, no, no.
20:32
It's a good answer because I always are trying to figure out what it was.
20:35
And it was me over complicating and over concerning my own health and just making all these,
20:39
I'm a healthy dude.
20:41
I'm 33.
20:42
There's no reason why anybody who's 33 who plays sports should be having a heart attack.
20:47
But for me, it was just in that moment.
20:51
I just let my head just, my mind just run, right?
20:54
And then all of a sudden, this was the result of it.
20:59
And we also have to pay attention to the environmental factors as well.
21:03
Right?
21:04
You didn't eat that morning.
21:05
You mentioned that.
21:06
Yeah.
21:06
It's probably Miami, so it's hot as hell and humid.
21:08
It was one of the hottest days.
21:10
And I think I drank the night before too.
21:13
So I was a little bit hungover.
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Hadn't eaten super hot.
21:16
Get a blood pressure.
21:17
It was just like, I felt like shit already going into it.
21:20
That's all the parameters for that kind of panic attack.
21:24
And there are so many people like you have been to the same ER in Miami
21:29
for the same thing.
21:31
Hungover, it's hot outside.
21:33
Something spooks them.
21:34
And the brain goes into overdrive.
21:36
Tells them that they're under threat that they're going to die.
21:38
And they think they're having a heart attack.
21:41
It's a panic attack.
21:42
It's massively common in America.
21:45
But what like the book hopes to do is to create more awareness
21:48
so people don't have to go to the ER.
21:51
So they can understand that in the moment, this is, you know, it's painful.
21:56
But I'm not having a heart attack.
21:58
I'm having a panic attack because of X, Y and Z.
22:02
So let's go back to the question I asked before.
22:04
So as I interrupt, you know, that was my bad.
22:06
But I wanted to tell that story just so you understand that I dealt with this
22:08
shit.
22:10
And it was not fun.
22:11
And I realized as a Canadian that you can't just just take a limit of trips to the ER.
22:14
Like you can't back again.
22:16
Welcome to America, my friend.
22:18
No national health service.
22:20
It costs it.
22:21
It should cost.
22:23
So when was the, when was the moment that this sort of
22:26
turned into a major issue for you?
22:28
Like you, you obviously had these micro attacks or you understood it was happening.
22:32
But there was a point, a moment when obviously everything just sort of peaked and you're like,
22:36
I got to figure this out.
22:37
I got to get my shit together.
22:38
I got to sort of take this and tackle it head on.
22:40
Yeah.
22:41
I was, it was a Sunday, January 26, 2020.
22:46
And I was cooking pancakes for the kids.
22:49
I had been on a road trip for like 30 days before that, just like almost never home.
22:54
So I was excited to be home.
22:55
And I got a call.
22:57
My boss says, hey, listen.
23:00
We think a helicopter carrying Kobe Bryant.
23:03
And maybe some members of his family just went down in Calabasis in California.
23:09
And that's about 10 miles from where I live.
23:11
And it's a massive story.
23:14
Kobe Bryant, you know, one of the greatest basketball players ever.
23:19
Patrons, Saint of Los Angeles.
23:22
Hugely philanthropic, philanthropic,
23:25
beloved here.
23:26
And his helicopter went down.
23:28
He used to travel around in the helicopter because
23:31
LA traffic, you know.
23:33
But like I looked outside and it was really overcast.
23:38
Low ceiling of clouds.
23:39
It was not a great day to be flying an helicopter.
23:42
I'm like, oh, that is bad.
23:44
So like within minutes, I'm in the car.
23:45
I'm driving to the scene.
23:47
We do our first special report.
23:49
And like you know, in the old maps of the world,
23:54
they had like at the edge of the map where they hadn't mapped the rest of it.
23:58
They had like, you know, the sirens and and and weird like sea monsters and creators.
24:03
Like I'm I'm talking in the special live report.
24:05
I'm seeing the end of the map because I've nothing to say.
24:08
I'm in the midst of a furious panic.
24:11
I can't remember the things I had planned on saying because the panic
24:15
saps you of your short-term memory and I'm like,
24:19
what and so like my mouth starts talking.
24:22
And I did what happens is that you your your brain loses short-term memory.
24:28
Your brain loses long-term memory.
