What It Is Like Living With Anxiety and Panic Attacks | Nadiya Hussain: Anxiety and Me | Only Human

paper was light gold in medieval times i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] why am i making this documentary partly because i'm selfish because i want to get better and partly because i know that having anxiety is probably one of the most lonely most isolating things to have because you are your own worst enemy and you live inside your head and i know there are thousands of people out there who suffer just like me and we need to talk and that's half the healing we need to talk i'm nadia hussain and i've been living with extreme anxiety for as long as i can remember it's something that i've always tried to hide what people don't see is before i sit in front of a camera nobody really sees [Music] what it took to paint on a smile and i think that's why people will watch this and be surprised hi how are you good thank you how are you good i might seem happy and relaxed thank you so much thank you but that's not how i feel that feeling of worry is always there it's so heavy and it just it doesn't go away i can hear the beating of my heart in my chest and then it goes up to my head and then i have a panic attack and it feels like you're gonna die imagine what kind of a life you live if you worry about dying every single day i think i have an anxiety disorder but i've never had a proper diagnosis so i don't know exactly what's wrong with me or if i can get better so i've decided it's time to seek help what what's happening now tell me what's going through your mind i don't like that feeling i'll undergo a course of therapy letting cameras record my progress so you would feel as if your life was in danger it's that same feeling yeah in the hope of breaking down the stigma surrounding this crippling condition it's so really tense my mouth feels really tough it's taking all of my strength to keep my head up with five million people in the uk diagnosed with anxiety disorders it seems anxiety is on the rise is there a pressure to be perfect yeah i'm going to explore how other sufferers are coping i do still get anxiety attacks and it's even whilst being on the phone even whilst on them yeah i'll investigate different treatments i'm scared though i don't know where to go what to do you're actually okay you didn't die you didn't pass out and ask what can be done to help me and millions of others like me get better it's got to a point in my life where that's all i am now i'm just the panic i'm just the anxiety and i don't want to be that anymore [Music] i feel sweaty i feel really hot am i talking to you or am i talking to camera to to talk to me um yeah suddenly all it all feels really real now like the mics on i wish i had the answers i don't have the answers and this is why i'm doing this i'm sweating so much oh my god my face is so hot i thought this was going to be really easy i thought i could do this okay anxiety is an emotion we all experience from time to time but the difference for me is that it's often an overwhelming feeling i can't control are you making uh brownies which is tough on me but also hard for my kids and my husband abdel can i have a cup of tea yeah sure seeing as you weren't gonna offer milk please milk no sugar no sugar thank you i worry about the most ridiculous things things that my mind doesn't need to be cluttered with i know that [Music] i worry about everything i can't even that's i worry about everything you name it i worry about it everything is a do you worry that time when we did a food shop and i needed coriander they substituted it for parsley and in what world is coriander anything like parsley i couldn't see past that and you remember i told you get the kids out here because i didn't want them to see me have a panic attack that was quite scary when i saw that slightly ashamed i thought she was having a heart attack at the time i was so worried whatever it is it looked like something that needs an ambulance just give it a little mix until there's no flour at the bottom let me go find some eggs okay the only time i've actually really tried to work out what my anxiety feels like is when i when i knew that i had to explain it to my kids and i to me it's like a monster now some days it feels like the monster is so big it's so huge that it's in my face and i can't do anything because i can't see past it it's there screaming and shouting at me and it's just i can't do anything i can't function i can't move and i just stay in bed the only way i've found to stop my anxiety spiraling out of control is to distract myself by keeping busy i i feel less anxious when i have a routine and i know what i'm doing and when i'm doing it so um can you tell me your routine like day to day yeah so go from the very beginning okay [Music] i try and start every day exactly the same way 5 5 30 just before the sun rises i get up and i'll pray once i've prayed come down give the kids breakfast 7 o'clock after dropping them off to school i'll go for a 5k walk and after i've finished my morning routine i keep my mind busy with my work for me cooking's a destruction baking's a distraction so i'll cook and bake a lot more than we can physically eat it's a vicious cycle i just keep doing it i keep doing it when anxiety hits i like to bake let me show you carrot cake coffee marble bun thingy some brownies and there's some salted caramel in the fridge despite all my efforts i still have regular panic attacks and i've decided it's finally time to do something about it i mean i think we should just look up i'm just going to look up anxiety going to look around yeah because we're not even sure if there's oh well we do it should you go to an nhs website then let's just do let's go to an nhs that's it i'm pretty certain i have an anxiety disorder but i've never been fully diagnosed looking online anxiety seems to be a general term for a range of disorders all of which share similar symptoms our symptoms and panic attacks symptoms include a racing heartbeat check definitely feeling faint check sweating nausea chest pain shortness of breath choking sensation check to all of those a feeling of dread or fear of dying everything to me that's one of the key ones yeah everything i do ends with i think we're going to die says if people would generalize anxiety disorder they don't