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If You Have Anxiety, Please Watch This. · Bye Bye Panic

0:00
[SPEAKER_00]: If you're struggling with anxiety, you've been lied to.
0:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You've been told all you can do is cope and manage with these sensations.
0:07
[SPEAKER_00]: 15 years ago, I was diagnosed with an anxiety and panic disorder, and I was told that this was my life forever.
0:16
[SPEAKER_00]: I tried everything, breathing exercises, trauma work, even elimination diets.
0:22
[SPEAKER_00]: none of it worked.
0:24
[SPEAKER_00]: What helped me wasn't these coping or managing tricks?
0:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It was my fight with my anxiety that was keeping it alive.
0:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Since my own journey I've spent the last 7 years helping people around the world overcome their anxiety and chronic symptoms, including many doctors and therapists.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: So here are 10 anxiety specific lessons I've learned to help you heal from anxiety.
0:46
[SPEAKER_00]: number one, anxiety isn't a chemical imbalance.
0:50
[SPEAKER_00]: If you've been told that your anxiety is caused by a chemical imbalance in your brain, you're not alone.
0:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Many people have been told this, myself included.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: But in 2022, researchers looked at decades of studies on serotonin and found no consistent evidence that low serotonin actually causes depression.
1:10
[SPEAKER_00]: So the theory that shaped how millions of people understood what was happening to them was never proven.
1:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that study was about depression specifically.
1:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But the same chemical imbalance explanation has been used to describe anxiety for decades, the same logic, and often the same medication.
1:29
[SPEAKER_00]: So if the foundation is in true, it's worth asking why was this explained as a chemical
1:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this is where things get really interesting.
1:39
[SPEAKER_00]: The serotonin hypothesis came from working backwards.
1:44
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the 1960s, researchers noticed that certain drugs that happened to affect serotonin also seemed to improve mood.
1:51
[SPEAKER_00]: So they assumed if a drug that raises serotonin helps depression, then depression must be caused by low serotonin.
1:59
[SPEAKER_00]: If you think about it, it really doesn't make any sense.
2:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's like saying, aspirin fixes a headache, so headaches must be caused by an aspirin deficiency.
2:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And survey showed that over 80% of the general public believe that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance.
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And the pharmaceutical industry has ran with this framing, because it makes SSRI's selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors easy to market.
2:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy for doctors to explain this as a chemical imbalance issue.
2:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Now believe it or not, unlike many others, I'm not against medication.
2:33
[SPEAKER_00]: There are people out there that owe their life to this medication.
2:36
[SPEAKER_00]: What I'm doing is challenging the root cause of all this, that the root cause is somehow a chemical imbalance, which isn't true.
2:43
[SPEAKER_00]: So if it's not caused by a chemical imbalance, what's causing anxiety?
2:47
[SPEAKER_00]: This leads me to point two, which is anxiety is your nervous system stuck on protection mode.
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Now we need to look at anxiety in two different ways.
2:55
[SPEAKER_00]: There's anxiety as an emotion and there's anxiety as a state.
3:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time.
3:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Before a big meeting, maybe before a flight, before getting on camera and filming a video, that's anxiety as an emotion.
3:11
[SPEAKER_00]: It shows up, it makes sense, and it passes.
3:14
[SPEAKER_00]: But when your body feels anxious and there's nothing to be anxious about,
3:18
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're dealing with intense physical symptoms that come out of nowhere, that the doctors don't have any explanation for, when you're feeling a wave of intense panic first thing in the morning, that's not anxiety as emotion.
3:31
[SPEAKER_00]: That's anxiety as a state.
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: That is your nervous system.
3:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, your nervous system is your body's alarm system.
3:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Its job is to detect danger and prepare you
3:42
[SPEAKER_00]: and it's very good on its job.
3:44
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the problem.
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system got stuck on that on mode, that on position.
3:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And it didn't get stuck because there's something wrong with you, it's not because it's a chemical imbalance, but because at some point your body experienced enough stress that it decided to stop turning the alarm system off.
4:02
[SPEAKER_00]: So now your alarm system fires all day.
4:05
[SPEAKER_00]: This shows up in panic attacks and intense physical symptoms and intrusive thoughts.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: This happens in safe places around people because it doesn't know the difference anymore of what's safe and what's not.
4:17
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is something researchers are also starting to acknowledge that anxiety itself isn't the problem.
4:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a normal human response.
4:26
[SPEAKER_00]: What we've been taught is this false belief that we should never feel anxious.
4:30
[SPEAKER_00]: And that belief is actually making things worse.
4:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's where I feel experts still aren't telling you the full picture, which is they're not deciphering between normal anxiety that comes and goes and a nervous system that's stuck.
4:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And if the second one that doesn't need to be managed, it needs to be understood.
4:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the good news.
4:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The second type of anxiety, anxiety as a state, that is reversible.
4:53
[SPEAKER_00]: your nervous system just needs to relearn to shut off the alarm.
4:57
[SPEAKER_00]: So if anxiety isn't a chemical imbalance and it's something that you can reverse, well then the question is, why is it still on?
5:05
[SPEAKER_00]: This leads me to point three which is everything you've been doing to turn it off is actually keeping it on.
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So your nervous system stays stuck for one reason and one reason only.
5:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps getting confirmation that the danger is real, not actual danger, but what it's interpreting as danger.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: When I was dealing with anxiety, that was my physical symptoms.
5:28
[SPEAKER_00]: I was convinced that my digestive issues, my brain fog, my heart palpitations were not anxiety.
5:34
[SPEAKER_00]: That was way too bizarre.
5:35
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just way too physical.
5:37
[SPEAKER_00]: So because I thought it was physical, I would try to fight the symptom.
5:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I would try to fix it.
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Anytime I felt the sensation, I felt like something was wrong.
5:45
[SPEAKER_00]: I would keep rushing to the doctors, but what I was really doing was I was teaching my nervous system that this symptom was dangerous.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And my nervous system did what it does best.
5:57
[SPEAKER_00]: If it interpreted something as danger, it stayed on high alert.
6:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, here is the wild part.
6:03
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't have to be your symptoms.
6:05
[SPEAKER_00]: You might not even have fear of your symptoms, but you could still be keeping this alive.
6:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it's not just about the sensations, but it's also the stories you run on repeat.
6:15
[SPEAKER_00]: You might have stories like, what if this is my life forever?
6:18
[SPEAKER_00]: What if this never goes away?
6:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I've tried everything.
6:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Last week I was fine, but now this is all back again.
6:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Every one of those narratives sends the same signal to your nervous system, which is, there's something wrong.
6:31
[SPEAKER_00]: and a nervous system that still believes that something is wrong has no reason to calm down.
6:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, that might make sense, but what can you tangibly do to start signaling to your nervous system that nothing is wrong?
6:42
[SPEAKER_00]: That it is safe.
6:43
[SPEAKER_00]: This leads me to point 4, which is stop treating each symptom like a separate problem.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: See, when we're dealing with anxiety, we try to fix each specific symptom or sensation one at a time.
6:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you were like me, this would be overwhelming.
6:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Some symptoms would subside.
6:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Some symptoms were incredibly stubborn.
7:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Some would shift.
7:02
[SPEAKER_00]: And what helped me and what helps people on this journey is shifting from multiple symptoms to one problem.
7:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We call this the anxiety umbrella, the nervous system umbrella.
7:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Simply put, everything you're dealing with is a result of a nervous system, stuck on protection mode.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need a different strategy for each symptom.
7:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't need to play this whack-a-mo game with each symptom or sensation.
7:26
[SPEAKER_00]: you just need one response for all of them, which is to let it be there without treating it like an emergency.
7:34
[SPEAKER_00]: When this sensation comes up, you feel it.
7:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead of fixing it, instead of fighting it, instead ofizing a chat GPT, Googling or running away from it, you let it be loud, without giving it the microphone.
7:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you're not saying you don't care or you're pretending it's not there, you just choose not to react in panic.
7:52
[SPEAKER_00]: You send a message to your nervous system that it might have not received for a very long time, which is this is not dangerous.
8:00
[SPEAKER_00]: That one response, repeated across different symptoms, different scenarios, different days.
8:05
[SPEAKER_00]: This is what will teach your nervous system to start turning the alarm off.
8:09
[SPEAKER_00]: Now here's the advice that keeps anxiety suffer stuck for months, even years, and we're told that you need to avoid a trigger.
8:17
[SPEAKER_00]: If you feel uncomfortable, if you feel high anxiety, leave that situation.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's the truth, and here's what leads me to point five, which is the things that you're avoiding are the things that will heal you.
8:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not saying go jump out of an airplane if you have a fear of heights.
8:33
[SPEAKER_00]: But what I am saying is that maybe the trips that you're avoiding, the dinner plans, or canceling, the places and things you avoid because you're scared, that's what's keeping your anxiety alive.
8:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I know this is hard to hear because you find momentary temporary relief from avoiding these things.
8:50
[SPEAKER_00]: It feels good in the moment.
8:52
[SPEAKER_00]: But that avoidance is telling your nervous system you were right, this is dangerous.
8:58
[SPEAKER_00]: So your nervous system sees this and next time it's in that situation or a similar situation, it sets off the alarms.