24:30
You can't remember anything that you did before 30 seconds ago.
24:33
You're in a panic attack.
24:35
Your brain is focused mostly on surviving this moment right now.
24:39
So everything is focused on the right now.
24:41
Um, not on whether what you got from the sheriff's sergeant 10 minutes ago was reportable
24:47
or that other piece of information you got was actually confirmed and reportable.
24:51
And what I did in the special report was I mixed up one thing that I knew to be correct
24:59
was something that I did not know whether it was correct or not.
25:02
And I said that thing and it turned out that it was wrong and it was very wrong
25:07
and I made a horrific mistake.
25:10
And it's the first time that this had ever happened on TV.
25:13
Despite all those panic attacks, I was always able to keep my shit together in my brain.
25:19
And this was different.
25:20
And I had a terrible failure.
25:24
And I kept reporting throughout the rest of the day.
25:29
But the next day or the day after ABC told me like, you know,
25:34
this is big and you're suspended for a month.
25:37
And, uh, you know, this is, this is a real problem.
25:41
I obviously felt guilty because my dad was killed on a plane crash when he was
25:46
basically the same age as Kobe.
25:48
And I was the same age as Gianna Kobe's daughter who died with him in the helicopter.
25:53
And so there was this crazy parody between these two events that had happened.
25:58
And like obviously that was in my head as I was starting to report it.
26:02
But, um, that's not anybody's fault, but my own.
26:06
And it was like, I was definitely in my head.
26:10
And I felt really, really, really guilty.
26:13
Um, I saw you also posted on Twitter like you posted the apology.
26:20
Just, just coming to terms with the fact that you screwed that statement up.
26:25
But ABC didn't really take it lightly.
26:29
I don't think a lot of people took it lightly, but you still, you still obviously
26:35
recovered from that hindsight's 2020 and you realize that
26:39
this is going to potentially negatively impact your career.
26:42
Like this was, well, I didn't know you two would take me back.
26:45
Like I thought I might, there were a couple of things that happens.
26:48
First, I wasn't sure ABC would take me back.
26:50
I thought they would.
26:51
Like, and then there were people like, well, ABC overreacted.
26:54
I think that's a material.
26:55
Like the biggest question that was happening within me was like, okay.
27:00
I am not happy doing my job because I am so honestly terrified of having a panic attack.
27:06
Like I was miserable.
27:08
So am I going to keep doing this job?
27:10
And my biggest fear throughout having all these panic attacks,
27:13
I never told anybody about because it was my deep, dark secret.
27:16
Right?
27:16
Like, well, I can't tell anybody about this because I'll be fired or they'll think, my God.
27:23
Gotman is vulnerable.
27:24
Chief National correspondent of the ABC has a vulnerability.
27:27
No way.
27:29
Right?
27:29
Like I couldn't let any wonder, like if you're a liability,
27:32
what you could say on air now, if you just,
27:35
if you just have a bad moment, right?
27:37
That's the concern.
27:38
And that was my fear.
27:39
And it happened.
27:40
It was like, you know, one of the things they teach you
27:42
in cognitive behavioral therapy, which is one of the,
27:45
like the gold standard of dealing with panic disorder is that your fear is very likely never
27:51
going to happen, right?
27:52
Like people who have a fear of flying, like you're not going to die in a plane crash.
27:57
It is extremely unlikely.
27:58
You're much more likely to die of literally a thousand other things.
28:02
But like, I actually had my worst fear happened to me during a panic attack,
28:06
which was losing control and saying the wrong thing.
28:09
And so I had to grapple with that.
28:11
Like, is this something that I want to keep doing?
28:14
Do I want to stay in television journalism?
28:16
Like I could go back to,
28:19
not radio because it was still performative,
28:21
but I could go back to print or I could think about
28:24
something else to do or I could go and consulting.
28:27
And I talked about it with my wife.
28:29
And as all this was happening, I kind of had a breakthrough.
28:35
Because, you know, suspension does have a way of freeing up your schedule.
28:39
And I'm putting a little bit.
28:41
Yeah, you know, a little bit, a month.
28:44
So I've been putting up a buddy of mine from high school,
28:46
who was on the lacrosse team and like an amazing athlete.
