WEBVTT

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[music]

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My vein\'s staggering along for months

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trying to cope with that drugs.
And, ah, how... just

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was exhausted and I wasn\'t getting the rest
I needed and it was suggested that, ah,

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I go up to the country to a friend\'s
place just to get away through it.

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My mind was raising so,
thoughts that I do that was

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just out of control. I
started to drive and, ah, I

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was aware of traffic lights, noise
being amplified and exaggerated

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and ah, bizarre and, and surreal way.
Driving was a nightmare. I

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seriously considered turning around and abandoning
the day. I could only perceive by locking my

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hands to the wheel and pointing the car in a straight
line. I was still driving, uhm, an hour and a half

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later and hadn\'t left the city. It was just
getting ridiculous. And I stopped the car and

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decided to ring my friends in the country and
said that I wasn\'t just able to, to make it.

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And my mother called and say, you know,
this was really serious stuff. I got

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back in the car, turned the key and
it just sounded so and it says,

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the whole engine it says... and
it just all hit me. But I was in

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the state, I, I was stuck, that ah, it was
just chaos. And, and I couldn\'t move.

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And I was suddenly out of the car, in the
street screaming. Just screaming, \"Help me!

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Help me! For God\'s sake
help me!\" There was an

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elderly man, who came there and put down his
bags, walked over and took me in his arms.

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And I just collapsed, ah, just waiting.

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He stayed with me for two hours.
Night came, where we sat in the

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car together. He was Iranian, he spoke
hardly in English. And he kept, just

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gently reaching over and patting my hand now
and saying, \"It\'s all right. It\'s all right.\"

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Until my friend came and got me.
And he took my phone number and he

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called away later to see if I was okay.
And his English

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was so limited. He himself said that he was sick
and asked him what was wrong and he couldn\'t

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explain. I got home two days later
to find a note into my door

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to call his son who had the
same name, and the son said his

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father died in that way.

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You, you, you always gonna suffer... you always
gonna have anxiety. All human beings have

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anxiety otherwise, well, I mean
it\'s just a natural part of life.

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But, ah, ju... ju... just you don\'t want to get
out of hand, that\'s all. But for me, it would

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freeze my creativity. I, ah,
I\'d uhm, I get saw that...

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It\'s like out of the windows, it\'s
like a white noise in your head, ah,

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and you can\'t just think straight.
I get a lot of people ra... writing

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to me, you know, with, \"If you want advice about
anxiety...\" Here\'s the first based you\'d turn to an actor.

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What is wrong with you? Nothing.
What do you mean nothing?

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I might be sick. Are you sick or
aren\'t you? I\'m waiting on the

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results on some tests. You can\'t be sick. If
something happens to you, what happens to mom?

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Not always... just about always work
related or else, watching my work,

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or else reading about my work.
Come on, you can tell me. I\'m a

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dentist. There\'s nothing wrong with
my teeth. Maybe but I\'ve also had a

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general health training. The thigh bone is
connected to the tooth bone. Exactly. Come on.

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Just tiredness, upset
stomach, that sort of thing.

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Uh-huh, uh-huh... And, ah, are you
tired all the time? Exhausted.

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And the upset stomach, is
it like, uhm, diarrhea?

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Yeah. Uh-huh... What

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is it? How would I know? I\'m a dentist!
There are people that have panic attacks

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everyday. It might have
like five in an hour.

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[sil.]

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My panic disorder started in, ah, like

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1980. I was driving to work and
I had my first panic attack

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at the time. I haven\'t been work for about three
days. And I remember thinking to myself, this

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is not a virus, there is something very,
very wrong with me. And with that forward,

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I felt this extraordinary, ah, electric
shock, just moved through my body. My

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heart\'s started to rise, I had trouble
breathing, uhm, I just started to

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shake. And then suddenly, oh, I s... it was
like, uhm, an out of body experience.

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I was looking down at
myself in the car and I

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panicked. And I\'ve always thought that was very
unaffectionately. My heart was trembling, my...

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You know, everything was just sort of pumping,
but I didn\'t know why. I suppose that was the

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scariest part of it all. So I didn\'t
know what was happening to me.

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[sil.]

