Most everyone has heard of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  You know, the disorder that combat veterans come home with after the war…

See, that’s the problem.  Everyone associates PTSD with combat, and it certainly is seen with war vets, but it can also be caused by many other traumatic events like abuse, natural disaster, or motor vehicle accidents.

It’s important that you receive the proper care and treatment for PTSD if you have it, but it’s often confused (even by therapists) with other anxiety disorders and vice versa.

I asked Dr. Matthew Tull to speak to me, who is the guide to PTSD for the popular website About, as well as the director of anxiety disorders at the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the University of Mississippi Medical Center. I asked him to take a few moments so he can give you an overview of what post traumatic stress disorder is, as well as the role it can play with anxiety and specific fears such as the fear of driving, flying, and others.

Just hit the play button below to listen to to out interview (about 15 minutes long):

Want to download it to your computer? Right click the link below and choose “Save-as…”

Download the Interview

I know  I usually don’t post this frequently, but this comment on my last post brings up something really important and I wanted to give it some extra attention…

Basically, it was commenting that most people don’t have much to worry about except mundane and inconsequential things like taking the kids to soccer practice, etc., while people struggling with anxiety are constantly engaged in this “inner turmoil” which makes life so much more difficult than it is for everyone else (or least that’s how I’m reading it).

I TOTALLY understand where the author of the comment is coming from.  That’s exactly how I felt too when I was suffering with panic attacks and seemingly endless days of constant anxiety.  Everyone else was just skipping through life…actually ENJOYING it damn them…and there I was gritting my teeth and praying I’d make it through the grocery store, red light, or haircut.

I’m not too proud to admit it…I was jealous of them.

Jealous of the life they had that I craved.

A life free from worries, struggle, and anxiety.

A NORMAL life.

But let me back up a sec….

See, when we’re anxious, we think that everyone can see it.  That there’s this big neon sign above our heads that says “Look…she’s anxious!” or “Watch out, he’s having a panic attack!”

The truth of the matter is, there is no neon sign and rarely can anyone tell that there’s anything wrong.  At the very most, we’ll seem a little “uptight”, but the people around us don’t get any preview into what’s going on inside our heads.

Once I understood that, I remember it helping a little.  I was always SO concerned that someone would discover I was anxious.  I mean, what would they think?  Aren’t I supposed to be strong?  A tough guy?

What would I do if they found out I’m me?

Once I knew I could feel anything inside my own head and even if it was terrible, no one knew besides me, at least I didn’t have to fight to keep it “contained”.  There was nothing there to hide that anyone could see.

What the heck does all that have to do with the comment about the lucky devils who only have to worry about soccer practice?

Well, it works the other way too.

Just like nobody can sneak a peek into the goings on in your head, you don’t get to know what’s going on in theirs either.

You can’t judge someone’s INSIDES by looking at their OUTSIDES.

Like you, just because someone appears to have it all together, doesn’t mean they do.  Even when you’re anxious or struggling, you don’t make it obvious to the rest of the world either.

EVERYONE has their challenges.  Some are different, some are more severe than others, but to the one affected, they’re all tough.

Maybe the person taking their kids to soccer practice had an alcoholic father that beat or molested them and it haunts them.

You can’t see that.

Maybe the guy at work who seems so put together just got diagnosed with cancer.

You can’t see that.

Maybe both of them are afraid of their own demons, and are just as scared as you, or it manifests in different ways.

Even the celebrities whose lives we’re so interested in and who seem to “have it all” are just as troubled as the rest of us – even more so.

As a matter of fact, I can virtually GUARANTEE you they have their own fears.

The other day, I was logging into my account at a bank through their website, and I had to answer some questions so they could quiz me in the future and be sure I was who I said I was.

You know, things that apply to everyone, things like, “What’s your Mothers maiden name?” or “What city were you born in?”

Look at the one they asked me:

Let me zoom in…They wanted to know my biggest fear.

THAT’S how common fear is.  EVERYONE is afraid.  It’s just a matter of “of what” and “to what degree”.

You can’t walk down the street and judge peoples insides by their outsides.

You just don’t know.

So don’t be too quick to get jealous like I used to about the people with “perfect” lives.  I found there aren’t any.  Some just hide it better.  By the same token, take some pleasure in the knowledge that you’re not so different after all.

It’s been an exciting summer…

You’ve seen lots of good things made available here for anxiety and panic attacks, and there’s more to come.  But in my personal life, which is increasingly fleeting lately it seems, I had an incredibly memorable time over the past few month helping my four year old daughter learn to swim.  The process even gave me a great example to illustrate a major part of overcoming anxiety…

Now I know how to swim, pretty good in fact, but just because I know how to, doesn’t mean I know how to TEACH someone else how to…so my wife and I decided to enlist the help of our friendly neighborhood children’s swim instructor.

When we first started out, my daughter was TERRIFIED when her feet couldn’t touch the bottom, even though I was holding her and she was perfectly safe.  I mean, it’s natural to be afraid of drowning, right?   Not as many of us would be walking around if your ancestors didn’t have a healthy dose of respect for the possibility of sinking. So whenever she would try and put her feet down and nothing was there to support her, she would hold on to me real tight and on more than one occasion, use my ears and hair for a nice and firm grip.

Ouch.

Now like I said,  I can swim, but I had no idea how to handle this or where to even begin  to teach her to have some confidence in the water.

Enter Bill, the swim instructor.

We showed up for our lesson, and Bill got pretty much the same response as I did initially.  But what he did next really took me by surprise.  He didn’t start by teaching her to swim like I was trying to do…

He taught her to float.

Yep, the very first thing he did was teach her that whenever she got scared, instead of struggling and fighting and kicking and flailing her arms, she could simply roll onto her back and float.  That trying so hard to NOT SINK was actually the problem.  She needed to stop resisting and relax and just become part of the water.

See, she’s a natural…

Kind of sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Maybe a little bit like I’ve been telling YOU about your anxiety…and how your struggle against it perpetuates it, and how a big part of overcoming it is to realize that if you just TRULY stop resisting it, it starts to go away.  That once you know that whenever you want you can, “roll onto your back”, there’s nothing to fear and the anxiety demon stops stalking you…

You can learn all about my techniques to help you lean to “float” and end your anxiety in my programs over there on the right side of the page.

So here’s some questions to ponder…I’d love to hear read the answers in the comments section of this post:

So how can you better “roll onto your back and float” the next time you get anxious?

How have you been fighting your anxiety so far?  Has it helped or do you keep sinking and scaring yourself?

How many lessons do you need before you try something different?

I announced it on the old blog, but I know we have some newcomers here, so I figured I’d mention it again…

Be sure to get your copy of the FREE report, “The Anxiety Manifesto”

It’s not  a long report, but it’s crammed with what I think are THE most critical things for you to know to overcome your anxiety, panic attacks, or fears.

And the best part is, it’s free…no fine print whatsoever…just go get it at:

www.AnxietyManifesto.com

I want to get this information into as many people’s hands as possible, because I think it’s that important.  There’s a lot of bad information spread around about anxiety, especially online, and I’d like to clear some of it up.  So pass this report around, tell people on other forums to go to www.AnxietyManifesto.com and get a copy, link to it from your blog, or email people you think it will help.

I know that together we can make a BIG difference.

But I need YOU too.

Yep, you found it, this is where all my new blog posts are going to be.

I’ve got a lot of special things in store for you, so stay tuned.

Don’t forget to subscribe so you know when I make posts! You can do that by using whatever RSS reader you like, or if you don’t know what that means (like me!), then just put your email address in the box to the right, under that big orange button.

I hope you like the new look!

Talk to you soon.

Rich