28:52
And he now had become a yoga instructor and a breathwork teacher.
28:57
And this is an early 2020, right?
28:58
Like, this is before the pandemic.
29:00
This was not a big thing then.
29:02
People were talking about Wim Hof.
29:05
But he was doing this thing called breathwork.
29:06
He's like, dude, it's changed my life.
29:07
You've got to try it.
29:08
Like, okay, I'll try breathwork.
29:10
And I thought it was like meditation or something.
29:11
I didn't know what it was.
29:12
So I go in this class with this guy.
29:14
It's like crisp.
29:16
This sunny morning in California in January or maybe early February.
29:21
And he's like, okay, here's what you guys do.
29:24
And he's coaching us through and it's polytropic breathwork.
29:27
So it's two breaths in, one through the belly, one through the chest.
29:32
One being breathed out.
29:38
And you just keep doing that.
29:39
And eventually, what you're going to do is deprive yourself of oxygen.
29:44
By hyperventilating over breathing,
29:47
you deprive your body of carbon dioxide,
29:50
which helps you break down the oxygen.
29:52
So it's kind of an inverse relationship.
29:55
It's kind of a, you know, a weird thing.
29:58
And eventually, what happens?
29:59
You get lobster claws in your hands.
30:01
Your feet kind of curl up and you go into an altered state.
30:05
And he's like, coaching us through this.
30:07
And suddenly I'm like, wow, I am not in this.
30:09
What is happening here?
30:10
This is a total out of body experience.
30:13
I had no idea what to expect.
30:16
And then I start crying.
30:18
I start sobbing.
30:19
And I'm like, in this room that stinks of patchouli
30:22
with all these, you know, like super crudgy people.
30:25
And suddenly I'm like,
30:28
like having this amazing cathartic experience.
30:32
And my buddy Lane, who still practices breathwork and teaches classes here.
30:36
Lane Jaffee, great guy.
30:39
Like comes, he holds space.
30:40
So he's just like, he just like makes me know,
30:43
makes me know he's there.
30:44
So he just presses on my legs.
30:46
He's like, you're okay.
30:47
He's like, keep going.
30:48
He's not trying to take me out of it to let me know I'm okay.
30:51
He's like, you're good.
30:52
Keep going.
30:53
I'm here if you need me, but keep going.
30:57
And I had this amazing cathartic experience
30:59
that I never would have expected.
31:01
And it's at that point that I start realizing,
31:03
okay, there's something more than just panic going on here.
31:07
The panic is a symptom of something much deeper.
31:10
And then I need to start figuring out how to get there.
31:13
And maybe that's how I figure out why I'm broken.
31:17
What's wrong with me?
31:19
And eventually I would realize that panic doesn't mean you're broken.
31:22
And I'm not broken.
31:23
Like we have evolved to have panic as part of our
31:30
central operating system as humans.
31:33
Fear is one of the greatest assets that primates and then apes and then great apes and then humans
31:39
were able to evolve.
31:41
One of the reasons we're so successful is that we worry.
31:44
We fear and we fear sooner than almost any other animal which allows us to prepare.
31:49
It allows us to plan.
31:50
It allows us to look deep into the future and think about stuff
31:54
because we're worried about what might happen.
31:57
We're concerned.
31:57
So we do stuff.
32:00
Panic is the maximal expression of fear, right?
32:03
Like I described panic as the orgasm of anxiety.
32:08
Right?
32:09
If an orgasm is the maximal expression of pleasure, right?
32:15
Then a panic attack is the maximal expression of anxiety or fear.
32:20
It's not pleasant, but it also could leave you wanting a cigarette and shaking and sweating out.
32:24
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32:56
For all the wrong reasons, but you mentioned something.
32:58
I just want to ask you one thing on that point because you said it's built into our genetic,
33:04
our DNA into our genetics, right?
33:05
This is how we survived as a species and evolved, but it's also it's also
33:11
partly built into potentially some past trauma.
33:14
So how do you know when it's working the way it should versus if it is maybe working on overdrive
33:23
because of things that have happened in our past?
33:26
I mean, it's a brilliant question.
33:29
I'm not just buttering up the interview.
33:30
I think it's a really good question.
33:31
We don't know.
