Why Did I Have A Panic Attack? I NEED TO KNOW! (Podcast Ep 250)

Hey there, I’m Drew and you are
listening to or watching. And this week, you really should be
watching the anxious truth. This is the podcast and YouTube
channel that covers all things anxiety, anxiety disorders, and
anxiety recovery. So if you’re struggling with things like
panic attacks, panic disorder, agoraphobia, or health anxiety,
this is the place for you. And I’m glad that you’re here. This
week, we’re starting a special series on the podcast, I’m going
to take you to one of the places that used to terrify me that
used to induce all kinds of panic and high anxiety. And
while we’re there, we’re going to talk about the idea that you
don’t always have to figure out why you panicked, deciphering a
panic attack is not necessarily part of the recovery process.

So
let’s get to it. And I will remind you before we start,
that if you’re not watching this week, you might want to do that.
So if you’re not sure where I am on YouTube, just go to the
anxious truth.com/youtube You will find my channel and you
will find this episode. That’s enough of that. Let’s get into
it now.

Hello, everybody, welcome back
to the anxious truth. This is podcast episode number 251.
Recording in March of 2022. I am Drew Linsalata, creator and host
of The Anxious Truth if this is your first time here on the
podcast or the YouTube channel, welcome. I hope you find this
all helpful. If you are a returning viewer or returning
listener. I’m glad you’re here. Welcome back. So this week,
we’re going to start a special series of podcasts that I kind
of promise to my folks on Instagram, where I’m going to
take you to places that I used to refuse to go when I was
struggling with the worst of panic attacks, anxiety,
agoraphobia, OCD, all of the things, I would hate to go to
these places, and I’m going to start to go to these places with
you. And I’m going to record podcast episodes in those
places. We’ll talk about what my experience was and what I did to
get over it. And we’ll also talk about whatever the podcast topic
is for that week. But we’re going to do it in those places.
And today, we’re going to start in a special place that you
might not expect, but it was a thing.

So today while we’re in
that special place. And starting our first series, we’re going to
talk about the idea that you do not have to decipher a panic
attack. A lot of people want to figure out why they panicked,
and they get sucked down the rabbit hole of trying to figure
out what triggered it. What can they do next time to make sure
it doesn’t happen? What can they eat or drink differently? What
can they do differently? What can they avoid? That’s not
part of the process that we’re talking about here.
Today, we’re going to talk about why they take you to that
a special, formerly terrifying panic-inducing place that will
probably surprises you.

So before we get started, just a quick
reminder that the anxious truth is way more than just this
podcast episode. There are 250 other podcast episodes, I’ve
written books about anxiety and anxiety recovery. There’s all my
social media content, there are courses and workshops, and all the
goodies are on my website at anxioustruth.com. So when you
get a chance, go check it out and avail yourself of all the
resources. If you dig this work, and I am helping you in
some way, all the ways to support it can be found on my
website, also at the anxious truth.com/support. That includes
maybe buying a mug or a t-shirt or buying my books, or maybe
subscribing to my Instagram subscriber group, whatever all
the ways to do that can be found there.

That is always
appreciated, but never required. And no matter how you choose to
support this work in this podcast, whether it’s just
hitting the like button on a YouTube video or leaving a
podcast review, thank you very much. I appreciate your support.
So let’s get into today’s topic. Why do you not have to figure
out why you panicked? Why is that not part of the
recovery equation? And let’s go to that first place that used to
terrify me and that I would panic when I went to. So
let’s get to it. And I will come back here to wrap it up at the
end. Okay, so here we go. As promised, I am
recording this podcast at the end of my driveway. And why am I
doing that I promised that I would do a series of
podcasts where I record from places that I used to be
terrified to go. This is one of them, the end of my driveway,
the end of my driveway is maybe 40 feet from my front door at
the most.

And I’ll put some B roll in here. So you can see
just how shorter a walk it is down out my front
door and down to the bottom of this driveway where I’m
standing, maybe two more steps. And I’m actually in the road in
the street. And back in the day when I was doing the heavy
lifting of recovery. And I was going through antidepressant
withdrawal. So we’re talking about well over 10 or 12 years
ago, and that’s that period between like 2006 and 2009 when
I was doing most of this work, this was a really difficult
place for me to be and I might come here to put the trash cans
out or take the trash cans in like really didn’t want to do
that. But that was my job. So I had to do it. Or I would come to
the mailbox to check for mail or put mail in the mailbox so the
postman would pick it up.