9:06
[SPEAKER_00]: This is why anxiety suffers can be living fully freely initially and all of a sudden their life becomes contained.
9:12
[SPEAKER_00]: They're almost in a prison because any time they feel anxiety they avoid it and that just reinforces the anxiety to the point where they can't even leave their house.
9:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like a Chinese finger trap.
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: The more you pull away, the more anxiety pulls you back in.
9:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I'm not saying you have to do everything all at once, but you can't start showing up to the things your body has been telling you to run away from.
9:35
[SPEAKER_00]: You can start with one thing at a time, going to the grocery store, going back to work, starting to drive again.
9:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually you'll see your world expand.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, as you're doing this, you might be thinking, yeah, Sean, that's easier said than done, but my body's screaming at me.
9:51
[SPEAKER_00]: How am I supposed to be doing these things when every part of me is saying, don't?
9:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this leads me to point six, which is, you don't need to feel safe to be safe.
10:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what I do know.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: If you keep waiting, waiting to feel calm first, waiting to feel ready, waiting for anxiety to leave before you start living, you will never feel ready.
10:12
[SPEAKER_00]: That day will never come because that's not how this works.
10:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Your nervous system doesn't update from waiting.
10:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It updates from doing.
10:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It needs proof.
10:22
[SPEAKER_00]: And the only proof your nervous system will accept is you walking into the thing your body is screaming about.
10:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's coming on the other side.
10:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, when you do these things, you're not going to feel safe at first.
10:33
[SPEAKER_00]: You're going to feel terrified.
10:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Your heart's going to race.
10:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Your body is going to beg you to leave.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But you stay anyway.
10:40
[SPEAKER_00]: You show your nervous system that there is no danger.
10:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Just because you don't feel safe doesn't mean you aren't safe.
10:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And as you keep doing this, you will see the shift.
10:51
[SPEAKER_00]: It won't happen overnight, but your nervous system will start getting the update.
10:55
[SPEAKER_00]: The alarm will start to get a little quieter.
10:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is because it's not learning from information.
11:01
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a learning through experience.
11:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, the journey will not be smooth sailing.
11:07
[SPEAKER_00]: In fact, it's going to feel challenging at times.
11:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And this leads me to point seven, which is your body will test you before it trusts you.
11:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Here's what happened that no one warns you about.
11:17
[SPEAKER_00]: When you start doing this, you're going to have great days.
11:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You might even have great weeks.
11:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You'll start thinking, okay, I finally figured this out.
11:24
[SPEAKER_00]: I know what to do.
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: and then anxiety is going to come back.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it's the symptoms, maybe it's the fear, maybe it's the thoughts, maybe it's even worse than before.
11:32
[SPEAKER_00]: And your brain is going to say, see, it didn't work.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: You're right back where you're started.
11:38
[SPEAKER_00]: This isn't going to work.
11:39
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to find something else.
11:41
[SPEAKER_00]: but here's the truth, you're not back to square one.
11:44
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just that your body is not gonna trust you that quickly.
11:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Think about it this way.
11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Your body has been running the same alarm system for months, maybe even years.
11:53
[SPEAKER_00]: And now you're asking it to trust that danger is over.
11:56
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not gonna take your word for it after one good week.
11:59
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's gonna test you.
12:00
[SPEAKER_00]: It's gonna send you another wave, another spike, another bad morning, and it watches what you do.
12:06
[SPEAKER_00]: If you panic, your nervous system says, great, I knew it.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We gotta keep the alarm systems on, but if you respond the same way you have been practicing, letting it be there, not reacting, continuing to live your life, it starts saying, okay, maybe we are safe.
12:23
[SPEAKER_00]: and that's how this works.
12:24
[SPEAKER_00]: It happens layer by layer.
12:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Test by test.
12:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Your body doesn't heal in a straight line.
12:30
[SPEAKER_00]: It heals in rounds.
12:31
[SPEAKER_00]: And every round you pass, the alarm gets a little quieter.
12:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And so when a bad day comes, and it will, don't let it erase your progress.
12:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The bad day is just a test.
12:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Pass it.
12:43
[SPEAKER_00]: And your nervous system moves one step closer to turning off
12:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, if you've made it this far, you might have some clarity that this is a solvable problem, where you're inherently going to ask yourself, can this come back once it's gone?
12:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And this is the question everyone is afraid to ask.
13:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Now I'm going to share something that's a bit confronting.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: What kept your anxiety alive wasn't just your nervous system.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It was actually the behaviors and thought patterns you had about what was going on.
13:12
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was those behaviors and patterns that reinforce the anxiety cycle.
13:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The reality is that stress comes and goes.
13:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone will have stress at some point in some capacity in their life.
13:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing or no one can protect you from that.
13:28
[SPEAKER_00]: But part of this journey is also taking responsibility of what kept this alive.
13:32
[SPEAKER_00]: which a lot of it had to do with your behaviors.
13:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was not understanding what was happening.
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was the unproductive thinking habits you had around your symptoms, your sensations.
13:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe it was the way you spoke to yourself.
13:44
[SPEAKER_00]: And I want to be honest, these are not tools we technically learned in school.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: We just learned how to cope or manage or bring the exercises.
13:51
[SPEAKER_00]: And that had its place.
13:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But part of this journey is also taking radical responsibility of how you're showing up.
13:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, we might not understand the mechanics of anxiety.
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody taught us the mechanics of thoughts, but once you're able to understand this, then it's not about whether this comes back or not.
14:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Because once you get out of the cycle, you know what to do to come out of it.
14:13
[SPEAKER_00]: So once you know how to get out, you have no fear about whether it comes back in or not.
14:17
[SPEAKER_00]: But this doesn't mean that you won't have challenges or stressors in life.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone will.
14:22
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about the stressor.
14:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's not about the challenge.
14:25
[SPEAKER_00]: It's about what you do next.
14:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And learning the mechanics of this and powers you.
14:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Because it makes the recovery journey something that's inherent within you.
14:34
[SPEAKER_00]: You have the keys to this.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this might all be well and good, and you might be thinking, but is there other things I can do to help with my anxiety?
14:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I do diets?
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I do exercise?
14:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Can I make lifestyle changes?
14:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Surely that makes a difference.
14:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And this leads me to point nine, which is makes lifestyle changes, but do it for your life, not for the anxiety.
14:55
[SPEAKER_00]: When people start learning about anxiety, they do what I did.
14:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They turn their entire life into a recovery project.
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: They start meditating to fix their anxiety.
15:04
[SPEAKER_00]: They exercise to lower their anxiety.
15:07
[SPEAKER_00]: They change their diet to reduce their anxiety.
15:09
[SPEAKER_00]: They sleep better to manage their anxiety.
15:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything becomes about anxiety.
15:14
[SPEAKER_00]: And here's the problem with that.
15:15
[SPEAKER_00]: When you do everything for your anxiety, you keep anxiety at the center of your life.
15:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Every habit is a reminder that something's wrong.
15:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Every routine is built around a problem.
15:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you're still making anxiety the center fold of your life, here's the truth, exercise because it makes you feel good.
15:34
[SPEAKER_00]: Eat a balanced diet to improve your quality of life, not to make the sensations go away.
15:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Meditate for your overall well-being.
15:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Sleep because your body deserves a rest.
15:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Do this for you.
15:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care of yourself the way anyone should.
15:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Not as an anxiety patient managing the condition,
15:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, this leads me to the most important point of all, which is you're not the only one going through this, and this isn't a life sense.
16:05
[SPEAKER_00]: The hardest part about anxiety isn't always the symptoms.
16:08
[SPEAKER_00]: It's actually the loneliness behind it.
16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: You look around and everyone seems fine, everyone seems to handle life without their bodies falling apart, and you start thinking you're the only person on the planet going through this.
16:21
[SPEAKER_00]: you're not.
16:22
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not even close.
16:24
[SPEAKER_00]: But here's why it feels that way.
16:26
[SPEAKER_00]: When somebody heals from this, you never know.
16:29
[SPEAKER_00]: There's no announcement, there's no badge, there's no visible sign.
16:33
[SPEAKER_00]: They just quietly go back to living their life.
16:35
[SPEAKER_00]: They'll have stressors, they'll have good days, and it's not a big deal.
16:39
[SPEAKER_00]: But you never hear about the people who made it out.
16:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You hear about the people that are stuck who are still in the cycle who are asking for help.
16:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that makes it feel like nobody ever gets better, but they do all the time, even doctors, therapists, professors, parents, athletes, people who at every symptom you have the panic, the busyness, the de-realization, the intrusive thoughts, they all came out on the other side.
17:05
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's why I created an entire YouTube channel filled with nothing but their recovery stories.
17:11
[SPEAKER_00]: real people, real recovery people who are exactly where you are right now, and also didn't believe that recovery was possible.
17:19
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'll add a link to that channel here.
17:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Go watch a few recovery stories, find someone who's stories like yours, let their recovery be your proof that this isn't a life sense, and if you're feeling overwhelmed by the amount of recovery stories in that channel, I've actually built a small tool that matches you with the right success story based on what you're going through.
17:41
[SPEAKER_00]: You are not alone in this, you never were.