33:34
The thing is if the panic is debilitating to your life,
33:40
then it's something you've got to deal with.
33:43
Then there's something going on there with the trauma that you need to deal with.
33:46
If it's a one-off like you had on an extraordinarily hot day in Miami when you're hung over
33:51
and you see some weird stats about your blood pressure and you have an eaten and you have a panic attack,
33:58
that's a different issue, right?
34:00
That it's environmental.
34:02
Maybe you have a greater predisposition for panic because you're are higher on the anxiety scale,
34:09
possibly it's not a bad thing, by the way.
34:14
But when it's like debilitating your life, then that's when you need to deal with it on a more
34:18
holistic way.
34:19
And that's what I needed to do.
34:21
I needed to like basically treat panic as I treated
34:27
the big stories I worked on in my journalism career, which is like,
34:31
and that's how I played sports in high school and college.
34:35
It's like, if there's a wall, I'm going to run through it.
34:37
I'm going to do whatever I need to do, and that's what I sign myself with panic.
34:41
I'm like, okay, first I'm going to learn everything there is to possibly learn about panic.
34:45
Then I'm going to figure out why it is that I'm broken and why humans evolve to have panic in
34:50
the DNA or anxiety, because all the science tells us it's so unhealthy and then once I look
34:56
to that of realizing, yes, it's kind of unhealthy, but it's also one of the things that preserves
35:02
humans. And your body doesn't care if you suffer a little bit.
35:05
It wants you just not to be dead.
35:07
Anything to not get dead.
35:09
No, I was going to say, I mean, that's a good, that's a good, nice little built-in
35:14
safety mechanism. I mean, I'm not going to complain about that, but I was just going to ask
35:20
when you look at sort of the point in your life,
35:24
when you realize it was a major issue, you do some breath work,
35:27
and you go back to work, you're still reporting, you didn't change your career,
35:33
was the solution, breath work was a solution, therapy was a solution, awareness was a solution,
35:40
all of those things combined with doing the thing that gives you anxiety another 200 times,
35:49
being cognizant of the fact that this feeling is actually going to arise, but working through it
35:53
anyways, with a little bit of a more educated lens, like, how did you evolve from that point?
36:00
Well, I definitely had not evolved when I went back to work. I was presented with,
36:06
you know, like, I could have stayed out, but like, I have, I am the sole breadwinner, right?
36:13
Like, I couldn't quit my job, so I needed to find an exit ramp, and in my brain,
36:21
I was like, okay, just take everything easy, just don't take it so seriously,
36:27
you know, breath work had definitely helped to open up my mind a bit,
36:30
and relieve some of the pressure that had been building up just emotionally,
36:34
so I did it a couple of times with Lane, and I had, you know, a good, a couple of really good
36:38
experiences during my suspension also went to Alaska, had a near death experience, and then
36:43
started to like, I got lost on, on near Denali in the snow, and mid-February in Alaska.
36:51
Just typically not a great thing to do as it gets getting dark, but like, I had a surge of adrenaline,
36:58
which is basically your stress response, which is the same thing essentially as a panic attack,
37:02
but it was for the real reason you should have a panic, which is your body being like,
37:06
holy shit, Matt, you're alone in Denali, it's three o'clock in the afternoon, it's getting dark,
37:12
you have no food, you have a little bit of water, and you're stuck in snow that's over your head,
37:16
and you can't get out, you're fucked, and I'm like, oh, I'm fucked, look how I feel, that's like
37:21
exactly what I feel of a panic attack, okay, well, this is my body working as it should during
37:27
the stress response, and in fact, what happened was it triggered something in my brain that allowed
37:33
me to think of a novel way to get out of this snow that was so deep, I couldn't get out of it,
