Barry McDonagh talks about panic attacks with Anthony Amos

Barry: Thanks everyone for joining us. I’ve got an interesting interview here today. Anthony Amos. He contacted me after using Panic Away and spoke about the need to address men and anxiety. It’s something — actually when he mentioned it, it’s something that is very close to my heart because I’m really interested in talking to men about mental health. I don’t even like that word ‘mental health’. I prefer ‘mental fitness’ and this idea of just looking after yourself. Anthony is a really interesting guy. He’s got a really interesting background. Anthony, thanks for coming today. Thanks for coming to Dublin. Anthony was actually on business in Ireland and made some time so he could be here and we could have a chat.

Anthony: Thanks Barry. Thanks for having me. It’s nice to be here in sunny Dublin. So if I just give myself a little bit of a background to give the guys out there an understanding that I’m not just somebody off the street that wants to throw out the way that I’ve dealt with these so-called panic attacks. I would just like to address once so I can get going on my feelings behind all that and give the guys out there just a good understanding.

My background is in franchising. I create franchise systems, build them up and then sell them to companies that are interested in purchasing the end product. We’ve had a very successful business called Hydrodog. I founded it with my brother back in ’94 and took it to the largest franchise of its kind in the world. To this day, there’s over a couple hundred in Australia. I brought it to America. It’s a worldwide brand. That’s pretty much the platform that injected me into the stratosphere if you like, into other marketing, other franchising products. Also some fantastic business partners I’ve got in the U.S. right now.

When I started to get these panic attacks about three years ago, like all guys out there, I had no idea what it was. I thought I was dying. I was actually rushed to the hospital and it was a very frightening experience.

Barry: Well, let’s actually talk about that because you’ve mentioned that earlier. Let’s talk about that episode in particular.

Anthony: Well, the thing for me was it actually happened after a big weekend. I played professional football when I started my career then I played local football right up until I was 30. I was a man’s man, knocking around with some tough guys and having a really good time obviously when we would win and celebrate. I woke up the next morning after a big night and nearly fainted but had the heart just motoring on me, just like I was dying because I’ve never had this experience before.

I called out to my wife and I actually said, “I think I’m having a heart attack.” She called the ambulance. The ambulance came and I get to the hospital. I do all the tests, -nothing showed up but nobody said that I had an anxiety attack or panic attack or anything like that. I still didn’t really know, I didn’t really want to tell anybody about it this episode, that I had that problem. I didn’t research it back then. I just didn’t want to know about it.

A year or so went by. I hadn’t really had another one again but then when I went overseas, it happened again to me after a big night, the drinking but this time I knew what it was because I had researched and found out it was a panic attack.

The word panic to me and this is something that Barry and I have been talking about when you think about it, when you think about the men out there go, “Well, I don’t suffer from a panic attack” because it’s the word itself. Once you’ve been through one, I think those types of people that have had them are really strong mindset people that can actually get through them. They are the toughest things to nail out. When you don’t know what they are and you’re able to get through them. Man, I respect anyone that’s been through that process because it’s tough.

When people understand what it is, -it’s the fight or flight rule
If the lion or tiger– jumps through the window right now we are either or going to run away or we’re going to stay there and defend our lives. That’s pretty much what happens to us. That’s what causes these things but they’re coming out at the wrong time. Our mind is not in the right balance like it used to be once you start to get them. I just know that feeling. I feel like that I’m a warrior in my mind state that’s taking this on so when it ever happens from now on, I picture myself as being in a warrior state.

So I’m now in a warrior state. I’m dealing with fight or flight, just like thousands of years ago, getting through that period of time to survive. It is survival. It is absolute survival and there’s no sugarcoating this because it’s a very, very difficult thing to come out of.

Barry: What bodily sensations were the worst for you, what were the triggers?

Anthony: You know when you take a deep breath in and you can’t cut it like when you go [breathes] and it cuts off. I mean, you take that for granted when you’re having one of these. Because when you can’t cut that off, you actually feel like that you are taking your last breath. It’s probably the breathing part for me but then when the heart starts to kick in, it starts to give you that feeling that shit , “Hold on, I know this is a panic attack. I should say I’m in warrior state

now. Is it a heart attack this time?” You still have that doubt but then you go through your steps and you calm yourself down.