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There to first panic attack was

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probably about grade three or four. I had this
thing we\'re walking. We\'re on the bus, I got this

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feeling. I thought, \"Wow! I hate that!\" And I
right stand in front of the bus and just be...

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Jumped off and it\'s still gone. And Joe(ph) had let me off
and from... for the next day or so, these feelings of

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panic have calm and then it will go again.
I was hot and sweaty and trembling, and I

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thought, I will go, \"God this is the
end and I\'m dying.\" But all through

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school, I noticed that, too. This, this bit
of feeling come up inside me. I thought, \"Oh!

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Oh-oh! I\'m going nuts or I\'m gonna die. One or
the other.\" So I think that goes right back

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to probably when I was three or four.
Well I\'ve

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been seeing Jason(ph) for 10 years and
Jason(ph) is Tasha\'s older brother. So,

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we meet through Jason? Yep. Everybody is
trying to trick me for all this other

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things and they were saying that Jason(ph)
recognized all the anxiety stuff that I was going

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through. And he recognized it because
of what Tasha had gone through already.

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The (inaudible)

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anxiety experience is extremely common. So,

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so there, there are huge numbers of people who
suffered from this kind of conditions. They

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never go and seek specialist\'s assistance. They\'re
treated by their family doctors or they kinda

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get frontline treatment from, from non-specialist
practitioners and that will always be the case.

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[sil.] The worst thing

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than can happen to you is read, read traffic lights
because, you... you\'re totally, totally trapped.

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And this whole road was just full of traffic
lights and I\'ve got every single red light.

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Uhm, and, and I finally got a green light
but then a train was coming, the gates

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coming down, and I was first, first cal(ph).
And that\'s when I was thinking, well,

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no one knows what\'s happening to me. No
one understands and I just can\'t go on.

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And as I got out of the car, and I was gonna
walk in front of the train, and everything is in

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slow motion. People\'s reactions, people who begin talking
about... beginning to understand what I was going to

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do. And I remember thinking myself at
least I\'m not scared to do this. And that

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really terrified me.

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The fear brought me right
back into reality and

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I got back in the car and I went straight
to my GP. And he told me that I was, uhm,

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experiencing panic attacks.

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An indigenous therapist that deals
with people with, uhm, traumatic pain.

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But before I can go out into the

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community and, uhm, help
men, women, and children,

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my own pain needs to be healed first.

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I was, uhm, sexually
abused when I was a child.

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Uhm, you didn\'t talked to anybody about
it, you keep it inside yourself.

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And, yeah... The feelings that
I was getting inside was,

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uhm, like, ah, stones in the
stomach and rising up, ah, that

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hot, just pumping, uhm, the fear.
I fear like that I\'m,

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I\'m clomping up, clomping up
inside my mind. My brain is

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saying, uhm, \"Stop it,\" you
know, \"stop it.\" You can

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have panic attacks without necessarily
having a phobia, but you can\'t have a

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phobia without having a panic attack. And the way that
works is that uhm, with the phobia. So, you are at the

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supermarket and you have your first panic attack,
and it\'s just such an overwhelming experience

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that you\'re starting, \"Hmm, I think I might
avoid this supermarket because I might

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feel that feeling there again.\" But then and
you start thinking, well, if I got defeated,

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there\'s a risk, too. And then if I go, then
the straight is a risk. And in the end that

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can corner you into an avoiding situation
where you end up not living your house.

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All the years when I was
not doing any, uhm,

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anything. Getting out at all, I... this
used to be my main focus. I come home

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if I didn\'t hit, hit... if I didn\'t go straight to be like
coming out on the shade and experiment with something,

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deal with something. But it was a completely different
world, ah, I escaped from the world of agoraphobia and

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work and into my own
little world in the shed.

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Because my problem is a social fear,
uhm, people assessing me and,

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and that\'s sort of things how I
look and a lot of that, uhm, it

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kinda just slipped in and I
just learn certain, I guess

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maladaptive behaviors in my social life
to try and compensate for that. In

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particular drinking. It, ah, tipped over into
social phobia, so that I had, you know, had trouble

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going out and visiting people, going to restaurants, going
to parties. I got to the point where I couldn\'t leave

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the house. I got to the point where I couldn\'t leave
my bedroom, except to get to accident and emergency,

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and to see my psychiatrist.