37:36
it was like this, it was like quick sand of snow, so powdery, I couldn't get on top, so I was like
37:42
drowning in it, so I before I'd seen snow shoe hairs, I'm like, I'm gonna make myself like a
37:48
snow shoe hair, so I thrashed around to this spruce tree, and I apologize to the tree, but I start
37:54
like snapping off branches, and I putting them in my clothes, into my jacket, into my hands,
38:00
into my feet, and in like all over, and I'm basically like being a snow angel to get out of the deep
38:07
snow, and that's how I got out of there, and because the one of the things that does work when
38:13
you're having a panic attack is your internal GPS system, I had gone down the mountain in a very
38:18
different way than I'd come up off the trail, because I'm like, hey, let me trick off the bean
38:24
path, I did only when I'm hiking it alone in the middle of the winter, that was dumb, but anyway,
38:29
my your internal GPS system works really well when you're having a stress response, and it
38:35
totally oriented me on the right path, I did not have a trail, and like somehow an hour later,
38:41
I figured out how to cross the trail, and I got back on the trail, like all the stuff that happens
38:47
in a panic and a stress response worked as it should, I'm like, okay, so this obviously just
38:54
had a stress response, and it worked to my advantage, I've had stress responses in a panic that
38:59
do not work to my advantage, so part of it is okay, let me figure out how to deal with the part
39:05
that's not working for me, and yeah, I had to go back to work because like I needed the paycheck
39:10
to be quite honest, but like the journey of figuring out panic and getting to the end of panic,
39:16
I don't know if it's not sure I'll never have a panic attack again, but I'm in a lot that are
39:22
placed in it was, but that was years, that took like three and a half years of like maintenance
39:27
and work and lots of psychedelics and therapy, and I tried every pharmaceutical out there that you
39:33
could ever imagine, ADHD medication, and Ben's in anti-depressants, and anti-seger medication,
39:41
everything, and it didn't work, what worked for me best was learning that I'm okay evolutionarily,
39:48
like this is part of the human DNA, so like that I'm not fucked up, that I am like as a human
39:55
is, that I'm not totally broken, and learning that like a way to express the feelings that I've
40:02
been bottling up inside for so long through getting out of my right mind with altered states,
40:10
because in my right mind I was way too controlling of my emotions, but when you're doing an altered
40:16
state, you have no control, whether it be breathwork or ayahuasca, you lose control and what you
40:23
lose control, you can start to expecturate, to cough up, to get rid of all of this like anguish
40:30
and grief inside or whatever it is that you're dealing with, and when you do that kind of work,
40:36
it does carry over into your day to day, so when you do the breathwork or even the psychedelics,
40:41
when you sort of confront these demons, when you're going in, you notice a significant decrease
40:48
when you're about to go on air next time, or you're asking, yeah, I'm asking, I have no idea,
40:53
I haven't done breathwork or psychedelics yet, yeah, definitely, I'm asking for me dude,
40:58
I'm asking for me because I've only dealt with it by just doing it more, so now my strategy is like
41:07
throwing myself into more speaking engagements on purpose, so that I just get more shots at it,
41:15
and then every time it gets a little bit easier, isn't it funny, people would be like, hold on,
41:19
I don't get it, you have a problem speaking publicly, but you literally do it for a living,
41:24
like you're speaking publicly now, I mean, okay, so there are humans in the room with you,
41:29
but like you talk for a living, I mean, it's funny, and no one would say,
41:34
be like, there's no way Scott experiences stage fright, like how would that be possible,
41:39
he's so fluid, he's so confident, but that's how humans are, right, we're an interesting species.