Taking this on full-on and getting angry as my friend/business partner who’s with me today suggests you turn into the Incredible Hulk and you make it disappear. You’re getting there and you just take it on and get angry. It slowly starts to dissipate. Because once it peaks, the only time it can happen again - because that one is gone but another one is on its way because the fear of the fear will bring it back and it starts agian. So that’s probably the scariest part is when you trip into that circle that just doesn’t stop.

Barry: Yeah. It’s that loop of anxiety which is — it’s the fear of fear and it’s really, really difficult to snap out of that once you get caught up in it. It’s a very scary place to be as well, isn’t it? I think for men, it’s a really hard place to admit to be in because for us, it’s all about - the funny thing with men is that it’s not the fear of what other men think. I think it’s more of the fear of what your family thinks and your partner thinks because you’ve got to be the strong person for them.

You know that expression where you think that they would rather you die on your horse than fall on the ground vulnerable so that you are the warrior. You’ve got to be that for your children. You’ve got to be that for your wife. When you’re not playing that role, it shatters your confidence and it’s very hard to admit you have a problem.

Anthony: You know Barry, that’s probably the strongest message — what can I say? Probably the strongest message that I can share with the guys out there is that when you are that warrior in your family and you’re having one around your kids, man, that is — it’s demoralizing. You get back up. You brush it off but they’ve seen it. They’ve seen you go through it. My daughter would say, “Daddy, you’re having trouble breathing again?” Because she knows I’ve been to the hospital. That’s not something that you really want to share because they need to feel safe around you all the time.

Barry: Exactly.

Anthony: I think it’s about education. The guys that I’ve been talking to and just to sort of let the listeners out there know, I’ll go into a group of guys. I never embarrass them around their girls but I’ll get over to a group guys. I’ll say, “Does anybody here had one of those things where you feel like you’re dying and you’ve had a heart attack, that and you’ve got to go to a hospital and you’ve been to the hospital?” One would say, “Yeah, I think I’ve had one of those.”

“You know they’re panic attacks?” “No, No, I’ve never had a panic attack, no.”

People don’t know what it is. Once they’re educated and they know that it is this panic attack and as I said, it’s really in the name. If we could sort of work it a bit, it’s a warrior state of mind, guys would be different about it. They’d share more examples and more times that they’ve had it with each other. But then the other ones are going, “Oh yeah, I had one of those when I was younger. Actually I had one of those last week.” They start to talk about it. Everybody’s now engaged with it all. We laugh about our examples on when we were on the floor of the kitchen and we couldn’t move. Things like that start to get really funny.

Barry: It’s ridiculous, yeah, the states that you get into, the thoughts that you have when you’re having a panic attack. You feel like you’re a totally different person when you’re in that zone. It’s amazing. I’m always surprised on how it catches you. The intensity of it — now, you talked about anger, was anger a key for you? What was the thing that transformed it for you?

Anthony: What transformed it for me? I think taking it on head-on was the key. I think it becomes habitual after a time because the guys stopped doing what they love to do because they know the next day that they’re going to get one especially if it’s drink-related. Since I’ve used your little technique of having a drink of water in between every drink until I forget at the end, it’s still enough for me to wake up tomorrow and feel a little bit better.

But the secret to getting guys back on the horse again and getting out with their mates again is they’ve got to understand what they have first so they can enter the program to get rid of what’s wrong with them. It’s just such a mindset because habitually, if you get into that process and say, “Right, here it comes. All right, bring it on, give me a heart attack. Make me stop breathing.” Then it just slowly starts to dissipate after it peaks and then it goes. But if you do that all the time, they eventually go. You don’t actually have to do it anymore because your body seems to lock it back into where it originally was.