remember the last time they felt relaxed would you really are you okay what are you thinking right now hmm what's wrong what are you thinking it's quite difficult to to kind of read about the fact that it's always like that and you're telling me it's always like that i've never asked yourself that question yeah i've never read those words in that sentence like that before that people with that don't ever feel relaxed and you agree with that yeah oh my goodness yeah do you think you want treatment i think so don't you you answered that very quickly no but for us think about it for the kids for me i'd feel much more you answer that question do you want me to get better of course why wouldn't i you have to take time out to give this a go i have to give it i have to give it a chance haven't i yeah i have to give it a chance having started looking i have more questions than answers [Music] why do people get anxiety disorders how big a problem is it and are any of the treatments effective [Music] to find out i'm meeting david clarke from the university of oxford the nhs advisor on improving access to treatment for anxiety disorders anxiety disorders don't discriminate between people um over 25 of us will experience an anxiety disorder at some time in our life so what is anxiety uh anxiety is an emotion that we all experience when we are in a situation that we think is dangerous and we're not sure whether we can deal with the danger the problem is though if there isn't a real danger you're in a situation where you think it's dangerous and it's not and that's when you start to develop anxiety disorders but anxiety disorders are poorly detected so if you take the other common mental health problem depression and you ask people who've got the question now has any professional ever spotted it it's about 70 percent um which is quite good but if you take anxiety disorders and you ask the same question it's only about 20 of people we know that whether it's people talking more or whether it's always been there but there is a rise in anxiety but treatment's improving too people are beginning to realize that there are psychological therapies that really help and the more people become aware of that the more people are willing to talk about it because it's one thing to talk about something if you think there's nothing can be done about it and you feel ashamed about it it's very different if you think well if i talk about it i can get good help and i can really overcome it so the two most effective treatments are medication and also cognitive behavior therapy which looks at helping people challenge their negative thoughts about how dangerous situations are but also change their behavior when that's maintaining the anxiety [Music] what i find encouraging talking to david is that there are effective treatments available i'm a little wary of medication so i've decided to start with a course of cognitive behavioral therapy or cbt i've been referred by a gp to a specialist in oxford [Music] i've been nervous for the last few days and i keep saying to myself well maybe you don't have to do it maybe you could just like avoid it for another three decades but i can't [Music] professor paul salkovsky will be my cbt therapist in the first session of this structured therapy paul wants to assess the extent of my anxiety so next time we meet he can give me an exact diagnosis i feel this feels like a test i'm failing miserably i it's all of these are severe all of them are severes the fact that i'm finally sat here is quite a big deal for me one of the things that stopped me the only thing that really stopped me from ever seeing a professional was the thought that somebody would say you're crazy tie me up stick me in a white van and take my children away a lot of people with anxiety kind of consider that the anxiety itself might make them unfit to be a parent of course what anxiety does is it means that you're super sharp and it's never a reason to take children away from parents okay can you tell me a bit about the most important ways it it it restricts your life and perhaps damages your life um i i've stopped seeing any friends i'm sorry to hear that and does that make it all sad so yeah i don't see my friends anymore i mean my goodness yeah no i don't have any friends anymore i don't have any friends no i don't have food you don't have them or is you don't see them no i don't have any friends okay yeah but i um use so much of my energy on just just doing day-to-day stuff there's a lot of energy going into keeping an eye open for the anxiety and the panic isn't it i mean so it's a permanent distraction kind of thing you're kind of constantly doing things which kind of holds the monster at bay kind of thing that's exactly what i call it yeah okay is it okay yeah i call it my monster were you a a child who worried a lot or do you remember being worried i i've had this feeling for as long as i can remember but i was bullied in primary school up until i left primary school what were you bullied about for being dark okay they would wait in corners and pull chunks of my hair out till it was bleeding and they they slammed my fingers indoors and all of my nails eventually fell out because they were all black and blue and i think it was my last year of school and um and they flushed my head down the toilet but did you tell your parents or no they had lots going on they were in and out of hospital quite a lot with my brother and sister who were really sick so i just never said anything knowing that it would not be fair to go and tell them that mum i'm being bullied or mum this boy's hurting me can you see that that might have set you up to be a bit worried later because there's a lot to be worried about yeah and and and and good luck yeah that was hard it was really hard talking about things that have happened in the past paul's doing something that's completely opposite to what i've been doing all these years i've tried to kind of suppress it and dig deep and like push it down he's saying no let's talk about it a little bit more now let's think about why that happened and that's something that i haven't done ever [Music] my past is in luton where i grew up and where i started to suffer from anxiety i'm a first-generation british bangladeshi and i lived here until i was 20 with my five brothers and sisters this is your