41:48
So yeah, like it works through reps, but for me, I'd had thousands of reps on live TV,
41:53
and I still was having panic, so I needed to figure out this other way out,
41:58
and so there are a couple of things that happen with altered states, one is the medicine itself
42:04
helps relieve anxiety, right, like especially with ketamine, they've done a lot of studies on ketamine,
42:10
but also MDMA and the psilocybin mushrooms, and there is a physical impact,
42:19
host treatment of these things that it definitely reduces the incidence of anxiety and depression,
42:25
but there are also images that you get from having these psychedelic experiences that you take
42:31
with you, and that I use this sort of like a treasure box to go back to for periods of calm,
42:38
like I'm thinking about, you know, one of these things in ketamine is that I was flying over this
42:43
forest, just like me, Matt, or my avatar, soaring over this forest, and I perch on this high cliff,
42:50
for some reason my avatar decided to take a nose dive into the forest and the dirt
42:56
thousand feet below, and instead of just like smashing my face into the forest or the forest floor,
43:03
the forest rose up to meet me. So in my afterwards, as I'm doing what's called integration,
43:08
which is like you think about and you get help with the psychologist, like why you saw the stuff
43:14
you saw, what experiences you had, and how to work that into your day-to-day life and gain meaning
43:20
from it, I was like, that's like the trust fall of life. I'm always worried that I'm going to let
43:25
myself down or that someone's going to let me down, so I have to have hyper control, but look at
43:30
that, the earth met up, rose up to meet me, it's going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay,
43:36
and it like maybe that wouldn't work for everybody, but for me that gave me a really a real sense of
43:41
peace, like I'm going to be caught in the trust fall of life. And so that's one of the things I keep
43:47
in my little treasure box of images. Did you go back and did you explore if there was some childhood
43:55
trauma or something that just like exacerbated this issue more than it probably should have been
44:00
something that happened when you were a kid that you didn't address like my dad's death, my dad
44:04
died when I was 12 and a and a plane crash. And again, like even before that, I was always into
44:09
adventure and I was pretty good at compartmentalizing stuff. But like I did not, I mean, nobody,
44:16
how can any like 12 year old grieve? I cried for a few days and then like my house was full of
44:24
friends and family and batting food and I ate and played and you know, like I was, I try to
44:31
avoid the pain. And then I became really good at avoiding the pain. And you know, we grieve
44:38
throughout our whole lives just as we heal throughout our whole lives. And you know, that that
44:44
wellness stuff is really work and you got to keep at it. And it wasn't, you know, I didn't just do
44:49
those psychedelic experiences, but I've been working on this stuff for five years now pretty much.
44:56
Or four, yeah. Yeah. And I didn't work. Fortunately, but that's that's the nature of it.
45:03
You also mentioned you tried a whole bunch of different pharmacy, pharmacological fixes for
45:09
this. It didn't really work out. Is there, is there any supplements that reduce anxiety or even
45:16
like compliment the therapy, the psychedelics, the work that you're putting in? I don't know, like
45:22
I've heard about beta blockers. I've never tried those, but things like that. So beta blockers are
45:28
a pharmaceutical that basically prevent your body, your heart from reaching a certain heart rate,
45:35
right? It basically will not let your heart beat super, super fast. So you will grieve so
45:41
heavily. You won't feel like you're having a heart attack. And just knocking that one symptom
45:47
of panic down helps a lot of people, right? Because then you don't get into the full cascade of
45:53
panic symptoms. It didn't work so well for me. It made me feel sluggish as did
46:00
Xanax, which is like a go-to for a lot of people. And also like I didn't want to be taking
46:06
you know, if I'm on air every day, like I'm going to take a Xanax every day or a couple Xanax,
46:10
like how much can I take? I really, I've always looked, it's a great drug. It does great things,
46:15
but I couldn't see myself on it every single day. And I felt like there was something fundamental
46:19
in me that needed to be addressed. And I, and after a while, like there was only so much,
46:24
only so much pharmacology could do. My favorite drugs though are the drugs that our body produces
46:32
endogenously. You know, like we hear the word endorphins, but we forget that it means endogenous
46:40
morphine. And endorphine is the morphine your body creates by itself. And you do it when you have
46:48
you know, 30 plus minutes of exercise and it's a pain killer, right? Serotonin is like the best
46:54
feel good drug. There was a reason the SSRI's the antidepressants are called SSRI's because they
47:01
basically make you uptake the serotonin faster. But the same thing can be done with a five minute walk.
47:08
Right? We're being outside in sunshine. Like there are ways of capturing these drugs that our
47:13
dogginess in our systems that we can achieve very, very easily by doing a couple of things.
47:20
Crying releases oxytocin, which is the bonding drug hormone. That's what happens when a mother
47:27
looks at her child or when you hug someone and you hug them chest to chest not like
47:32
side man hug, but like you hug someone chest to chest and you hear your hearts beating against
47:37
each other. You may not feel that. But like when you have like an actual heart to heart,
47:41
your body releases oxytocin, which is this feel good chemical. So there are all these ways of
47:45
achieving this stuff that we can do by just being a little bit kinder to our bodies. So like
47:50
people don't like to hear it, but yes, like I'm a huge advocate of exercise and of
47:56
eating right and of taking a five minute walk to make yourself feel better. Like there are all
48:02
these things that I try to keep in my daily routine that help me not get to the point of I'm
48:08
likely to have a panic attack. Like think about it, if you were to eat in that morning before
48:12
going to the public's not super where you got your blood pressure or if you had not had not been
48:17
drunk the night before or if you had had, you know, more of a five up more of a walk before it,
48:22
you probably would have gotten to the point where your body would be like, okay, no loss.