Barry: Yeah. Then you enter the state of acceptance where regardless of what the sensation is, you accept it for what it is. You don’t get upset by it. You can have those hangovers and you can deal with the sensations and not get worried by it. You don’t even have to use that anger anymore because it doesn’t peak. You’re aware of what it is. You know what it is and you look after yourself as well a bit better I think after panic attacks.

You become more aware of not to overdrink if you know the next day you’re going to really suffer, looking after your hydration. Exercise is so important. Taking time out, you know, all the key things that we know are important for mental health. I think you’d become more aware of them. You watch your life and if business is getting stressful or home life is getting stressful, you kind of say, “Okay, I need to step back a bit here. I need to take some time for myself, maybe read stuff that’s been working for me again, go over the materials.” It’s more about just being aware more than anything else. It makes such a difference.

Anthony: Yeah, you know, you’re right, Barry. Adding all of this together of eating clean, drinking stacks of water — I drink a gallon of water a day now and that helps so much because you’re hydrating your body, you’re eating clean, you’re exercising. Then that on top of learning the Panic Away Program, it then just keeps it a nice, easy consistency. You can still have your drink. If you’re really good throughout the week and your culture is to drink -

Barry: Yeah, I mean Irish people.

Anthony: And Australians, we love to have a drink. If you behave yourself right up until that one drinking day or that one occasion, it’s nice to reward yourself in having some nice things. There’s probably some people out there are saying, you shouldn’t drink. But it’s hard when you’ve got cultures like ours. That’s the way.

But the other thing too. This is my thing with business is you can initially make people have a great time and work it all out. But if you have a little drink with him, it might only be a few, you start to sort of relax a little bit more and then there’s a lot more things to talk about you probably wouldn’t do normally. To me, it’s important to do that.

Barry: Yeah, of course. I totally understand that. I don’t think people should have to cut alcohol out. I don’t even think that people should have to cut coffee out of their lives completely. For the initial phase, they often have to just to get through that really difficult spot but then bring it back in slowly, bring in a bit of coffee again, bring in a few drinks again and just see how you are.

I even tell people sometimes really go for it. If you really use the program well and you’re feeling brave, go out in the piss and see how you do the next day. Challenge yourself that way. Push yourself into the situations where you’ve been - because if you have this idea in your head that I can do everything but that, then you’re still suffering from anxiety. If you’ve still got areas where you’re uncomfortable, you’ve got to go in to those areas.

Plan it out, whatever it is, it could be a plane flight, it could be sitting in a meeting room, business, public speaking, finding the opportunity to challenge yourself. Because I think we all, after having experienced panic attacks are a bit reserved by certain things. Sometimes we don’t even admit to it but we kind of - we don’t even admit to ourselves that we’re avoiding situations. It’s so important to banish it from every area of your life. So you go back the guy that you always were, -fearless.

Anthony: I think the best advice you gave me was - because I was happy enough just to take a small pill to get me back on track again but I don’t want to have to be dependent on that, take them with me, make sure that I would always have it just in case. Then when it’s all done naturally, it’s just such an easy thing. You don’t have to worry about making sure you’ve always got it on you.

But going through that and doing the experiment and yeah, why don’t you go, get on piss and get shitfaced and deal with it, like through the program and that’s exactly what I did. That moment, that was the whole thing of, I can do this now and I can still have a drink and not really have a problem with it at the end of the day.

That was great for me to get back on the horse because I didn’t even want to stop doing that. That was the truth. It’s nice to sort of celebrate your wins that you have in life and to do that sort of thing is really good. But I look at it like this, people that are going through the panic attack or the warrior state, is, it’s -

Barry: I really like that, the warrior state.

Anthony: I think it’s great for men. I think men need to know that they are tough fuckers going through this. It’s not that they’re pussies. They are tough in their mind to get through. You’re being a warrior. I mean, we’re dealing with fight or flight. We’re not dealing with some mental illness. We’re dealing with a mechanism that’s been in our DNA since God knows when but it’s all about dealing with this on a really high level.

Barry: It’s being triggered at the wrong moment.

Anthony: That’s it. That’s exactly right.

Barry: We’re just trying to figure out what’s going on, why is it happening now and getting through it..