world this is it yeah this is my world it's changed a little bit since i was here last my sisters still live in the area hi holy me let me in growing up although they saw how bad my anxiety was we never really talked about it hey hey look at my eyebrows what happened to his lips i just look like a cute i look like a chocolate drop talking in therapy has made me realize that serious health issues in my family could have been one of the triggers for my anxiety as a child that's shaq that's our little brother and he is only a couple of days older when he was born i spent probably close to six months just watching his chest go up and down in the fear that he would just die both my youngest brother and sister had life-threatening diseases when they were born do you remember when i was like seven or eight and i'd get really emotional and start crying like even if like mum would go out somewhere really quickly nip out and we know she's had crosswords with dad and we're like oh she's never gonna come back i used to take it to the extreme yeah you would be absolutely hysterical and i used to think i used to look at you and i think why is she doing that why is she doing that why does she have to be so dramatic that's the problem with having this i think about death in a kind of irrational crazy all the time kind of i remember saying to myself if i didn't repeat everybody's names before i fell asleep everyone would that whoever's name i didn't repeat a lot of pressure what i used to do is i used to have my fingers and i used to say mom dad did he let's just say rumi i said mom's done what you were doing at night i was did you ever see that this is me this was me i used to do this always what you do though i'm like why does she do that yeah and it's become a habit now even now i'm listening to you and i'm thinking i'm telling me in my head i'm saying well some things you can't help like life and death that's not in our control why worry about it so much i can't help it though yeah i know this is it there's a voice in your head i can't help it and that to me it's like wow there's a voice in your head yeah what does a voice in your head sound like it tells you that you're not good enough it tells you that you're inadequate it tells you that you're a bad mother it tells you that you're the worst sister in the world it tells you that you're the most disappointing daughter that ever lived it tells you that you're an inadequate wife it tells you that you are not good if i told you nadia you are the best sister in the world forget about these two yeah you're the best sister in the world yeah you are everything that i could ever ask for in a sister is that not good enough i'd say you're lying or you're just saying it why'd you say you're just saying it to me like make me happy the thing is because of my anxiety i don't appreciate that any i can't appreciate the fact that i've got beautiful children an amazing husband a wonderful family sometimes i don't see it i think as her older sister i didn't realize how how deep it actually uh is the details in that when she was telling me about how she used to count down and names and things like that that blew my mind i thought really she actually does that how does one get through the day it's clear i was anxious from an early age so i want to know if this is something i was born with and if so could i and other anxiety sufferers like me pass the condition onto our children i'm afraid i've got three kids and i'm scared that i'm scared that they'll have it one of them will have it or all of them will have it and i hope it isn't genetic i don't want it to be genetic for the past 26 years at king's college london scientists have been conducting one of the largest twin studies in the world using cutting-edge research carried out on fifteen thousand pairs of twins they've been investigating the complex relationship between nature and nurture rosa and her sister margie have been part of the study since it began this is where they do all the studies so in this research center this is where the 20 century is based as well as a lot of other studies as well as being a participant rosa now works on the study conducting groundbreaking research into the role of genetics and environment on anxiety disorders so this twin study you've both obviously been doing it what information is it that they're trying to gather it's banking on the fact that twins are a really neat natural experiment how does that make you feel a little bit like yes sometimes by comparing twins we can start to unpick um how different traits are genetic so nature so nature and nurture yeah which kind of brings me to my question because i suffer with anxiety is there an anxiety gene uh that's the that's a classic question that um we always get asked and there absolutely isn't anxiety is influenced by um loads and loads of genes and all of them have quite small effects so it's not to say that it's genetic you can't say whether it's genetic yeah well we know that genes are important but they don't determine anything and really importantly the environment like within the family and schools that's key as well so you'll pass on half of your genes to your children but that doesn't mean that they're necessarily going to have exactly the same experience of anxiety as you because they have got environmental differences as well i've come away feeling quite good today because there's no one out there saying to me that actually i can pass it on to my kids but what i am hearing is that my environment the nurture part is the bit that i can control and that's the bit that makes me happy because actually i'm going to do everything in my power for my kids not to get it it seems to me one of the best ways to do that is to treat my anxiety so it stops having such an impact on our lives today paul will be giving me a diagnosis of exactly what type of anxiety disorder i have before starting my treatment in the last session what we picked up was very clearly nadia has high levels of anxiety at the forefront of this is the occurrence of panic attacks and in the panic she thinks that something terrible is going to happen that she's going to faint or die i'm keen to focus on that i want to know what i have but is it as clear-cut as that so i think central to his anxiety and and panic attack is the most obvious sort of manifestation