48:27
Something real bad is happening here and I'm going to pull medical arm, the fire alarm,
48:31
and I'm going to let Scott know that something is not right here and that he's going to pay attention.
48:36
Yeah, 100% and I also believe that there's so many societal factors, especially post COVID where
48:43
everyone is isolated. I'm sure that didn't help. I think that I mean, I don't work in an office
48:48
anymore. If I don't make an effort to go out and see people, I'm working in like my podcast
48:54
studio right now doubles as my actual office and I've blocked out the windows because I want the
49:00
lighting every time I record something. So I mean, that's not a healthy environment,
49:05
isolate yourself in every single day. You never go outside and I know a lot of people don't
49:10
find time for the gym, find time for their health and well-being. You can have the whole argument
49:15
about why food in the US is so damn unhealthy and all the added is and all the garbage is put into
49:20
it and I think the state of health in the US is not great. Outside of COVID, it's just not great,
49:25
it's not everything is almost like setting people up for this, this perfect storm of
49:31
overworked isolation, poor health, physical, mental. This is what you get.
49:37
Like for me, caffeine gives you and like I still drink it y'all. I drink a shit ton of caffeine.
49:43
I, but I try to limit it before I'm about to go on air. Like I'm not going to chuck a coffee
49:47
before air, you know a few hours before I'm going to stop drinking caffeine. Doesn't always work
49:52
out that way, but like I am much better when I don't do caffeine, but I'm, I like it. I like
50:00
that drug. I like it too. Actually for me, it's always balancing and other people that have the
50:08
same issue as presenting on air or for me presenting on stage or even jumping onto a podcast.
50:14
For me, it's I want that cognitive performance that comes with caffeine, but then I don't want
50:20
the anxiety. And it's always the balance here. Here is one little trick. Elfianine can help
50:26
balance the jitter knee jitteryness of caffeine. If you're looking for supplements, like that's
50:32
something that a lot of people take this sort of gives you a little bit of the edge, but takes away
50:36
the anxiety. Hoson's definition. You know, you wrote this book now a while back and then I know
50:42
you got tied up with work and in this book of process, the writing process, the research process
50:48
super time consuming and lengthy as well. When you look back at all the stuff that you put into the
50:52
book and even in the past year or two years, what is one thing that you've learned about yourself
50:59
or about panic attacks, anxiety that you wish you could have put in that maybe you didn't?
51:04
I think a lot of it has to do with male self care. Like what I realized is that this three and a half
51:13
year journey is something that I had not afforded myself for, you know, 20 years of the career
51:18
before that, which is to take a little time out for me. Like yeah, because I, in order to do the
51:24
reporting of the book, like I ended up going on a retreat to, I was already in Peru doing a story,
51:32
but I ended up taking a week for myself to do an ayahuasca retreat. So I did ayahuasca there
51:38
and five amio and mescaline and I was with a group. It was a coed tour, but it ended up being just
51:44
guys and like I basically had a week to bond with other men and like that was also one of the really
51:51
healthy things like having that kind of experience that I'd never afforded myself because like I'm a
51:57
worker, I'm a dad and that's what I do, you know, I'm a worker, husband, dad. And if it's up those
52:03
three things, I don't golf, I don't have hobbies, you know, I have friends, but my focus is my work,
52:08
my family, and that's it. And suddenly like I'm taking these years out of my life to spend time
52:14
writing, to spend time interviewing, to go on these retreats, to do breath work, to do ayahuasca,
52:20
to do these altered states, and that was part of it. It's like, oh, you know, I did a retreat
52:26
at the Ohai Valley, which is like one of the nicest places on the planet. I'm taking time for me,
52:33
to work on my own health. And that ended up being one of the real side benefits of it. And I realized
52:41
that we don't do enough of it in the terms of like, yeah, guys play golf, but like in terms of
52:45
really thinking about taking care of ourselves and nurturing ourselves. And I know people hate that
52:51
word, but it is true, nurturing ourselves in a more holistic way. And it's something I'd never done
52:56
and suddenly afforded myself the opportunity and low and behold, it worked. It made me feel a lot
53:02
better. I don't, I think a lot of men in particular don't realize how high strung and how fucked up
53:11
they are internally until shit hits the fan. And then they have something like what happened to you.
