Panic and Anxiety Disorder - My Story | Answers With Joe

we spend $2 billion a year in the United States on physical health health and fitness that kind of thing but for some reason putting that kind of effort towards your mental health is still weirdly stigmatized which doesn't really make sense when you think about it because your mental health affects far more people than your physical health does your physical health doesn't affect anybody unless you get to a point where you need help getting around but your mental health literally affects everybody around you not just in the present but in the future as well it affects Generations down the road whatever issues you may have you can usually track to your mother and whatever issues she has you can usually track back to your grandmother and so on and so forth these things carry down for hundreds of years so the fact that we stigmatize mental health issues it's it's a real problem we need to be more willing to talk about these kinds of things I was just thinking about that the other day and as I was thinking about it I realized that I myself have dealt with issues in this area and I've never talked about it on this channel so maybe I'm part of the problem so here it goes when I was at VidCon I did an interview with Miranda the adventurer it's another YouTube channel I'll put a link down below to the video but we were just talking about issues of uh positivity mostly but then this subject came up and I talked about it a little bit and I realized that this is something I really do need to discuss on this channel but basically I am somebody who has struggled with with panic and anxiety issues in the past when I was in Middle School it hit me pretty hard I would have these just overwhelming sense of Doom I felt like the world was going to end I actually missed school over it because I I literally made myself sick with worry and anxiety eventually this passed and I just chocked it up to you know going through puberty but then it happened again in my early 20s I went through a really weird existential crisis I suppose I became obsessed with the idea of death it it just took over my mind for a while and I remember working in the store and just everybody that I saw all the all the strangers walking through the store the customers my co-workers everybody that I saw the only thought that I had in my head was you're going to die someday like everybody was just somebody who hadn't died yet and if that sounds dreary and awful it was and I just carried it with me me everywhere I went for a few months and then it eventually passed I slowly got back to normal and just like when I was in Middle School I chocked that up to puberty when it happened in my early 20s I just chocked it up to you know about to graduate college and into the real world it was sort of a life transition thing and ever since then it was kind of just something that was in my past it was just this thing that happened a couple of times but then it happened again not too long ago just before I hit 40 apparently I don't handle transitioning to a new phase of Life very well but I I have a pretty strong imagination as you can imagine and one night while I was in bed on the edge of sleep for some reason my mind went to the moment of death and what what happens what that feels like you know as I'm laying there in bed and I'm trying to make myself lose Consciousness I've talked before about how much I suck at sleeping uh you know but I'm I'm sitting there about to lose Consciousness and wondering if this is what the experience of death is like and so my mind just went there and then it didn't quite ever leave and that whole existential Panic thing it just came up all over again you know again I just became completely obsessed with the thought that not only me but everyone I know will die someday it's like everything was a reminder of how temporary existence is and you don't realize how much we reference death in life and in pop culture and that kind of thing until you are in a place where every single mention of death or every single every single illusion to endings fills you with existential Panic like I was in the middle of watching doubt and Abbey and I couldn't even watch that anymore because I couldn't watch that show without thinking about how everybody who lived back then does not exist anymore like I would lay in bed and I could feel my heartbeating and instead of that feeling of my heartbeat being some kind of reminder that I'm alive it was instead a reminder that that's all it would take for me to not exist anymore is for that heart to just stop beating everything was a reminder that I was going to die someday I would go and visit family and put on you know the most normal face that I thought I could but inside I'm watching kids playing and all I can think is that kid's going to die someday it's like just just imagine that your brain is stuck in a place like 200 years in the future where you and everybody you know has died everything that you have ever lived for worked for cared about is gone and nothing ever that you did mattered that's where I was it was just this overwhelming feeling of pointlessness to everything I was just consumed with the pointlessness of human existence fun there's a restroom at work that's down in the basement it's for the maintenance people and it's this really crummy bathroom only one of the toilets actually works I went down there multiple times to just go into a stall and cry so that Panic State lasted a few weeks maybe not quite a month but even when that finally went away I still had this this weight this this tightness in my chest I always felt this tightness in my chest and by the way if you are in a panic state in an anxiety state having pain in your chest doesn't exactly help but I can't stress enough how much of a physical presence this was this starts to sound kind of weird and woo woo but I I I remember I was driving into Dallas and I was just about to downtown I'm looking at the buildings all lit up it was at night and and i' been having this tightness in my chest for I mean a month and a half or so but as I was driving home I had this moment where without me trying it just lifted and I can't express enough how much it was like a physical presence left my body Now understand I'm not trying to say that some kind of demon or Spirit was in me and left my body body that's not what I'm saying at all but the mental thing that was going on was creating a physical sense in me that when it lifted it really did feel like something just flew out of my body and the next thought that I had honestly has never quite left me and that thought was I had no idea how wonderful normal felt so one thing I want to get across to any body who hasn't dealt with this kind of thing feeling normal is a gift it's not something I'll ever take for granted again in a weird way I'm kind of glad that I went through that because it did change my worldview it did make me think about the bigger picture and how I fit into that and that new worldview that I have has really come out in this channel astute viewers of the channel who have been following it for a really long time could probably point out out early in 2015 when the tone of my videos changed a little bit because that's when this was going on in fact probably no video more fully encapsulates what I was going through than the short video that I did called this two Shall Pass all of those issues and questions still were very heavy on my mind and they were brought out in that particular video so if you never dealt with anxiety or Panic issues just try to understand how you are and don't take it for granted and try really hard not to judge people who do have these issues because it's it's really something you can't possibly understand unless you've been there and for those out there who do have chronic anxiety and panic issues I want you to know how much respect I have for you I just I I I couldn't imagine dealing with it my entire life and and I want you to know that I I get it I get how hard it is if you are dealing with this kind of thing getting out of bed and going to work in the morning is an act of sheer bravery it just it saps every ounce of your energy and to be able to power through that and go to work and raise a family and and just try to be a productive and normal human being with all of that on top of you it takes a a level of strength that most people never know so I you know the point of this channel is I get asked questions a lot and if any of you out there want to ask me what to do if you have this situation you know I don't want to try to play psychologist I can tell you what helped me but I think I'm not the norm I think people who normally have this have it on much grander and larger and longer scales than I did all I can say is if you have access to a mental health professional talk to them talk to a therapist they're online options now that cost less money they may not be as good as sitting in front of a therapist but it's something in lie of a therapist talk to your spouse talk to your girlfriend boyfriend talk to your family talk to your friends I felt like every time I opened up to somebody and talked to them about it it chipped away at it just a little bit each time more than anything else I wanted to connect with somebody I wanted to share how I was feeling and get a mutual understanding of just life through that and it helped out immensely and it's made me since then so much more thankful for all of my relationships because in the end that that's all we have we have this small amount of time that we've been given and we have each other that's it you know life may be a life may actually be a big pointless joke so we might as well laugh at it anyway that's something I've been putting off talking about for a really long time I don't know if that actually helped anybody but I really hope it did I'm going to put some links down below to some resources to anybody who might be dealing with panic and anxiety issues that might help you out um like I said I'm not a psychologist and I've only had a little bit of an exposure to this so I'm not going to try to pretend like I'm an expert I am not if you are dealing with this I hope that you can find somebody to talk to I hope that it's something that you can transcend and find something positive out of and I want you to know how much I I respect you and I'm pulling for you and I got your back I think I'll leave you guys with that thanks a lot for watching I wish the best for all of you I love you guys take care of yourselves

Channel: Joe Scott

Views: 71,363

Keywords: anxiety, panic disorder, depression, mental health, therapy, midlife crisis, existential crisis, fear of death, fear

Id: eHuacPDXpVY

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2016