of that and that would meet the label of panic disorder so you've got panic disorder and the bit that i'm not sure about is whether or not you actually have post-traumatic stress disorder because some of the things you described clearly haunt you the good news is that panic is just about the easiest one to treat so you can actually get rid of it you can get rid of it eight the research shows that eighty percent of people will be completely free of panic so you're saying that i could not have panic but i could just be anxious like any other person be free of panic yeah okay now when you have a panic attack what do you do well i know when i'm breathing really fast and rapid um i know that that's not how i'm supposed to breathe so the first thing i do is try and control it so i will in through the nose out through the mouth show me how you do that what's happening with you keep keep doing it makes you feel weirdly like headed okay yeah keep going keep going and a little bit thick three okay that's fine what else is happening to you so my heart feels like it's racing okay is this supposed to be helping no no it's not supposed to be healthy i'm just picking out what you said you normally did in a panic yeah and it's making you feel worse okay at a time when you felt very excited let's say when you got married you remember that feeling of excitement that feeling of intense excitement right what's how does it affect you physically when you're intensely excited almost quite similar to when i'm having a panic attack almost or actually physically yeah i don't feel like i'm dying then no you don't what's the difference feeling's the same yeah the feeling's the same the only thing is what it means to you yeah right and if you think it means that you're dying hey guess what you feel anxious if you think it means that this is the best day of your life you're full of joy yeah if that's the case then when you have a panic attack if you can be sure that nothing bad is going to happen then what would that do to the anxiety i could stop it in its tracks yeah well i think it wouldn't happen in the first place it wouldn't happen yeah yeah it'll probably take a break at this point i think we're not quite done but i think this would be a good time to take a break [Music] yeah you know every time i have a panic attack and you say in through the nose out through the mouth and we breathe lovely and deep and deep back out you know that makes it worse because that's like almost you're almost feeding it and i literally was on the edge you know like when i'm on the edge of an attack one of the things i was looking for as an activity that we could do to actually confront the the fear i'm really excited it's not about controlling breathing it's about discovering that the thing she's afraid of the fear is unjustified essentially okay go get the kids okay so what i'm keen to do is to try to again actually now take it to where she might feel panicky and confront it building up now okay do a bit more it's quite predictable interestingly that yeah literally the same kind of thing going on here you got the heart going fast yet okay sorry what what's happening now tell me what's going through your mind i don't like that feeling of course you don't nobody likes that feeling in this context yeah what's going through your mind apart from not liking the feeling i'm just wondering if it brings back any memories it reminds me of that moment when um it always reminds me of that moment when um i was hiding under the sink and um my head was flushed down the toilet because that's how i was breathing i'm guessing that when he heads in the toilet he can't breathe as well no i was breathing in a lot of water yeah which of course could have killed you yeah so you would feel as if your life was in danger it's that same feeling yeah so although you're not actually thinking you're going to remind you of a time when you thought you were going to die yeah is that right it's really important to remember that that was then and this is now right that what happened then it's not ever going to happen to you again and i think there's a little bit of an echo of that coming through in panics as well because of that difficulty breathing how's the physical feelings though i feel fine it's fine okay i still have that memory of the water going up my nose and feeling like if they don't pull me up now i am going to drown with my head in this toilet knowing that i'm breathing in water and urine and all of that and they eventually stopped and they left me and i hid under the sink and i i remember breathing really hard and i had a panic attack that was my first ever panic attack but that memory stays with me that memory is going to stay with me forever if i could erase my memory then i would take that one memory out of my head because that memory is always there it's become evident that there's two problems they're separate but interlinked frequent panic attacks which atlanta panic disorder but also the bullying trauma the idea is the next session will actually get control of the panic so that she can then more effective than deal with the traumatic stuff the flashbacks and re-experiencing she's got if my traumatic experiences as a child show anything it's that we need to deal with anxiety as early as possible and government figures back that up the biggest rise in anxiety in recent years is amongst teenage girls and young women hove park secondary in brighton is one state school trying to tackle the issue head-on welcome to what do i need to do to get in thank you the school has prioritized mental health trying to prevent anxiety becoming a serious problem by encouraging students to talk openly teachers are trained to spot the early signs of anxiety and pupils have access to dedicated therapy rooms and counsellors what kind of stuff makes you need to come in here like well maybe if i'm getting like wound up like about something maybe like some work might be a bit hard to get a bit wound off about it and then i'll just come up and just chill and then maybe we could do the work go back to listen okay kind of a bit of a safe space is what we try and say is that it's somewhere that you can go where you whatever kind of behavior you're feeling at that time or emotion you're feeling you can get that out and we're not kind of going to judge you or