53:18
I mean, maybe I've been worrying about my health for a while before that trip through publics.
53:23
And it for sure. Oh, Scott, that's exactly it. That's it. Sorry, just don't be like, yeah, you just
53:29
hit it. I'll tell you a story that I just saw that was really messed up. It was really sad actually.
53:36
And I haven't verified the facts about this story, but this is like a Twitter story. So take
53:40
with a grain of salt. However, if it if it played out the way that it did, then this is a combination of
53:45
really sad story plus mental health crisis. So the story was in the UK, it just happened on the 25th,
53:52
a guy who owned a luxury watch store was robbed. And that night, he killed himself.
54:00
He killed himself after having, you know, probably a couple million dollars in merchandise stolen.
54:04
So the point is it's horrible that he was robbed. A robbery should never lead to a suicide.
54:11
If assuming there was no other factors at play, if it was just the fact that money was stolen or value
54:18
was stolen, the point is the point is that's a completely avoidable scenario. And that's an extreme.
54:24
But I think that on a day-to-day level, when shit goes wrong and most people's lives in their
54:30
career, this is when they have breakdowns. This is when they last shed at their wife. This is when
54:34
they have panic attacks. This was just an extreme example of a ton of values stolen from this
54:39
guys shop and suicide. But on a much less extreme in a much less extreme way, I think this happens
54:48
all the time with men. And this is what ruins careers, breaks up families because they don't
54:52
realize it for the past 30 years. They just been dealing with shit and not really understanding
54:57
the anxiety and the stress it's bubbling up in their body. And when something goes wrong,
55:02
they can't handle it. And this is what I see happen all the time. But I don't know how to fix it.
55:08
I guess it's just about being self-aware enough to understand that you should probably spend time
55:14
on yourself, whether or not it's all the stuff that you went through because of the panic attack.
55:18
But many take care of themselves too because a lot of men just go through life thinking they're okay.
55:23
Exactly. No, I think you really hit it there. And it leads to some to the exact outcomes that
55:30
we work so hard to try to avoid. Right? Exact failures that we think that we're working so hard
55:37
not to have. And, you know, it's a lot of unintended consequences.
55:42
All right. Where are people going to go get your book? Obviously anywhere books are sold,
55:48
but also working to connect with you if you want to send them to social, website, anything.
55:53
The book is no time to panic. You can find it anywhere books are sold, as Scott just said.
55:59
You can find me on Instagram and Twitter. I should do TikTok more, but I don't.
56:08
It's Matt got the ABC on Twitter and Instagram. Matt got the ABC. Perfect.
56:14
You know, if you were going to go back and now you've gone through your career and you've
56:19
sort of had different seasons to your career, especially since you had a pre-awareness season
56:26
than a post-awareness season to your life in your career, what would be one lesson that you
56:31
will go back and tell your 20 year old self? Oh, good one. Slow down. It's hard. You know,
56:39
like the thing I would have said is slow down. On the other hand, like having a Ford motor up,
56:46
you know, my butt is like my grandfather used to say because I was always running around. It's like
56:51
that's also kind of my secret to my success is like I just had so much energy, you know, and like
56:57
charging full speed ahead. And so I would have told myself to slow down. On the other hand,
57:03
it has been a secret to success. But yeah, I would have said slow, there is a there is a happy
57:11
medium, right? There is like you can be hard charging, but not suicidal. And I felt like I was
57:18
really teetering on the edge of doing really, really dumb stuff. And it could have led me into
57:24
trouble. And I think that was part of what the panic was is like my brain to let your brain
57:29
telling you like for a long time, you've been preoccupied about your health. Mine was trying to
57:33
tell me to slow down for a while. And I didn't really listen to it. And I needed to take care of my
57:39
self in a way that I just would not afford myself. So yeah, self care and slow down is what I would
57:45
have told myself that the 20 year old man.