What does it look like when the person who teaches calm is the one having the panic attack?
I had no idea what this episode was going to be when I pressed record. I was sitting here anxious, stressed, feeling like the whole world was going wrong. I had stopped opening my emails. I was not even reading them, just bringing them up and looking away. The reason I help people with anxiety is that I have it. So here is me, on a bad day, being honest instead of pretending. Me and my carer Sasha have a mantra: things always work out, and if they do not, you are dead and you will not know.
One thing to try: When it hits, do one constructive thing, however small. It does not have to fix anything.
In this episode
(1:39) I help with anxiety because I have it
(2:48) Avoiding my emails without even opening them
(5:26) You will think I am not like this. Today I am
(6:33) How fast the mind jumps to we are going to die
(7:56) Recording this has already made it better
(9:21) Sasha and me, and our mantra
(11:34) Nobody I know is free of it. It is what we do with the load
Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk
Thank you for listening.
Steven
The story behind this one
I pressed record with no idea what this was going to be. No notes, no script, nothing prepared. I was sat here anxious and I made an episode out of it instead.
Nothing has gone wrong. That is the strange part. The morning was good, I meditated for forty five minutes, and I cannot point at a single thing.
And yet I feel like a child who has taken the biscuits and is waiting for somebody to burst in and find out. Forty seven years old.
What I had actually been doing for two hours was watching somebody play a video game on YouTube. I do not care about video games. I was admiring the graphics of a thing I have no interest in.
And I had stopped opening my emails. Not avoiding them exactly. Bringing up the inbox, scanning for a nice one, and not clicking anything.
Then I started feeling warm. The room was twenty two and a half degrees so I should have been cold. Had I coughed today? I had coughed this morning. So within about ninety seconds I had gone from slightly off to a few days left to live.
That is how fast it happens, and I teach this for a living.
What it taught me
The whole job is catching yourself doing it.
I could not stop the feeling. What I could do was notice the avoidance, laugh at it, and then ask one question. What would the best version of me do right now?
The answer was not fix everything. It was do something constructive, and recording this was the nearest one to hand. I felt better before I had finished the first two minutes.
The alternative is layering. Anxious about being anxious, then cross about being anxious, and then taking it out on somebody.
Things always work out. And if they do not, you are dead, so you will not know.
That is the mantra my carer Sasha and I share, and it has got us both through a lot of afternoons.
The storms do not stop when you sort your life out. You get better tools and the weather stays exactly the same. What changes is what you do while it is happening.
Questions people ask
Should I be worried if the person teaching this gets anxious?
The opposite. Anybody who tells you they have stopped getting anxious is either not paying attention or selling you something. I teach this because I have it, not because I finished it.
What actually helped?
Doing one useful thing. Not the right one, not the one that fixes it. Any constructive thing at all breaks the loop, and the loop is most of what makes it unbearable.
Why release an episode like this?
Because a podcast that only ever tells you how peaceful my life is would be no use to you and would not be true. This one is what a bad afternoon looks like from inside.
Read along
The transcript
It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.
In this episode
anxiety · stress · vulnerability · personal-story
Read the transcript
Okay, Right now, I have no idea what this podcast is going to be about, apart from I am sitting
here stressing. I'm sitting here feeling anxious. I'm feeling like as if the whole world is going wrong.
You know those types of feeling when you're a child and you know you've done something wrong or you think
you've done something wrong And your parents are about to burst in and they're going to shout at you and
the whole world's going to find out that you just nicked the biscuits. Yeah, that's how I'm feeling right now.