And there were many many times when
I came to the bottom of this driveway in full panic because I
was afraid I was just afraid. It’s a little bit embarrassing
now I mean not embarrassing, but it is sobering to say that I
would be afraid to come to the end of my driveway 40 feet from
my front door and I would come here with my life shaking, and I
would feel like I couldn’t breathe. And I was doing that
thing where like, I’m trying to fill my lungs, and I’m taking
these giant heavy breaths, and my legs would be shaking. And my
vision would be weird. And it felt like the sort of world was
spinning or I was leaning to one side or the other, I just felt
very unsteady. And I was just afraid, I was just really
afraid.

And I would come down here and do what I had to do,
and then quickly run back up and get back in the house. And it
would take me a while to recover from that. So I had quite a few
episodes of panic right here at the bottom of my driveway. And
if I’m going to be completely transparent and honest with you
guys, and I’m going to record podcast episodes from places I
used to be afraid to go have to start here, because this was my
reality for a while. So the whole podcast episode won’t be
here at the bottom, just about talking about my driveway. But I
will tell you that there were many times when I would stand at
my front door. And I would wait. And I would debate with myself
and I would have been hauling, go back and forth, and try to get
up the courage to walk out the door to come 40 Steps to the end
of this driveway.

And I’d already be kind of in a panic
knowing that if I walked out the door, I would panic even
more. And especially if my job was to take out a trash can. And
that trash can was heavy because sometimes they are, that
would set me off even more because that meant that I would
breathe a little heavier. Or I might my heart would race a
little more. And back in those days, I was not in as good a
shape as I am right now. I’m older been in better shape now
than I was then. Because people with panic disorder and
agoraphobia tend to be kind of sedentary and I still had some
weight on me for my antidepressant days. So that
would trigger me in a big way. If I had to take out a heavy
trashcan or you know, heavy garbage bag, I would not
want to do it because I knew that my heart would start to
pound and I didn’t want that I was afraid of that.

So
anyway, here I am starting this little series of places I used
to be afraid of at the bottom of my driveway. And just know that
if you’re struggling to get to the bottom of your driveway or
get out into your backyard or your garden or whatever you call
it wherever you live, I get you because I was used to it. And these
were hard days. So if you’re struggling like I was then just
maybe take a little bit of heart and know that I used to
struggle too but now I wouldn’t think about the bottom of the
driveway.

If I wasn’t here recording for you. It’s a nothing. And we’re gonna go on in this series and do way more
stuff. I’m gonna go into New York City with you, I’m gonna go
to airports with you, we’re gonna go to the beaches, we’re
gonna do all this stuff. So it won’t be every week. But stay
tuned, I will sprinkle them in as logistics allow. So let’s get
to the actual meat of today’s podcast episode, which is the
idea that you have to figure out why I panic. Why did that
happen? So always remember that here we’re dealing with anxiety
disorders or disordered states of anxiety, where part of that
definition is that you are anxious about being anxious,
you’re afraid of being afraid, and you are panicking because you
panic.

So in those situations, we’re not talking about just
like life is stressing me out. And I’m not ever telling you to
ignore your emotions or ignore your life. If you’re an abusive
situation. If you’re in, you know, a bad relationship
where you’re being manipulated or even harmed, or you’re
working for crappy company and you hate it, they’re those
things do matter as the source of your stress does
matter in life. But when we are talking about why did I panic,
and you are in a situation where you are just afraid of the
panic and the panic becomes the source of the panic and that
Original stress is contributing, but not the trigger any
more than digging for triggers and trying to figure out why it
happened is not fruitful at all. So if you’re kind of new to
this, and maybe you’re just sort of new to the podcast or new to
my books, or whatever it is, that might be a strange concept
for you because part of your probably desperate attempt to
stop your panic attacks control them or keep them from
happening was probably to spend a lot of time trying to unearth
your triggers and know what your triggers are.

I have to find my
trigger so that I Why do you have to find your triggers, so
you can avoid them? Right. And that isn’t working out so well.
So a lot of people do spend a lot of time going down that
rabbit hole where they are attempting to identify every
possible thing that triggers the state of panic. And I was there.
I blamed everything, everything food that I ate, like the too
many phone calls, I blamed every possible thing I could think of
and after a while, I ran out of things to blame. And I ran out
of things to avoid. So I always tell the story once of having a
real panic attack, maybe half an hour after I’ve eaten Chinese
food with my family. And I didn’t eat Chinese food again
for like four years probably longer, because I was 100%
convinced that it was the Chinese food that triggered that
panic attack. No, it was the 10 panic attacks before that
week that triggered the one that I thought was all about an egg
roll.