Anthony: Yeah. I got a little story. I don’t know how relevant it can be for some people but to me, I believe that having this little condition that people are getting with the panic attacks is happening for a reason. It’s making people stronger down the track for them at some level, whether it’s business or whether it’s relationship. It gives them the courage to know that if I can get through a panic attack, man, they can get through anything. Then once you’ve learned not to have them anymore, you’ve built like a resistance of strength within your mind to be able to cope with much larger things that are coming.

There’s a little bit of a story. I shared this with my business partner today is that back in the early ’50s, there were Japanese that came out into Australia and they got a hobs of coral fish. I’m not really sure what sort of fish it was but it’s just a bit of a story to give a really good ending. They said, “We love this fish that much. We want you to send it to Japan. We’ll buy stacks of it.” It made everybody very, very wealthy.

They sent all the fish over. They froze the fish. When the fish arrived, it tasted terrible because it was frozen, it wasn’t fresh. They went back and regrouped and they then organized the ship to go over in tanks so the coral fish were in all these tanks. They went over live. They turned up and they were all gangly and straggly. They didn’t look healthy. They were terrible to eat. So again, it was ruined.

Then, I did some research and found out that these coral fish had a black catfish that was its predator. They split the tanks in half and put like a see-through piece of glass. The catfish was on one side, coral fish was on the other side. While it was traveling, it had its whole nervous system consistently worrying about getting eaten by the black catfish. When the coral fish arrived in Japan, they were brand new, fresh and the business was done, still done to this day.

I feel that these warrior moments that you will go through, that’s our catfish. That’s what is giving us the strength in ourselves to know that this is happening for a reason. There’s something bigger on the other side that can invest in us to become a better person, to become more tolerant. Anyone that’s got kids out there needs something to understand patience and to look at them. When you go through this, your appreciation of the smaller things goes through the roof. You only need to have one to understand that.

I believe they come into people’s lives to give them more strength to down the track. Then once you’ve got that lesson, go through the program and get rid of it for good, then that extra appreciation that you’ve got that some

people don’t get these particular things will never understand.

Barry: Yeah, I totally agree. I think you become a bigger person because of this. You’re more aware of yourself. It’s a tool as well. You can go on and teach other people because so many people suffer from the problem. But it definitely, definitely makes you grow as a person without a doubt because you’re challenged in a way that most people are never challenged. You’re challenged on an inner level. Your foundations are completely rocked by this thing. Then you’re building yourself up again, you’re building stronger foundations. It’s such an important skill to have. I think a lot of people never even get that experience. There’s such a gift in anxiety. When people get the meaning of the anxiety, that’s when they really rocket ahead with their life and move on to even bigger and better things.

Anthony: Because it’s funny, you go from such an incredible, lonely, scary place that even the people around you can’t help you. Your loved ones cannot help you in that mind space. It’s really, really bad.

Barry: They don’t understand it because they’re not there.

Anthony: That’s exactly right. To get from that then to the other side of have a healthy, normal life, you’ve got to ask yourself, how many people can actually do that and have that final feeling of achievement that you’ve been through hell and back. “Oh, it’s just a panic attack.” Well, tell them to come and see me with that question because that’s obviously someone that’s never had one because once you’ve had it, then you’re in a very higher level group of people that -

Barry: An elite club.

Anthony: An elite club, that’s it, yeah. You’re an elitist.

Barry: We have Anthony’s partner, Declan here.

Declan: Business partner !

[laughter]

It’s interesting because I didn’t know Declan was coming but we were chatting there having some food before the interview. Declan was talking about - he potentially experienced anxiety at different occasions or would we call them panic attacks as well. Declan, what’s your experience?

Declan: I have no problem calling it panic attacks because again -

Anthony: You might’ve in the beginning there.