sanction you it's about having that space to breathe and that's a that's a great place to be right that you recognize that you need to come to the hub you're like right i need a minute please yeah and then you come up chill and then maybe go back to listen and carry on with wherever you're in and does it feel better when you go back yeah you're very lucky do you feel lucky yeah i feel lucky [Laughter] and they are lucky because outside of this school some children with mental health issues are waiting over a year to be treated we're going to talk about this afternoon worry and anxiety and what happens but here talking about anxiety and the pressures students face has become part of everyday school life i've heard the word perfect quite a lot yeah is there a pressure to be perfect everyone's supposed to be a certain way like and people expect you to be perfect basically social media basically impacts everything to us and like before you post the picture you're like worried what's everyone else going to think what comments am i going to get can you think about everyone else's opinions before you think about your own the difference i think for you guys and for us is that growing up i could just go home and there was no you know i didn't have a mobile phone but you guys have that added pressure of you can't leave school behind how do you find that i really wish i was born in 1980 oh yeah you do yeah you do it was a good time just i talked to my nan about all the time i'm just like life would just be so much easier you wouldn't have to deal with like social pressure like just people editing pictures and you're like oh she has such clear skin i want that oh her figure's so nice i want that like it just you wouldn't have that pressure listening to you like you should definitely give yourself more credit for the stuff that you are having to kind of bat off and navigate because like nadia said some of those things weren't around for us they just weren't there so you've got a whole new set of um things to kind of find your way through and you're doing an amazing job the mental health provision here is obviously having a really positive effect but head teacher jim roberts has to deliver it without any additional funding we've had to prioritize we've had to to make some tough decisions about things that we're going to resource and things that we're not going to resource as a head teacher you decide where your priorities are you decide the culture and ethos you want in your school and you have the autonomy to make that happen and that's what i wanted for this school i know that if this service was available for me when i was a teenager i can guarantee that i would have used it and i know that i would have said something and i know how much it would have helped me going into adulthood you know this is hope right yeah the level of care given to these pupils means they stand a better chance of avoiding the kind of anxiety i've suffered from since i was at school [Music] but the experience of being at hove park has also made me realize how deep rooted my condition is so i've decided to investigate the other recommended treatment medication [Music] but i'm cautious because i've tried it once before when i was 26 i had my daughter and i went to the doctors and i was given medication for depression and with very little explanation as to what the medication was for how i would feel and you know just what to do going forward so i had the medication for two weeks and didn't that was it for me that i just decided that i can't deal with having no emotions whatsoever but now now i'm almost considering it i've been looking online for other people's experiences of taking anxiety medication and i found blogger and journalist laura bartley who also has panic disorder like me [Music] laura lives in a rural part of wales she's been on an nhs waiting list for cbt therapy for 14 months and last year she turned to medication what do you want at the moment so that's the oh so that's the serotonin yeah the ssri there are a number of different types of medication used to treat anxiety and the most popular are the type laura is now taking antidepressants called ssris or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors serotonin so yeah you hear that that word to me is that says happy right serotonin chocolate when you took the medication was it as easy as right i'm having this medication i feel better already how did your i suppose how did you how did your body take it because mine didn't like it no it was not easy at all everyone reacts to it so differently and everyone has different side effects what were those horrendous side effects for the first two weeks i felt constantly sick and my anxiety was just at a level that i haven't experienced it for a long time it was just relentless worrying from the second i woke up to the second i went to sleep at what point did you think oh hold on a second i'm not feeling sick anymore uh it was about a month really yeah gradually i was realizing that i wasn't finding things as difficult as i found them before do you think the medication was the big turning point for you it has been a big turning point nothing seems so extreme anymore there's no extreme anxiety no extreme panics but i do still get panic attacks i do still get anxiety attacks and it's even whilst being on the even whilst on them yeah so i'd say they're definitely not it hasn't cured me it's not like a fix but you found something that works for you yeah it wasn't easy no you're in a better place yeah definitely in a much better place now speaking with laura has made me realize that i didn't know enough to make an informed decision when i was first prescribed antidepressants eight years ago so i'm going to see local psychiatrist dr mirza mohammed to get some professional advice about anxiety medication do you know what ssris mean no basically what they do is they they prevent the breakdown of serotonin in our brain right which is a very important neurochemical and it is associated with our mood our motivation our feelings of you know happiness and and that's how people tend to sort of get some improvement in their symptoms i was given medication for depression when i was 26 and i took it for two weeks and actually without the doctor's advice i just came off them so i mean the worst explained to you that you