So I was wrong. So the bottom line here in this
particular podcast episode is you do not have to figure out
why you panicked. Again, when you get out of this state where
you’re just always afraid of yourself where you’re always
worried about panic, you’re always scanning you’re trying to
control it, they just keep happening. And the panic
itself has become the problem for you. Once you get out of
that state then yes, stress management triggers management
taking care of yourself, not subjecting yourself to you know,
abuse, nastiness, or negativity. Yeah, those are all
reasonable bits of life advice that most people would follow.
And I’m a big fan of stress management and things of that
nature and taking care of yourself.

But right now, we
can’t get stuck in why did I panic at all? That’s not
fruitful at all. Now, where do I hear this the most I hear
it from people who are kind of new to this. And they think that
okay, cool, I’m gonna get involved with this dude from New
York, who’s on his driveway recording a podcast, and we’re
gonna identify my triggers. And no, you’re not because we don’t
talk about the, we don’t talk about that right here. But most,
so you’re gonna have to sort of let go of that like I just
said, but so I hear it most from people who are kind of
down the road and recovery, where they’re getting the job
done. And they’re changing their relationship with fear. And
they’re getting better at having panic attacks. And they’re
losing the fear and the panic attacks. So, therefore, they
begin to have fewer panic attacks, which I know where
everybody wants to go. And that is the happy secondary side
effect of learning to be better at relating to panic and fear.
And they are they’re getting better.

And that’s awesome.
Because you start to realize, like, wow, I don’t panic as much
as I used to, or a man, I haven’t had a panic attack. I’ve
had four panic-free days, for the first time in two years. And
that’s an amazing day, that’s a day to celebrate, for sure. But
then on day five, you have a panic attack. Most times,
people when especially the first time that happens to them,
will immediately start going to but why I didn’t have any for
five days? I didn’t have any for two weeks. I didn’t have any for
two months. And then I had a panic attack. Why? What caused
it? What was it? What was the trigger? What was I doing? What
did I eat? Where was I? You can’t go there, you can’t go
there that won’t help you at all. So part of that idea is that
you have to then dig in and again, try to figure out why you
had a panic attack. It’s literally because you are still
not confident in that state that you’re in.

Trust me
on this one. People who begin to experience fewer and fewer panic
attacks, who feel less and less anxious, are often all over my
Facebook group and in my comment section, being anxious about not
being anxious or wondering if it’s going to last or not
believing that it will last like what if it comes back? What if
this is fake? What if it all comes crashing down and I have a
relapse? People who are recovering often worry that they
are not going to recover and they worry about it
all falling apart. And they’re always looking for the anxiety
and they’re still looking for the panic, and then it comes.
And that’s why it comes. So that’s okay. You don’t have to
dig in and start trying to figure out desperately Well,
what caused my panic attack? What was my trigger? Why did it
come back after so long? Well, it just did well, mostly because
you’re still scanning and you’re still afraid that it might come
back.

So it does. Now if you’re further down the road, and you
haven’t experienced panic in a year and a half or two years,
and you do experience a panic attack, or maybe it’s been even
longer. There’s still that thing where like, I don’t have to dig
so much. Now I may be in a situation where I can say yeah,
I’m not sleeping a whole lot. I’m not eating very well. I’m
stressed to the max. Like, I’m, I can’t take any more I’m just
bubbling over. And yeah, it turned into a panic attack.
Sometimes when we get to that recovered state, we can identify
that, like, oh, yeah, life pushed me into a panic attack.
But that’s okay.

Because then you realize that and you think,
well, it wasn’t because something is wrong with me. It
wasn’t because I was going insane. It wasn’t because I was
having a stroke or a heart attack, I just got stressed to
the max and it pushed me over the edge. That’s a good place to
be. But if you don’t recognize that yet, and you still find
yourself drawn to what was the trigger? What did I eat? What
was it? Is there something wrong with me? Like the old ways?
That’s where you have to remember my words right now. So
when you do have a panic attack after not having one for days,
or weeks months, or even a couple of years, try to remember
my words, why did I have this panic attack, you’re gonna ask
that because everybody just naturally does if you find
yourself getting trapped on the hamster wheel of trying to
figure it out, because you’re afraid of the reason why you had
a panic attack.

And it’s time to go back to the things that you
learned that you are practicing that got you to where you were
to begin with. So go back to the things that had you panic-free
or not so anxious or having fewer panic attacks. Don’t get
sucked in because it will try to pull you back in. And it will
try to make you ruminate and think and analyze and figure out
it’s going to do that recognize when it’s happening and
remember, Oh, that’s right, I just have to treat this like I
used to treat panic attacks. Like they’re not important. It
was scary.