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I became housebound in, ah, 1981 and I

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didn\'t start to move around again to about
1994. There weren\'t many places I could go

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anymore. It seemed and it gradually closed in to I thought
it\'s gonna get to a stage where I can\'t even move to the

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bed. I couldn\'t even go from

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the bedroom through to the toilet. Just walking from the bedroom
through the toilet was just, uhm, an unbelievable, ah, tough

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experience. And I think the humiliation
that I felt, because, I, I had asked my

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husband to come with me. Hi! Come on in

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and I\'ll show you my room. I live
in a room in house, so the room\'s

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finally all I\'ve got. Uhm, this
is my bed, my old mattress

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which is my main living area where I write
things here, wrote, read things here. Answer the

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telephone, feel lazy to get up.
I had a crash

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injury to my hand. It was about
six months before I actually got

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back on the machine that I had been
working on and I had a severe,

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intense symptoms of what at that
time I was caught in flashes. And

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which now I know were severe
hallucinations. Basically, what

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seems to is happened is that as I work
that and overcame the symptoms of

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post traumatic stress disorder, as I
fight it away, the obsessive compulsive

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disorder became more pronounced.
OCDs are very, ah,

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used to be seen as a very rare problem.
And I remember when I started working in

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psychiatry patients with OCD who came for treatments
were very uncommon. They, they\'re seen as

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anxiety disorders because one\'s
response to this thoughts or desires,

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rituals and actions that you have to do is
def... is because you\'re anxious. You have

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the thought and then the
ritual undoes the anxiety.

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The anxiety that I have is that, uhm,
I\'m really afraid that I\'m gonna try

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at the wrong things, so that causes me then to
really check, and check, and check, that I\'m,

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before I throw anything at. Not
long after we were married, I,

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I notice a few things and, and
a couple of symptoms like Fay

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didn\'t, ah, wanna come out of the house. Come on
in and look at the main bathroom. The workman

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didn\'t finished it because we were out of money. So
in mean... mean... in the meantime, I\'ve used it for

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dumping area, and get more boxes. But

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one stage, we cleaned out the bathroom there
are, just for curiosity, I carried 100 empty

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toilet rolls. One thing that I do
remember is that, I didn\'t understand

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why our house was so messy when my mom
stayed home all day. Some of the boxes I\'ve

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got labels on. This one
says gloves and (inaudible)

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. Let\'s just take a look
and see what\'s in here.

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Oh, here\'s some of it. There\'s
a few gloves, some (inaudible)

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.

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And as usual, there\'s a few
things I\'ve got just like

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glasses and plastic leads and bits
of plastics(ph). Fay only told

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me, uhm, fairly recently that sometimes,
three o\'clock in the morning, she will go

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back to the rubbish bin and go through these
stuff and bring stuff back into the house.

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One of the habits that

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I\'ve had is, I\'ve been a hoard
out for probably about 20 years.

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Over this way, you can see
a lots of wood and bits

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in pieces of white wood, as to
be called junk. One thing I

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haven\'t disposed off and I\'ve
been collecting since about

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\'88 is \"Good Weekend\" and
\"The Australian Magazine.\"

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Uhm, and since that time,
I\'ve got every edition except

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one edition of \"The Australian
Magazine,\" and I asked a couple of

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people if they had one and they didn\'t. After
a while I did go there on one night and

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I went to the seven eleven which is few
blocks away. And everyone had their recycling

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paper put out and I, I didn\'t stopped
and look for quite a few files

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and the compulsion was there and the self
talk is there, I don\'t need to do this.

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If I come across a person who hasn\'t
thrown out their copy of that

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edition of \"The Australian Magazine,\" I
might see, you know, then I went to,

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\"Can I have it?\" kind of thing. Uhm, which
is a bit odd coz I might not even read it.

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[sil.]

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It just started out of
happening with just me

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playing with my split ends. And then I had
my hair cut short, and I couldn\'t do that

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anymore, so I started pulling it out.
And then it just got to the stage

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where I couldn\'t control that
and I had long, long hair then.