know those drugs are also licensed to be used for anxiety were they explained to me no absolutely not i mean a lot of these problems could be solved if patients had an extra couple of minutes at their gps where they can actually say oh you know what this is what i'm worried about can i speak about this and the gp had enough time yeah i think that's where i think a lot of resources are required so that you know these things they better explain and but they take time yeah but i mean i think if a doctor doesn't communicate what that medication's for then you know a pe a patient certainly isn't going to be brave enough to ask the question because when you're in a situation where you're already vulnerable surely that's just adding to the problem as opposed to again i think if i want to go through each and every important side effect and go through consent form it might take me you know 15 minutes in a consultation rather than a you know five minutes yeah it's clear medication can play an important role in managing anxiety but i'm still looking for a long-term solution and since i'm only three sessions into my therapy i want to give cbt a real chance having identified the root cause of my anxiety paul wants to put that to one side for now and concentrate on controlling my panic attacks if i don't keep busy i give it room to bubble he's asked me to listen back to our previous session so i can think about the things i do to control my anxiety it's made me realize that plans and routines dominate every part of my life even when i do my laundry um once i've done it everything is in color order so i've got black white cream gray red orange yellow green blue pink there's no other way but for me there's something about having everything in color order that's like the clarity makes me feel so good [Music] even living in milton keynes seems to help i like structure i like routine and milton keynes suits my life you know it suits the way i live it kind of gives me that structure that order a to b if you look at milton keynes as a whole it's like a grid system and there's something very satisfying about those grids there's no like curly wurly lines anywhere it just it suits me because i know exactly where i'm going from point a to point b um and everything takes nine minutes and i love roundabouts i think they're great there's no traffic anywhere ever nadia is constantly trying to keep her anxiety in check by obsessively following routines trying to keep herself occupied at all times and we'll be exploring today how these safety seeking behaviors can actually keep the anxiety going even though it appears that they're keeping it down i'm feeling quite anxious today i i just don't know what what's gonna i don't know what to expect from each session like i like plans i like to know exactly what's happening so first time i'm doing anything where i don't have a plan it's just kind of like this is what we're doing and that's scary for me i'm really really keen to to try and get you to introduce an element of randomness in your life okay i'm not saying nadia stop planning things but i'm saying now stop planning everything to within an introvert's life i can but i'm scared that i can't okay but what i'm saying is this is all part of the control makes me feel less anxious whereas in fact i think it's controlling you your anxiety bullies you into you must do it that way you've always got to know where you are you've always got to know what's happening next and so on that's obviously got to do that if you don't do that then i'm going to get you yeah it's the voice in my head okay so if you wanted to deal with the panic what might you need to do face a panic attack strangely enough i've come to the same conclusion yeah i was thinking that we should go looking for situations which may make you feel panicky can you think of a situation i'll do anything but i can't do that when i have to get on a train that's quite frightening that's quite scary just the thought of going on a train on my own makes me feel sick okay so so now we're going to go and be impulsive on the train we're not are we are we actually going to go on a train yes that was the other day now yeah yeah that was the idea i'm wanting you to try to get the panic going so we can flatten it okay is it are we really going to go to london now third time you've asked me that okay fine i guess we're going to london i hope he's got a plan because i don't does you know where we're going okay well fighters might you obviously don't know either does it matter are you good with plans do you need plans i'm sorry yes so you're getting anxious too yeah my heart's racing a little bit what is it you're worried about i don't like not knowing where i'm going so if you could just let that happen let your heart pound okay and i mean this is really important you you need to be able to discover that either something happens or nothing happens nothing will happen but it's all very well for me to say that but it's you that needs to discover that okay okay we can cross over just having that voice in your head telling you that you're not good enough and that you can't do this and remember you're gonna have a panic attack and everyone's gonna see that everyone's gonna know that you're weak and everyone's gonna know that you're sick [Music] those are the voices in my head so where are we going london paddington delayed transfer this is why i don't like not planning things lots of what we do in in treatment and a lot of what she needs to do is to discover how the world really works as opposed to how she fears it might work what she fears might happen what we're seeing is the whole range of safety seeking behaviours so she for example is avoiding looking at other people looking at her feet she's doing a whole range of things which are designed to stop her from panicking to keep the anxiety at bay and so on but which are actually making it worse the hope is to get her not to do those things and then see that our anxiety will actually begin to diminish but the closer i get to the train the more i feel the panic rising inside me okay so many tents my mouth feels really tight okay well yeah so that's it's okay to have it to be tense it's but you know you know it's unnecessary you know yeah it seems unnecessary like the looking down is unnecessary yeah it's almost like you're