I didn’t like it. I wish it didn’t happen. I hope it
doesn’t happen again. That’s okay. But I handled it. And I’m
going to have to do it the way I used to do it. The things that
got me to where I am now in recovery, and I’m gonna keep
going. And then one day, if all goes to plan and all goes well,
you will wake up and maybe you will have a panic attack that
you and you haven’t had for so long. Or you might have a
particularly anxious day that you haven’t had in a long time.
And you will be able to say, I know why this happened. Because
my left my life was a mess right now or because I had a huge
fight with my partner or because I just got laid off from my job
or because I’m having money problems, or my kids are making
me crazy or there’s a big illness in the family. Or do I just
suffer a huge loss? Maybe someone close to me has passed,
you’ll know, you’ll know.

That’s what recovered people do, you’ll
know, I had a panic attack because I got overwhelmed. And
that’s okay. I don’t like it. But it doesn’t mean something is
wrong with me. And I don’t have to be afraid of it. And I can
concentrate on the part of my life that sort of pushed me into
that, and I can deal with my grief or deal with my loss or
deal with my financial problems my career problems or my
family problems, or whatever it is, you begin to know that the
panic attack is just an expression of something
happening outside of you, and you stop trying to figure out
what’s going on inside of you.

That’s when you know, you’re
done. That’s when you know you did it, you are recovered.
Welcome, congratulations. So that’s enough rambling on at the
bottom of my silly driveway about why you do not have to
figure out why you have panic attacks. I know that some
people they don’t like when I say that because it sounds like
I’m invalidating their emotions or validating their experiences,
your emotions matter, and your experiences do matter. But you
have to recognize when you have become more afraid and more
stressed by the panic itself, than anything that may have
caused it in your life.

I’m not saying that those things don’t
matter anymore. But recognize when you are afraid of being
afraid, recognize when you are catastrophizing about the panic,
recognize when you are, you know, finding meaning and panic
that generally revolves around what’s going to happen when you
panic, as opposed to what happened that may be made me
panic, see the difference. So recognize when you’re trapped
there. And remember, I don’t right now, I don’t have
to know why I panic right now. Maybe one day, when I’m in a
better place, I can have a little bit more of a healthy,
normal, productive relationship with that, I could look at that,
and I could do something about it. That’s just good
life management, a good stress management. But for now, I do
not have to worry about why I panicked, I only have to know
that I did.

I didn’t like it, I prefer that did not happen
again. But once again, it didn’t take me down. And I can handle
that. That’s where you want to maintain your focus if at all
possible. So that’s it. I hope you enjoyed my recording at the
bottom of my silly driveway. I hope you got something out of my
driveway story. The next time we do this, I don’t know where I’m
gonna go. But I will bring you along for that, too. I have a
couple of ideas, but I’ll just sort of let it unfold while I
can. I will pop back into the studio, which is just my office
and I’ll wrap this up the way I usually do.

And yeah, thanks for
listening. I’ll see you in a minute. Okay, we’re back in the studio,
like I said, which is just my office where I always
am. And I was only about 35 or 40 feet in a straight line
that way and recording this podcast episode. It was a little
unorthodox. And it got a little bit uncomfortable a couple of
times because they could see a couple of my neighbors were out
sort of looking like What’s that guy doing? But that’s
alright, we can handle it.

We’ll just comfort, right? So I
hopefully, we have shed some light on the idea that you do
not have to figure out why you panicked and dug in
to try to figure that out often things make things worse
then they already are. So if you’re getting sucked down that
a rabbit hole, just remember my words from today back away from
that. I promise you’ll be happy that you did that. So that is
it. That is episode 251 of The Anxious Truth in the Books we
know it is over because the music, which is as always
afterglow by my friend Ben Drake, you can find more about
Ben and his music, including this song at his website, which
is Ben Drake music.com.

Go check it out. And I will ask you if
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Leave a comment I circle back to my YouTube at least twice a week
to answer comments. Love you guys over there. And that’s it.
Hopefully, this has been a helpful episode. I hope you
enjoyed my little trip down memory lane to a place that used
to be so hard for me to go. We’re going to do it again.
Maybe not next week, but we will.

I will be back next week
with another podcast episode. Don’t know what I’m talking
about. Don’t know where I’m going to be. But I will be here
and remember every step forward is a good step forward no matter
how small it is. See you next week. Yeah, you’re doing now in the
city, you know looking back at dwelling on the past, you know
you’ll never get another chance. So you go and live your life.

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