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And when I had it cut short, I mean it was very thick,
always very thick shiny beautiful hair. I was renowned

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for my hair, but you don\'t know
you\'ve got to live lost it. It

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sort of run your fingers through your hair and like
have to have the right one, it had to be the right

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thickness or whatever. And,
uhm, it just pull out and,

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I mean some people eat it, some people tear
it to bits. And I started pulling from the

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front and it... I worked
my way all the way back

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down to about there. And as

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the front would grow, it would sort
of cover the back part that you\'re

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pulling from. So, but it was always...
There was always patches. I mean always

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very easily disguisable. Uhm, if you pull

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for a quite a bit of time, uhm, the
next day your scalp feels almost

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bruised. It\'s like you\'ve been hit in the
head, and it just keeps going on and on and

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on. As much as I like to control it, it\'s

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totally out of... I can\'t, like I

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didn\'t feel right in a place and stuff like that.
And I\'d come home and s... sort of feel, \"Ah,

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okay. It was, it was this piece of jewelry I was
wearing or it was the shoes,\" and stuff like

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that. And I wouldn\'t ever wear them again. And so I
end up with a whole pile of things I couldn\'t use or

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wear and stuff like that, and it just got
out of hand. I tried to battle it, like I

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try to put... taped these things on coz I
know how crazy and stupid it is. I mean

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it\'s,

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I mean it\'s no way that any of
that could be true or real.

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So I put them on and I\'d actually

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feel say, an ache down
my arm or shiver. And

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it seems like it\'s totally
out of my control. I do feel

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a lot of shame. I felt here
I am, thinking these crazy

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things when there\'s other people in the
world say, in Ethiopia or something,

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starving to death and I\'m saying, \"No.
I can\'t wear this jumper.\"

00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
Uhm, after my crash injury I

00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
don\'t experience any major,
ah, physical symptoms. But

00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
the most dangerous place was the
kitchen because I would walk

00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
into the kitchen and I would see a
potato peeler and I would see it,

00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
uhm, ripping the flesh of my fingers.
Uhm, I would see knives

00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
stabbing into my hand, the oven
door crushing my head, uhm,

00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
boiling water spilling onto my hand.
I would close my eyes and I\'d

00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
still see the images. I\'ve go to sleep and
not having a dreams. For a day a half,

00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:54.999
I\'d had really intense images or

00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.999
sensations of being violent in myself.
And I just,

00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.999
at this time, felt that I
needed a rest, just 10, 15

00:19:05.000 --> 00:19:09.999
seconds. Remind myself what it\'s like not to
be in this room for like... So I first stab

00:19:10.000 --> 00:19:14.999
myself to one pencil and
those sensations run away.

00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
And I felt calm again, well
comparatively calm again. And that\'s

00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
irrational and, in a way, it\'s frightening.

00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
You know, afraid once lying on the bed and
she, she\'s just crying and saying, \"This

00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
time we\'ve gone too far, and go on
like this, you know.\" And see...

00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
And my response to that would be,
you know, ah, feeling extremely

00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
guilty. But,

00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
uhm, yeah... Ah, very strong

00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
emotional outburst that
how I would describe it.

00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
I... if a crew of people came into my home and
removed all the boxes, I\'ll be absolutely

00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
panic stricken because I would know that if I
throw everything after them, in amongst the

00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
boxes, photos and school reports,
and momentous from the past.

00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
Ah, if they did that, ah, I know that I\'d

00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
start hyperventilating, I\'d become extremely
anxious. I\'ll probably start shaking

00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
and the anxiety would just build up and build up and
that have... possibly would have to be admitted to

00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
hospital. I used to have trouble
differentiating between my

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
personality as me uhm, and
my personality after taking

00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
alcohol and drugs and stuff. And then
the lawns just blurred very quickly.

00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
And then very quickly I didn\'t
care anymore. Back then I was a

00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
very, very weak person. There was no way
that I could give up alcohol and drugs,

00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
not for anybody, not even for myself.

00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
I think many people with anxiety disorders,
especially with panic attacks, think they\'re going

00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
mad. They think... they believe that this
is a progression towards madness and

00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
that\'s a very powerful fear.
I was afraid of being crazy.