repeatedly telling yourself i'm an anxious person you know yeah and you know what you don't absolutely don't have to be no and so some of it is about you're just not going to give in to the anxiety look down do this do that it's taking all of my strength to keep my head up yep oh okay thank you it's all right it's not as bad as i thought it was going to be it never is [Music] here you are headed to london and it's not as scary as i thought it was going to be is it the scariest old man at the moment this moment i don't think it is carrie i think it's can we and you know and and if you were to panic now if you were to have a panic attack what then it would go away okay you'll go away you don't need to say this is me saying that i'm not when it happens i'm not going to force it to go away it will just go away it will just go away because there's nothing to be afraid of [Music] this is unfamiliar for me this is not something i do i was not expecting to be here today and here i am you know for sure you can do it now i know i can't do it yeah and we've still got a bit of work to do yeah guys let me show you look look i came to trafalgar square and look i'm not dead i'm not dead or anything [Music] today has been life-changing i've done things i never thought possible and i'm starting to realize just how valuable this treatment is but i'm also aware i'm incredibly lucky because there are lots of sufferers who are undiagnosed or not getting professional treatment what if i can't do it i'm getting like cold sweat right okay so what i would say to you is you're going to have to expect that the anxiety is going to manifest but the difference is as you've been learning i've been looking online at what else is out there for anxiety sufferers oh god what am i doing i mean it's definitely i've come away from the nhs website a little bit and there's lots of stuff online these self-help groups and there's this thing i've come across run by this guy called barry and it's like this community uh of people who like a live stream thing where you can go off and you could do something and like kind of push yourself but you've all but you've always constantly got a community of people who um who talk to you and encourage you oh i see i'm getting like flashes of panic i'm scared though i don't know where to go what to do you're actually okay you didn't die you didn't pass out none of those horrible things you thought would happen happened and you're proving that to yourself right now by standing there in the shop barry a former anxiety sufferer is one of a number of people running online self-help groups offering an alternative to nhs therapy for a price are you trained in any way all of the everything i write and everything comes from my own personal experience so it's very much about my personal experience of how i overcame my anxiety and then i'm connecting people with other people who are using that same approach trying to build up this peer-to-peer environment where people with anxiety can connect with each other working together and supporting and inspiring each other i mean how many subscribers how big is your community we have about a quarter of a million people who we communicate to over social media media and through our emails and it's growing all the time as i said earlier anxiety is this problem and people are becoming more aware of it and so they're searching out solutions online i mean i know that there's a struggle it's not that easy to get access to cbt but why do you think people are why do you think people are turning to this form of therapy i suppose there's still a stigma of going to a therapist and having that help people are afraid of doing that and there's also some people are afraid to talk to their doctor about it even so going online doing some research finding these communities is a great way or great introduction for people into that world you can absolutely whilst i'm unsure if online communities like this are as beneficial as nhs therapy what is valuable is that they encourage people to open up and realize that they are not alone i always talk about how important it is to share and to talk and that is part of the healing i hope that people see that actually it's not that scary and you know who knows even if just one person picks up the phone to their gp and says do you know what i'm going to call my gp because if average nadia can do that then so can i [Music] it's been seven days since i caught the train to london with paul and despite how well the treatment has been going now i'm back at home without him to help me my anxiety is taking hold again it's one of those things where um i think the doctor asked her to just all of a sudden go to london by herself the underground she did it she called us we were really proud of her so you know it was like a really good moment high moment and then literally a day or two later something else life through another problem and she couldn't cope with it and i think that really dropped her from a high to a very low she was crying in a corner at one point and she would not kind of get us get herself up and i think she feels quite dejected now as in it's not going to work i'm not going to find the cure because she felt so good and then literally a day or two later she felt really bad and i think that's really worrying her [Music] what can i do i mean if you think about it what do i do i'm just there isn't it but as an aide to you i don't know how to help you that's you know that's i do not help me either because sometimes i've seen rather than facing the problem you'll cook for two weeks ahead yeah you clean everything that's available to clean you'll eye and everything you organize everything everything and you and i'm always i'm always coming to you and i say can i do that but those things help me to be distracted and they helped me to kind of function as normally as people kind of hiding from it yeah i think maybe you need to let go of control not letting me just do it but just accepting the consequences of letting me do it like that time i accidentally burnt your top with the iron why are you so bad at everything i'm not you just are you're just a perfectionist oh you're so bad at everything you're like bad at cooking you're bad at ironing your body i'm not that bad at ironing what do you do do you want to make lunch you could make an