47 years old, sitting here and I'm. And I help people all over the world have less anxiety,
less overwhelm. I help people all over the world find that stillness in the storms, hence the name of my
podcast. And yet here I am, browsing through Youtube, watching things that I have no interest in whatsoever. I just
found myself a moment ago watching someone play a video game. I don't even care for the video game. I'm
not bothered about it at all. But I was sitting there watching it, admiring the graphics and my I was
avoiding life. And now I'm recording a podcast telling you, because we're all in this. We all
do this. Even. Even teachers, even people that from the outside, when you're looking at them, when it seems like
their whole life is sorted,
it probably isn't. It's just they've learned better ways to cope with different things than maybe you have at the
moment, that's all. We're just we're just two or three pages, you know, we may be a chapter ahead, that's
all. And only on some things. You know, some things were ahead, some things were behind. But, you know, the
reason why I help people with anxiety and stress is because I suffer from those things, too. And this podcast,
I guess, is going to share what I do when I suffer from those things. So my day has been
essentially pretty good. There hasn't been anything that would suggest why I'm feeling like this. And I was coming up
to lunchtime and I had my lunch and everything,
and after lunch I was coming up to do my live on Facebook. And I go live every day with
a guided meditation, or at least weekdays about 2 p.m Uk time. And I had my usual
problem and I had to go back on the bed. Now I'm paralysed just below my neck. And so my
carers had to help me out and sort me out. But here's the thing. Everything's fine now, that's dealt with
and sorted, and I'm Terrified. I'm like, I want to hide away. I want to pull the curtains and turn
off the lights and just say, I'll do it tomorrow like I can't deal with this today. So
I've decided to. Instead of carrying on on YouTube, avoiding my emails like I was doing. I was reading the
emails, but I wasn't. Well, I wasn't even reading them. I was bringing up the email Gmail and I wasn't
even opening them. I was kind of looking for a nice one. I was avoiding the errors that I need
to reply to. And like I'm laughing about it now. I can now see it. But I've been doing this
for last couple of hours or so, just completely avoiding life. And it's. And it's really funny when we catch
ourselves doing it. And that's the whole work is catching ourselves when we're doing it. You know, this is what's
going on in my life. This is what's happening right now. You
know, am I being the best possible version of myself right now? Am I putting all those tools into place
that I know better? And I wasn't. I was staying on Youtube, staying, doing my thing, avoiding everything.
The only thing I didn't do is go to Facebook.
That's the only thing I haven't done. And you know, I'm sure it would have happened within the next five,
ten minutes or so and I would have scrolled down through and I would have made some comments on some
posts. I would have put the words to write in some way like that, you know, and I started looking
at news sites and doing, going back into the same old habitable behaviour that I've done for many years. But
here's the thing. I was able to observe myself doing it. And now of course I laugh about it, but
it's quite serious. You
know, what, what do we do when we're feeling anxious or we're feeling like something's not right? Then of course,
in a week's time, whatever, is this gut feeling that something's not right. It could be anything. Right now my
computer's really playing up and it's really annoying me. And I don't know what's wrong with it. I used to
have a computer shop myself and I forgot to turn the phone onto silent You'll just have to put up
with that because it's fine. I don't get that many messages. I was just thinking, can I get that out
after editing? No I'll probably leave it in. So I haven't even prepared for this podcast. I Haven't even got
a script up in front of me. So I thank you for your patience on this. You know, this is
real and raw, but this is. This is life, right? If you come to this podcast all the time,
and I'll tell you how wonderful and beautiful life is now. Wonderful and beautiful my life is. You're not gonna
believe it. You're gonna be like, yeah, Bs he ain't Like that all the time. No, you're right, I'm not.
Today is one of those days. I'm not like that. I'm feeling quite agitated. And where do I feel agitated?
I feel agitated in my belly. But the thing is, it doesn't start from there. It starts on my thinking.
And of course, I started to feel hot. And I was looking at a temperature in the room was going,
well, it's 22 and a half degrees now I shouldn't be feeling hot. I should be cold. Ah COVID-19
Have I coughed today? Yeah, I was coughing this morning oh I've got a temperature. I'm coughing. Oh, my shoulder's
hurting. So I was talking myself into being poorly. And, you know, and then, of course, I'm like,
sat here in the seat. I'm like, oh, my God, hold on to the seat. What's gonna happen You know,
I've only got a few days to live. So suddenly, just feeling a little anxious or feeling like something's not
right has turned into, I've only got a few days to live. How
quickly does our mind jump to we're gonna die Help.
