How 724 Panic Attacks Gave Me The Gift Of Emotional Mastery

In school, we were taught many things, but no one taught us the most important thing - how to manage our thoughts and emotions. After 2 decades of research on human behavior, it still felt like I was controlled by my mind, until a debilitating panic attack led to a 2 year spiral of daily panic attacks. That ordeal gave me the gift of mastering my thoughts and emotions. If you have constant negative thoughts, beliefs, and volatile emotions, I hope this helps you.

Transcript

Hi,

I'm Shan and this is the Shan George Behavioral Lab podcast.

Imagine every negative thought you have about yourself and the worst fears that you have and the thoughts are the type of thoughts that are so terrifying that you don't even want to think about it because you aren't sure you could even look at it.

Then multiply those fears and thoughts playing in your head almost non-stop every single waking moment of your life and this mental torture loop plays over and over again every waking moment of the day.

You can't seem to stop it no matter how hard you try and it feels like you're being taken hostage by your fears and negative thoughts for two years that's 730 days of mental torture and that's me.

After a massive panic attack,

I suffered the side effects of that panic attack where for the next two years of my life every day was a battlefield in my mind and the negative thoughts and my worst fears were this constant assault.

It was screaming on full blast non-stop and during those two years I felt and believed all of the negative thoughts and all of my fears.

It all felt real and it felt true and I believed it and no matter how hard I tried the thoughts always knew what vulnerable buttons to push to hurt me and shut me up.

I felt helpless and hopeless and I tried everything to manage it.

Therapy,

Meditation,

Medication,

Yoga,

Alternative healing.

I've probably tried it all and it took me two years of daily work but at the end of it,

I learned to manage my thoughts and emotions instead of letting them control me and not just that I was able to create the thoughts and emotions I wanted that supports me.

These are the lessons I learned during the journey and if you are struggling with volatile emotions and negative thoughts I hope this helps you.

The first and most important lesson I learned was thoughts aren't real.

Everything is a matter of perspective.

Now,

We have multiple thoughts in a day but what makes a thought feel real is how it makes us feel and our belief about it.

If someone were to call you a potted plant right now,

That's the thought in your head,

But you don't believe it,

Right?

There's no objective reality,

Only subjective reality based on your perspective and interpretation of that thought.

So let's take my mom as an example.

When I was about six years old,

I was helping her set the table for dinner and while carrying a bowl to the dining table,

It slipped from my hands and it crashed into a dozen pieces on the floor.

Her interpretation of that situation at the time was,

This kid is so careless.

Now I have to spend money to replace a new bowl.

I need to punish her immediately for this bad behavior.

That resulted in her screaming at me and I was whipped.

Now,

30 years later,

I was over at her house helping her wash the dishes when a plate slipped from my fingers and it landed on the floor and shattered.

Her interpretation of that situation this time around was,

Okay,

It's just a plate.

I can always get another one.

In both cases,

The situation was almost the same.

But how she thought,

Felt and responded was very different and the difference was her perspective.

And the belief in that perspective as the truth.

So what could be perceived as true in one moment can be seen as false depending entirely on your perspective.

And you have the power to change your thoughts and feelings by changing your perspective right now.

So maybe you tend to be quite hard on yourself and let's say you did not finish all the tasks you told yourself that you would do today,

Right?

Your usual punishing perspective is going to sound like this.

I should have done more today.

I'm so lazy and I'm so inefficient.

But this is just your usual habitual perspective.

You could challenge it and replace it with multiple perspectives because the same situation could also be interpreted as I made some headway into the task and I finished some of it or you know,

Even though I didn't finish,

I'm still on track this week to finish it on time.

Or,

You know what?

This list of mine,

It's unrealistic.

It doesn't even take into consideration my different obligations at work and to my family.

So let me adjust it so it's more realistic and reflects what's actually going on in my life.

You know,

At first when you try to adopt different perspectives,

It might feel difficult to come up with different perspectives or even feel that those perspectives are real,

Right?

It's so hard because you've been so ingrained with that old habit and old thinking patterns.

Now,

This is normal since this is an unconscious habit you have had for decades and it's natural that it feels unnatural for you to believe because you are in the process of breaking old habits and replacing new ones and it's part of your brain's neuromodulators that it feels hard so that a new habit truly sinks in.

I have a different episode talking about our brain and how change is supposed to feel hard so we fully absorb the new knowledge and skill.

So if you're interested,

Go check it out.

So to recap,

Thoughts aren't real.

What makes it real is your perspective of the situation and you can rewire your brain to change and believe in new perspectives through practice.

Another thing that helps when you have persistent negative thoughts is knowing that since your mind can create negative thoughts,

It also has the power to create positive thoughts.

As humans,

There's an evolutionary bias to look for the negative or the bad in order to survive.

But since these thoughts are created in your mind,

Now that you are aware,

You also have a conscious choice to create positive thoughts and perspectives of a situation.

When you do this,

You move from passive beings who accept the negative default thoughts created by habit to active creators who choose to shape the way you want to think.

You have a lot more power than you realize.

In the beginning,

When you're used to negative thoughts,

When you try to do this,

Your negative thoughts will resist and fight you.

It will tell you it's too hard.

It won't work.

And when you hear that,

Realize that's just your habits doing their job of trying to keep you where you are.

Even though it's miserable,

It's familiar.

It feels safe.

So when you start,

Just start small.

Let's say you can try a mini gratitude practice every day where you list out a couple of things that you are grateful for.

In fact,

If you do it right now,

List out just two things that you are grateful for right now.

Notice the change in how you feel after you do it and realize that you just created that positive emotional shift by doing this.

You can change how you feel in an instant.

As you keep going,

You will reclaim your power and manage your thoughts and emotions the way you want them to be.

And as you continue with this journey,

Adopt a scientist mindset towards it.

You know,

I'm guilty of this.

Whenever I try a new habit to change my habits,

You know,

Thoughts or whatever,

When it doesn't work,

I just go,

It doesn't work.

I can't change.

This method sucks.

There's no such thing as change.

What I realized is that our journey,

It's like different seasons and depending on the season,

Different techniques will work better than others.

So say you forgot your keys and you got locked out.

You tried using a piece of wire to try to jiggle your doorknob into submission and it doesn't work.

So you try different methods until you finally open it.

Now years later,

You lock yourself out again in your brand new apartment.

The lock is different.

And this time the methods you've used in the past did not work.

So you experiment with different ways to get it to unlock until you get the door to open.

And it's a similar thing here where you approach your self-growth journey with adaptability and a scientific mindset where let's say this method doesn't work,

Then move on to a different one.

Or how about combining methods?

You treat it like an experiment and try different ways until you find what works then.

These three lessons have really helped me manage and control my emotions over time and it does require practice.

But with practice over time your brain will rewire and it will start to sink in and it will become your default behavior.

I hope you found this helpful.

And if you have any questions,

Feel free to leave in the comments below.

Thank you.