00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
Just basically, and I\'m afraid
that I get more crazy and afraid

00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
that it wouldn\'t go away. And
then I\'m afraid of failing,

00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
being unhappy. So I\'ll

00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
probably do some... I\'ll probably spend a lot of
time hugging myself because hugging myself in effect

00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
stops the shaking. Eventually,
there, there is depression

00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
that slips in about and might stick like
this forever. What am I gonna do? That\'s

00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
almost as if, once you\'ve seen this thing
you can\'t answer it. And that\'s the

00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
terrifying thing. I, I can\'t make this go away
I know, I know it. Drip, drip, drip, heavy

00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
hours. A sack of them on my shoulders.
Untidy things without order.

00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
I mean, I know a lot people think
depression, \"Hey, just snap out of it.\"

00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
But you can\'t, y... you just can\'t. Your down
and your down and that\'s it. Oh, I have moments

00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
where I couldn\'t cope and in these

00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
moments I didn\'t actually feel suicidal,

00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:19.999
but I felt terrified that
I might commit suicide.

00:22:20.000 --> 00:22:24.999
It\'s like, uhm, I, I was
terrified I was kinda

00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
have a bad minute where I just
could not resist the temptation,

00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
and the temptation wasn\'t to
die, it was to this... to escape.

00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
I even write a note at one stage show.
I was ready to go. Was

00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
just tired of the fight and it
was just the pain I was in,

00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
seem too great to endure any longer.

00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.999
[sil.]

00:22:55.000 --> 00:22:59.999
I am a working mother. I have four grown up

00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:04.999
children. I have suffered OCD for 34 years.

00:23:05.000 --> 00:23:09.999
Over those years, it has
got progressively worse. I

00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:14.999
go to bed between seven and eight
in the morning and get up at about

00:23:15.000 --> 00:23:19.999
one pm. After the family
has gone today, it takes

00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
me all night to wash the clothes
for the next day and ate a

00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
sandwich, which takes me
two hours to prepare.

00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
This is my only meal for the day.
And I have it at

00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
this time when no one is around
to grail(ph) on my food.

00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
Often, I am so exhausted
that I just ate a biscuit or

00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
nothing at all. Then it takes
20 minutes washing my hands,

00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
with eight separate pieces of soap.
I then Ajax

00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:56.000
the taps with (inaudible)

00:23:56.001 --> 00:23:59.999
. Then I

00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
have to do, four more lots of hand
washing to be able to put the kettle

00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:09.999
on. One hand wash, means washing
my hand with the nail brush.

00:24:10.000 --> 00:24:14.999
Washing my hands four times,
washing the taps four

00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:19.999
times, washing my arms to
the elbows four times,

00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:24.999
then washing my hands
one more time again. In

00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
all I washed my hands at least
300 times a day in this

00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
way. My husband has had to
keep five jobs all these years

00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
to be able to support my
cleaning composures. During my

00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
rituals, I have obsessive thoughts
going around and around in my

00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
mind. I have no control over
my obsessions or compulsions

00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
and I\'m often sobby(ph) and
uncontrollably while I am doing that.

00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
This is not living, I feel like can\'t go on

00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
feeling so alone and in
such pain that I must do my

00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:09.999
rituals to stay alive.

00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:14.999
[sil.] When I look back on

00:25:15.000 --> 00:25:19.999
those days, uhm, i... ah,
I can\'t just express the

00:25:20.000 --> 00:25:24.999
horror of that, of that time.

00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
[sil.]

00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
When the time comes and you\'re
taking your last few brace,

00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
what you wanna do? Do you wanna look back
on a life that\'s been lived in fear, that\'s

00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
been lived in terror, or do you wanna look
back and know that you\'ve given out your

00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
best shot and you have become
everything that you could\'ve become.

00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
And that really is the choice and that\'s the
reality of the situation. What I realized fairly

00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.999
well, that if I didn\'t face today\'s rubbish,
that then, in the future I\'ll be facing it

00:26:00.000 --> 00:26:04.999
in a box some way. One
morning before going off to

00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
work I, I, I was, I was standing
near the front door and for

00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
some reason or other I confronted Fay and
said, \"Living with you is like living with an

00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
alcoholic. You deny everything that\'s going
on.\" But I think that was the turning

00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
point, as far as the illness was concerned.