You know, I
just wanted to share this. Just. I just want you to know that you're not alone. You
know, these panic attacks and these um stressful anxious times, they happen to even
the teachers, even the people that are doing the podcast, doing the things, putting themselves out there. You know, I
do a lot of. I meditate this morning. 40 minutes, 45 minutes. Well, probably five minutes. The rest of it
is probably thinking. But I did that this morning, and I've had a wonderful good morning, and
I really cannot think of anything that's going wrong in my life right now. So why am I
feeling like this? You know, perhaps sometimes doing the reason, perhaps, sometimes we're just,
you know, I don't know um So
what do I do when I do things like this? Well, I record a podcast or I. I do something
I should be doing. We know what we should be doing. You know, go for a walk, do some exercise,
take your mind off it. And just by recording this podcast right now, I feel a whole lot better. I
feel like I Feel like as if I'm doing something constructive instead of sitting here in this bubble of, oh,
my God, I'm gonna die. And I'm not I'm kind of making a joke of it, but it's really serious.
It makes us feel dreadful. It paralyzes us completely. You
know, I don't know, something wrong with my Usbs or something. And I. I sold a camera and got a
new camera, and the video is really jerky and there's something not right, and I'm like,
oh, I'm just so stressed about it. And really the reality is it's not going
to mean anything in a week's time
tomorrow, I've got a part that comes that fixes it, but I'm like, I need to fix it now. I
don't. I
need to take a breath. That's what I need to do. Let's
do that. Okay, I've done a breath. Now
how do I fix it? No, I'm joking
it's just something you just have to wait and give a little bit of time time Just let. Let some
things nurture and they sort themselves out. And one of the advice I always give me and my we and
one of my carers, Sasha, we always have this mantra of things work out. Things always work out,
and if they don't work out, you're dead. And you didn't know it didn't work out anyway. You had no
idea. No idea. You know, it doesn't even suck to be dead because you don't know you're dead oh That's
how we deal with life. That's how we deal with it, and that's how I deal with it um Just
recognise what we're doing, observe what we're doing and and take it lightly, laugh at it, and then you can
do something with it. The problem is if I layer on top of that anxiety and that agitation, and I
layer on top of it more and more and more, I'm just getting more and more stress more angry, and
I'm going to lash out with people. I'm going to make my life a whole lot worse.
So it's a matter of just peeling back that layer and being vulnerable and going, well, do you know what?
I'm feeling like crap. But I'm gonna read a book, I'm gonna go for a walk, I'm gonna do my
exercise, or in this case, I'm gonna record a podcast. So I've not really got much more to say on
this podcast. So I'm just gonna leave it there and say, thank you for listening to my wimps
And this is me, and this is real. And this podcast might be about finding that stillness in the storm.
Well, the storms still rage. Even when you sort your life out, even when you get all the tools,
even when you become stoic, even when you know better and everything like that, the storms still
rage. It's what we do with the storms it's what we do in the storms that counts.
And the best way is showing up for ourselves. What's the best possible version of me? What would the best
possible version of me do right now?
And that best possible version of me right now would record a podcast and share my story with you. So
it helps you to realise that, you know, I get anxious. I get stressed, too. And that's okay. It's
okay. It's what we do with it that counts. I don't. I don't know as a master, I don't know
a teacher, I don't know anybody, even counsellors and everything that don't get stressed from time to time.
It's how we carry it, but it's what we do with the load And the more knowledge we create for
ourselves, the more experiences and tools use them. We know what to do instead of running
around. And I say, I don't get many messages now. I you Instead of running around and not knowing what
to do, we know what to do. Take a little time out. And right now I'm going to say, thank
you for listening. Thank you for indulging in my
little narcissistic whims for the minute and making this podcast all about me. But hopefully, if you just realise
that I struggle, too, and if that gives you a little bit of comfort that you're doing all right, you're.
