I’ve had many panic attacks in my life.
And I’ve had many more moments of good ole’ anxiety.
Before hopping on big calls, smack dab in the middle of big calls, at the bar with my friends, in therapy with my wife (also doing other things with my wife) and even simply sitting on the couch watching a movie with my family. In fact, that night on the couch I had a flat out “panic attack,” also known as a very scary, very powerful moment of anxiety.
Same thing happened the day I got diagnosed with COVID.
For months, all I had heard about this coronavirus thing was that it was killing people all over the world, so naturally whenever I tested positive and felt like actual shit at the same time, I simply knew death was upon me and I became absolutely terrified in a way that I couldn’t navigate on my own and eventually I ended up in the ER.
I’ll even spare you the details of other, inebriation-induced experiences, where the anxiety eventually took over and I, shall we say, became extremely dysregulated, made very poor decisions and basically ran around like a chicken with my head cut off. Today, these stories are funny and valuable to share I think, however, at the time, they felt like anything but those things.
If you’ve ever had similar experiences, then you know exactly what I mean.
And yet, I lived with these experiences, on a rather consistent basis, for literal years of my life and if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past 8 years as a human being on this Earth, it’s quite obvious that I’m not the only one.
In fact, Anxiety has got to be one of the more powerful buzzwords of recent generations, specifically in its apparent universal experience of us all — no matter who we are or what we do.
Like so many of us, for a long time, I actually thought anxiety was the problem.
I thought if I could just stop feeling anxious, everything would be fine again.
If anxiety would just go away, I could simply show up how I wanted to, make the money that I wanted to, get absolutely ripped and impress everyone around me with all my amazingness as a businessman, father, intellectual genius and local sex symbol.
And yet, it took a suicidal episode and lots of group therapy for me to actually realize that anxiety wasn’t the issue at all. It was the alert system. The symptom. The physiological engine light that something deeper inside of me — something emotional (oh, the horror!) — actually needed attention.
I mean, jokes aside, when your actual engine light comes on, do you immediately address it every time? Or do you simply cover it with mental tape and ignore it, convincing yourself that it’s not that important?
Anxiety is the same thing — it’s a signal to something under the hood — only it’s much more valuable than even the nicest of engines and transmissions. It’s you.
And yet, sadly, so many of us are taught to treat ourselves (and those dreaded feelings of ours) much worse than we do our truck engines. I mean, anxiety is actual pain. It genuinely hurts to experience.
The racing thoughts. The panic. The tight chest full of tension. The perspiration. The restlessness. The constant feeling of dread, like something bad is about to happen, when you’re really just grocery shopping. That shit is real. And sometimes it can be incredibly intense.
Which, as I mentioned earlier, is exactly what led me to get some help in the first place — and this is where things got interesting for me. Because when I eventually found my way into therapy, group work, coaching, and a simple practice of personal reflection, I discovered something I never expected:
My anxiety wasn’t about how weak or bad I was.
It was mostly about how scared, mad and sad I was.
The grief of losing my Mom at 15. The sadness of my Dad taking off afterwards. The fear of not being enough if I didn’t achieve more than everyone else by the time I was 10 years old. The belief that I needed to perform in order to be valuable. The existential dread of death. The sadness in feeling alone.
The uncertainty. The shame. From high school and college. This terrible sexual experience and that massive failure with work and money.
Not only do we carry these things with us, practically forever, most of the time, we also actively allocate so much of our own energy not to feel them. And that’s an exhausting way to live.
Which is why anxiety eventually pops up, trying to tell us that we need to stop ignoring the fear, the sadness and the angry we’re experiencing, just living our normal human lives.
Science has shown this to be true countless times at this point. When our nervous systems perceive threats — even to our self-images, our unique belief systems, our social lives and our bank accounts — the amygdala activates and prepares the body for survival.
Heart rate increases. Breathing changes. Muscles tighten. Attention narrows. We literally brace for impact, search for exit signs, make escape plans and then activate these plans with our behavior in milliseconds.
And yes, this response is incredibly useful when we’re being chased by a bear, but it’s also much less useful when the “threat” is an unresolved emotional experience we’ve simply been triggered by in an an old face, old song been or past memory we’ve simply been denying for years.
Where this gets really tricky is the nervous system not being able to distinguish physical danger from emotional danger, and instead simply responding to what feels unsafe.
Because for so many of us, sadness feels unsafe. Anger feels unsafe. Fear feels unsafe. Failure feels unsafe. Rejection. Trying. Being seen (positively or negatively). So many basic, human experiences have simply become off-limits to our fragile egos — so we suppress them.
We distract ourselves. We work harder. Drink more. Smoke more. Consume more. Stay busier. Scroll longer. Anything to avoid feeling what’s underneath. Until eventually the nervous system gets loud enough that it can no longer be ignored.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what we call Anxiety.
And it’s not evidence that something is wrong.
It’s simply evidence that something important is asking to be felt.
Which, most of the time, is some version of fear, anger and sadness, but it can also be any emotional experience. For example, when I experienced that panic attack sitting on the couch with my family, I simply noticed how happy I was. It was flat out peace and joy that I was experiencing.
And yet, that too had become a genuinely unsafe feeling for more to experience — until that moment when I simply listened to the alert system, breathed into my body and allowed my mind to connect the dots of what I was actually feeling + how I was actually responding to it.
I was compassionate to myself in the feeling. Then curious about what it was telling me.
And eventually, I was able to turn that “panic attack” into an ability to begin experiencing real joy again, just like I’d done with sadness, anger and fear before it.
Anxiety is never the issue.
It’s simply the signal, the doorbell, to the issue.
So the next time you hear it, simply don’t ignore it and go answer the door.
My name is Scott McElroy.
I’m an Executive Coach helping leaders better understand themselves, strengthen their relationships, and create meaningful, sustainable growth in life and work. Thanks for reading.
Also, before you go, I made an entire workshop about anxiety and it’s impact on our lives. It’s a 40 min. video full of the exact stuff I teach my individual clients, complete with a virtual and printable workbook for you to fill out on your own.