Declan: No – what it’s been called, whatever, I have no problem. My biggest fear was I didn’t know how to work. Again, it was usually after a big weekend as Anthony earlier said so your body is in a really in a low state, health-wise I think. Then, if I was put in a situation like for me, I’ve had them on an aeroplane. I’ve had them in cars but I just call them “extreme hangovers” where you’re obviously somewhere where you don’t want to be. You start thinking, “What if I get sick and I make a spectacle of myself in front of everyone.” That was I think what set it off, me making a fool of myself in public. While you’re you thinking of that, this thing creeps up on you and you have a fully blown extreme hangover. Now I know it was an anxiety attack.

Barry: Let me just paint the picture here for listeners. Both Anthony and Declan are rugby players or former rugby players?

Declan: I’m actually still playing. I have no dramas. As Anthony said, we’re man’s man. We play rugby in Australia together to a very high level. Physical pain doesn’t bother me. Confrontation doesn’t bother me. But the biggest thing about this was I didn’t know what it was. It’s like there’s no — you don’t feel like you going to vomit so you’re going, “What’s wrong with me? I don’t feel like I’m going to vomit.” You’re profusely sweating. Your heart rate goes through the roof. Your breathing becomes irregular. You’ve no explanation and that makes it worse. For me, it’s making it worse because its — what’s happening? I just have to literally — I’ve been on a toilet floor on my hands and knees.

It sounds bad. <He’s laughing>. But I mean, when in your life in a public toilet, you have to go into a cubicle and there’s piss in the floor and everything but you don’t care. You have to get - you have to —

Barry: That’s the power of it. It just knocks you down.

Declan: I would lie down in the middle of the street, in a puddle just — curled up. Because see, I didn’t know what it was. I just curled up. I didn’t know what it was. What happened was Anthony, through your program and through his own experiences became aware. I was in America visiting. We were doing business and stuff. Like they say, we had a couple of big nights. It’s fine. We were going in a friend’s Jeep. I was actually in the front seat which is — I know it doesn’t make a massive difference, believe it or not, backseat, but it would have happened a lot sooner I think.

All of a sudden, in mid-conversation, very rudely, I just met this guy, Scott he’s telling his story and we’re in the fast lane of a three-lane highway , mate “you have to pull in”. He was like, “What?” “Pull over now.” “You’re going to get sick?” I couldn’t answer because I could not talk. He was talking to me and he was looking at me.

Barry: But you were in a different place.

Declan: I couldn’t hear a single word he says for like an entire five minutes. It was just white – no disrespect to him. He was telling an interesting story. He thought - it was a kind of a gory story about a Jet Ski accident. He thought that I was squeamish but suddenly when I got out of the van at the side of the motorway, I would have actually — what I usually do is I’ll walk away on my own. I’ll hide because I don’t want to have this in front of other people. That was the biggest thing for me is embarrassment because I’m a proud person. As Anthony said earlier, I don’t want people to see me weak, this feels like weakness even though now I know it’s not.

When Anthony saw — my hand was basically locked up and people can’t see. It’s like halfway between an open palm and a fist but you can’t open them.

Barry: We were talking about that from hyperventilating.

Declan: I just showed Anthony my hands and said, “What the fuck is happening to me?” He went, “It’s a panic attack.” He talked me down. In a minute, he told me — he talked me down, calmed me down and spoke to me really nicely. I was waiting for him to take the piss. I snapped out of it. I got through it. It has happened before and unbeknownst to myself again, I didn’t know what it was but anger got me through because someone said, “He’s faking or he’s putting it up.”

Basically, I went, boom! Like there is my fight. There is someone to fight. Now, I don’t mean physically ready but we had a good verbal confrontation. It was a pay off - it was there for a reason so it went away because there was a payback -if you could understand that?

Barry: Yeah.

Declan: Whereas if you have one and there’s no end game, you don’t have to fight anyone, it’s so mind-blowingly confusing and you don’t want -

Barry: You have all this adrenaline, all of this energy, where do you go with it?

Declan: It’s massive, yeah, exactly. It’s like taking massive quantities of adrenaline shots. You think you can go to bed and go to sleep.

Barry: Yeah, that’s a good way of putting it.