00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
No, everyday, I, I still have
anxiety every day. But I do get

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
through it, because I think he\'ll look back in and sort of say,
\"Well, I did get through it yesterday.\" And he get through it

00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
today before, I will get through it today.
It was destroying my

00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
life, and I began to get very, very
angry at each at the anxiety at

00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:49.999
the panic. And I found that
the more angry I became

00:26:50.000 --> 00:26:54.999
at it, the more powerful I felt. It

00:26:55.000 --> 00:26:56.999
began, uhm, I supposed probably
because of the (inaudible)

00:26:57.000 --> 00:26:59.999
that, that seemed to be,

00:27:00.000 --> 00:27:04.999
ah, I need to express visually this or
contain this fear into some sort of entity.

00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:09.999
So I put together the book
living with each. And, ah,

00:27:10.000 --> 00:27:14.999
the it character became very important to
a lot of people. I\'ve discovered scenes,

00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:19.999
especially those with a very active imagination
and a very good sense of humor. It was a

00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:24.999
way of understanding that this, it

00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
constituted almost, a, a naughty
child that was running and

00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
mocking my attics someway that just needed
to be disciplined that in a loving way.

00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
In fact, when you died of fear
the symptoms, it actually goes

00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:44.999
incredibly quick. Uhm, you got a bit of a
heart race or get this bit of fear and this,

00:27:45.000 --> 00:27:49.999
this quick high rush. But
because you\'re not investing

00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:54.999
yourself in the panic thoughts,
uhm, it just stops. I was

00:27:55.000 --> 00:27:59.999
getting to the stage where I thought, \"This is
it. I\'ll be out to getting work anymore.\" And I

00:28:00.000 --> 00:28:04.999
met a doctor that really
turned things around for me.

00:28:05.000 --> 00:28:09.999
He introduce me to a psychologist who
actually got me to face the fear,

00:28:10.000 --> 00:28:14.999
look at them and, ah, laugh at them.

00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:19.999
Mine is to get the, the hairs grown up.

00:28:20.000 --> 00:28:24.999
How long it\'s gonna take, I don\'t really
know. But now, I\'m just taking at it, uhm,

00:28:25.000 --> 00:28:29.999
and each year, there\'s less and less...
The power is actually going there.

00:28:30.000 --> 00:28:34.999
Uhm, I really can\'t put a time on it, because
quite frankly I forgotten what\'s the little other

00:28:35.000 --> 00:28:39.999
boxes behind me. Ah, it does gonna
be a surprise when I open them.

00:28:40.000 --> 00:28:44.999
The other week a friend, ah, drop me off and, and I said I
was about to come in for cup of coffee, well, I mean, I

00:28:45.000 --> 00:28:49.999
haven\'t do that for a long time.
So it felt really great.

00:28:50.000 --> 00:28:54.999
You know, you\'ve got to do a little bit of
work and you\'ve got to look at your aim

00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:59.999
forwards and that is very confronting. And, and
a lot of, a lot of, a lot of us with anxiety

00:29:00.000 --> 00:29:04.999
want, ah, someone to rescue us and no
one\'s gonna rescue us. Once you, once

00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:09.999
you realized that, that no one\'s going to rescue
you, then it\'s all up to you. Someone can guide

00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:14.999
you and, and, and show you the techniques but you are the one
who has to put it into practice. You, you know, they\'re not

00:29:15.000 --> 00:29:19.999
gonna sit beside you in the car and drive. \"Excuse me. Well,
I\'ll just keep a foot on the accelerator.\" While you sit behind

00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:24.999
the wheel, you know. You\'re the one who\'s gonna have
to do it. When, when, when people, uhm, experience

00:29:25.000 --> 00:29:29.999
that panic attack, uhm,
it is a situation wherein

00:29:30.000 --> 00:29:34.999
that particular experience is
telling them that there is that

00:29:35.000 --> 00:29:39.999
spirituality within them that they have actually
ignored. People think or some people think that

00:29:40.000 --> 00:29:44.999
the world is all about material things, it\'s all
about physicality, nothing more, nothing else.