omelette i'm not going to tell you oh my god see i did it yeah whoa i'm not going to say anything okay go do whatever you want i'm doing it yeah i have never sat here and watched you do anything there go for it time now oh lord this is going to be painful where's the knife nadia i'm joking there's a salmon pie here you can't that's ready made you can't even touch that sometimes when you're going away on a weekend job you'll spend thursday friday cooking five meals what would happen if you didn't i've never done that before no but it would be okay wouldn't it we'd work it out me and the kids what would you feed him i don't need to tell you i'm their dad no but isn't it you need to let go of that control whereas i wanted my curiosity i won't even tell you what curiosity what would you feed me no i i don't know i'll work it out this is going to be difficult for you i better test it quick myself then i know i don't know can i have that little corner because i can see a chili you want the chili i want that chilli corner look there's a chilli there even with abdul support i can see that getting better is going to be hard and i'm starting to wonder if therapy really is the answer i've had these sessions with paul and he's teaching me how to manage my panic attacks or at least understand my panic attacks at the moment but over the last two days the way i felt i have questioned the cbt i have stepped back and thought is this even working because what i wanted was a cure why would somebody say right that's it it's gone now you're never going to have it ever again um but i mean he could be wrong i mean he could be wrong at the moment i'm feeling like he might not he might be wrong at the moment i'm feeling like i'm not going to it's not going to go away i don't know where i am at the moment i feel stuck in the middle somewhere i've met people who have said well you have panic disorder and this is kind of something that you live with and you learn to manage it but you live with it for the rest of your life and that's it and i don't want to be and you don't agree no more than that yes i mean not only do i agree a i've seen it not to be true 80 percent of people who who have you know the appropriate therapy are panic free i mean panic free you say 80 i could be that 20 where i still have to yes except you're not because of what you've already managed to do i suppose my frustration over the last few days has been that i want this kind of i want this instant fix and i know that's a lot though because because i mean there's multiple things going on here you know what i've been focusing on is is is the panic bit because that's what brought you through the door kind of thing right there's also this trauma issue that's something that you'll be working on for the rest of your life that for me was the thing that made me realize that this isn't going to be easy and that this it was never going to be easy but but it's still like being really clear about what you need to do cbt is not me doing things to you it's we talk you take something from that and then you apply it and if it works you stick with it and if it doesn't work we'll work out what needs to be done but it's about self-help and what you you know it's about actually you taking control and what i've seen is that you have begun the process of taking a job [Music] if the success of the treatment is ultimately about helping yourself then i need to start trying things on my own without paul facing my fears to overcome them like i did on the train to london so where better to start than in front of an audience of 2000 at the nec in birmingham [Music] in the past i've managed to cope with these big cooking shows by not wearing my glasses my fear has always been if i can see the audience i'll have a panic attack today i'm doing something that is that breaks that pattern and the pattern for me was to not wear my glasses and today i'm breaking that pattern and saying i'm going to wear my glasses so that for me and that in itself is a massive challenge for me [Applause] i can't see their faces i know as soon as i put my glasses on okay it'll be fine i can do it just glasses just people just faces it'll be fine it's making me anxious [Music] in front of your very eyes please be hands together massive applause for nadio how are you lovely look at all these people here lots of people for you one of the things that i just kind of wanted to say before i started cooking i'm doing a documentary about mental health and i suffer with mental health issues which i've been really open and honest about i've recently learned that there's certain things that i do um that are called safety seeking behaviors and i do them to protect myself one of the things i do is i don't ever wear my glasses because then i can pretend like nobody's here so today for the first time i'm going to break that sequence and i'm going to wear my glasses boom i said you're going to see me look at me but i'm here i can see everyone oh my god look i can see all your faces that's hard um you guys are good looking people let's just crack on i think we should just cook indeed yeah what are you gonna be cooking for us because i know you've got a couple of dishes i came into this thinking that i wanted a cure i wanted to be fixed i know now that it's not a cure i'm looking for i need i have to find it's not a cure because it's not that kind of illness i have to find a way of managing and you have to find a way of living like this but without all the things that make me sad i know my treatment isn't finished i know i've got a long way to go but i feel i feel ready for it i already see little glimmers little little glimmers [Music] so i know there's hope [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Only Human

Views: 209,452

Keywords: Only Human, Only Human channel, documentary, nadiya anxiety and me, anxiety documentary, health anxiety documentary, anxiety depression documentary, anxiety attack documentary, social anxiety documentary netflix, symptoms of anxiety, only human anxiety documentary, only human mental health documentary, only human anxiety, only human anxiety disorder, only human mental health, mental health documentary, mental health documentary anxiety, obsessive anxiety

Id: Q-9ThOrvl5Q

Length: 58min 52sec (3532 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 02 2021