Declan: It doesn’t work that way. Since I became aware of it, now — I just basically — totally gone massive on a massive health kick like I used to go out was every weekend, I’m not a big drinker but I’d have one big night at bars. At the time I thought I was suffering from depression – because it has different forms. There are low-level ones where you just want to shut the door, shut the world out. You can’t face anything.

Barry: But that makes you depressed as well.

Declan: Yes. The reason I stopped coming calling it depression is because someone close to a friend of mine, his uncle had full-blown depression and that was the result of it eventually. I thought I was being disrespectful to someone suffering from a genuine thing, so I stopped calling it that. Again, I went back to calling it ‘extreme hangovers’. It took basically meeting someone who understood it that said to me and changed me and then told me to drink loads of water, training all the time – exercise. It’s very easy to overcome them but unless you’ve had one, you’d never, ever understand what it’s like.

As I said to you earlier at lunch, it sounds really bad. I apologize to anyone who’s been down this road but if someone would have gone in front of me and had one, I’d seriously consider when it was happening full blown, I’d seriously consider…

Barry: It was that horrible.

Declan: It was that horrible. I’d probably rather break a limb playing a match. It sounds terrible but if I got a horrific injury playing a match…

Barry: Oh yeah. People say they wish they had some kind of disease compared to this so that they could say, “This is what it is. Now, I’ll treat it.”

Declan: A hundred percent. Since I was aware of it through Anthony… I tell my mates. Since I’ve said it… now one of them will text me usually on a Monday or a Tuesday and say I’m in the horrors.

Barry: Or the fear.

Declan: I’m in the horrors, blah, blah, blah. Now he says, “Yeah, the anxiety is creeping up on me now.” He’s — you’re not in your own, 100%, I guarantee it’s far more people suffer but like me, they don’t want anyone to see it happening…

Barry: That’s why we’re having this conversation, to talk about it.

Declan: Exactly. But I have no dramas. We have no dramas with confrontation, or things like that.

Barry: That’s an interesting point because a lot of firemen, a lot of policemen are using Panic Away program and they can run into burning buildings, they can run into very dangerous situations and never feel a bit of anxiety because they’re in control and they know what to do. But they can’t sit and get their hair cut because they don’t know what this thing is. They don’t know what this inner threat is. That’s the difference. It’s nothing to do with bravery or courage. It’s really just about understanding what’s going on and knowing what to do with this adrenaline that’s coming out of nowhere, knowing where to put that energy, -knowing how to channel it.

Declan: I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. It’s just knowledge, knowledge is power and especially with this. Biggest fear of the whole thing again, is I couldn’t put a label on it. I didn’t know what it was. As Anthony said, he thought he was having a heart attack. That thought never crossed my mind, mind you because, geez, I started getting it in the mid-20s or whatever.

Barry: Yeah, I’ve been worried about your heart.

Declan: No, I have no worries about my heart. I just thought again it was motion sickness or extreme hangovers or actually it was motion sickness was what I was blaming it on because they happened in cars and planes and stuff, but they weren’t

.
Barry: Anthony, if someone walked into the room here and said that they suffer from panic attacks or when you meet people like that, what are the key things that you just say to them? What do you want to get across?

Anthony: They’re suffering from them or they’re actually having one?

Barry: Let’s say they’re just dealing with them on an ongoing basis. They’re having them in different situations like at work or maybe when they’re driving. They come to you and say, “Look, I hear you’ve dealt with this similar issue.” What advice would you give them? What would you say to them?

Anthony: Do they know what it is yet? Are they still searching to find out what it is?

Barry: Let’s say they know what it is but they just don’t know where to go from here in terms of dealing with it.

Anthony: I think the best thing is that you’ve got to be a little bit more loud and proud about it. I think you’ve got to accept that it’s a part of you. It’s not going to be there, if you do it properly and use your program to get rid of it, you’re not going to have it anymore but you first have to face the fact that they’re there.

Once you acknowledge that, “Yep, I’m suffering from this warrior state that I’ve got myself into. I’ve got to work at how to put fight and flight back into the basket where it needs to get into, then I’m right.”

Once you know, you go through the program and then you’ve got the experience of being through them, that then gives you the power to move forward to be a stronger person. It’s definitely when you know to work through the program. Your forms and the way that you can connect people together to speak, it’s unbelievable. It’s not like they’re on their own. There’s a wonderful saying that they’re on their own but they’re not alone.

That’s what this program does. It keeps you within a little community that you can actually talk to other people about it. If you want to go that far, some people are into that sort of thing, but they’ve got to acknowledge the fact that they can do something straight away with it and that’s probably what my advice would be. The people that don’t know what they’ve got out there, we’re in such a technology explosion, you just Google what’s wrong with you. “I’m having heart palpitations and can’t breathe properly.” Bang! You’re having a panic attack.

Once you find out then you can solve it but it’s all about education. People need to understand that there’s nothing wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with having these attacks. It’s just a process of growth.

Barry: Yeah. It’s also about getting the right information. There’s lot of good sources not just Panic Away but there’s lots of good sources of right information. But oftentimes, you’ll find people getting the wrong information. They’re told to control this, manage it, calm down, breathing exercises, distraction, all this kind of stuff which is really not the way to go. They’ve got to, in my opinion and what I’ve taught all the thousands of people who use Panic Away is they’ve got to go through the anxiety and through the panic and come out at the other side because that’s the only way to end the fear of fear.

Declan: I’m so glad you brought that up because when you do Google that and you find out that you are having an anxiety attack or panic attack, whatever it’s labeled at the time, you cannot afford to go down the prehistoric process that’s out there that’s been happening for years. This is how it used to be done. I don’t know whether it’s another level of anxiety that sort of morphed into these monster compared to what it used to be years ago. But the models out there that tell you to do that, -the calming down and get the paper bag and all that bullshit, it’s almost worse because it doesn’t solve the problem and it then creates another anxiety attack on top of that or a panic attack on top of that.

Barry: You’re left with this thing to manage the rest of your life which is ridiculous.

Declan: That’s exactly right. It doesn’t go away. It stays with you but you learn to manage it. You don’t need to manage this, you can actually destroy it, you can get rid of it and learn from having it as a good thing rather than thinking, “Oh no, here comes one. Okay, what am I going to do? I’ll go through these steps” or whatever the case maybe. But this way, you go through the program and they’re gone. That’s the difference.

Barry: Yeah, it’s becoming powerful again. It’s turning that panic into power. This other approach seems to just create more weakness or more vulnerability so you’re dependent on this ‘managing it’. Maybe you’re dependent on medications still, you know, you feel you need those crutches. You end up having all these kind of crutches and safety blankets that you carry around with you and that doesn’t end. That continues for years and years. Many people that I meet have all of these safety blankets that they’ve brought along because they’ve been managing it all the time, just managing, managing , trying to get through.

Anthony: It becomes a self-hypnosis process. You basically keep telling yourself that you’ve got them, you’ve got them, you’ve got them but you’ve got a solution to -

Barry: I have a disorder.

Anthony: That’s exactly right. Then you self-hypnotize yourself. You’re now labeled. You just make it a part of what you normally do. That really causes people not to be happy. Everybody should wake up every morning and go, “I just love my life so much” rather than thinking, “If only I could get rid of this thing.” Imagine waking up everyday like that, everyday, everyday, everyday. People do. It’s a simple process of just getting into this program and making that go away.

Barry: Well, I think it’s been really, really helpful talking to both of you. I think –there’s a lot of people that are going to listen to this and get a lot out of it and particularly today, we’re talking to men and it’s that message of deal with this. If you’re not sure, find out exactly what it is. Go to the doctor as well. Get the check-ups done. Make sure — there can be physical things causing these sensations. Go to the doctor. Once you discover that it is definitely just anxiety you’re dealing with, then tackle it, get the right information and work through it.

Anthony: Don’t forget guys, you’re a warrior and you’re dealing with fight or flight. That’s the key.

Barry: Brilliant. Thanks guys. Thanks for coming in.

Anthony: Thank you, Barry.

Declan: Thanks mate