00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.999
That thing within them is telling them
that you have to start, uhm, paying

00:29:50.000 --> 00:29:54.999
attention to that spiritual
sign within you and then

00:29:55.000 --> 00:29:59.999
reconnect with it and be a whole person.

00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:04.999
It\'s the simple things in life.
Our priorities

00:30:05.000 --> 00:30:09.999
become so much different. It\'s not the great burning
ambition to earn, you know stocks, and stocks of

00:30:10.000 --> 00:30:14.999
money, it\'s not the great burning ambition
of power and being right out, be...

00:30:15.000 --> 00:30:19.999
And it\'s being able to
prioritize our lives so that, so

00:30:20.000 --> 00:30:24.999
that, uhm, that we\'re honoring our

00:30:25.000 --> 00:30:29.999
integrity, that we are, ah, respecting
ourselves. And I think for all of us though, the

00:30:30.000 --> 00:30:34.999
greatest lost of all has been the loss of,
uhm, the self we thought we were. And I

00:30:35.000 --> 00:30:39.999
think that\'s probably one, one of the hardest
things for all of us to come to tons(ph) with.

00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:44.999
But it\'s gonna very uhm, natural
path of your recovering

00:30:45.000 --> 00:30:49.999
process that there will be grief, everything
you\'ve been through. Occasionally, I found myself

00:30:50.000 --> 00:30:54.999
daydreaming that I was going to work
hard, make extra money, buy a house.

00:30:55.000 --> 00:30:59.999
And uhm, when I was going to move
there, I wasn\'t gonna come with.

00:31:00.000 --> 00:31:04.999
And that\'s ah, that was the
beginning possibly of, of ah,

00:31:05.000 --> 00:31:09.999
of the ultimate separation and
then the divorce. My daughter

00:31:10.000 --> 00:31:14.999
ah, has left home. She couldn\'t
stand the... me surrounding. Also,

00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:19.999
she finds it difficult to work in the kitchen
with me because of, of my symptoms. There

00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:24.999
I\'ve moved... or after, she does something I
didn\'t have to be going along and checking after

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.999
her. Doesn\'t seem toward people around you. It just
doesn\'t seem logical, because I mean, you don\'t look

00:31:30.000 --> 00:31:34.999
sick. You look perfectly normal,
perfectly wormed(ph). Yeah. I haven\'t

00:31:35.000 --> 00:31:39.999
really admitted to many about how
I\'m feeling. Just my family and

00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:43.999
my doctor and egos. And the
rest of that (inaudible)

00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:45.000
.

00:31:45.001 --> 00:31:49.999
Yeah. Well, hmm... Since

00:31:50.000 --> 00:31:54.999
I\'ve been diagnosed, well ah, I\'ve, I\'ve come
in out of the closet so to speak. I\'ve told my

00:31:55.000 --> 00:31:59.999
neighbors and my friends and relatives. And
ah, I mean I\'m not proud of my house being

00:32:00.000 --> 00:32:04.999
amiss, but uhm, I\'m proud of the fact
that I have cleaned up part of it.

00:32:05.000 --> 00:32:09.999
I suppose when mom was diagnosed
and she explained what

00:32:10.000 --> 00:32:14.999
the story was, then I put
it... put a label on it

00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:19.999
which helps and I suppose they\'re
now be getting to realize it.

00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.999
It was an illness and what it was.
Whereas before I just didn\'t understand

00:32:25.000 --> 00:32:29.999
it\'s the nature of it. I
look at it as uhm, the

00:32:30.000 --> 00:32:34.999
self-medicating uhm, drug-wise. Uhm,

00:32:35.000 --> 00:32:39.999
has an escape... escaping
reality, getting away for my

00:32:40.000 --> 00:32:44.999
pain. You know, just having a couple of snips
of glue uhm, you know, twice or three times a

00:32:45.000 --> 00:32:49.999
day. Uhm, just wouldn\'t you
into a, a state of uhm,

00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:54.999
hallucination. I\'m tripping,
tripping out ah, (inaudible)

00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:59.999
. But now, you know, now on I can trigger.
That was my first thing target. It was

00:33:00.000 --> 00:33:04.999
making though an eyes of that ah, 21.
And so I think,

00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:09.999
yeah. They\'ve, they\'ve definitely found very
strong links between marijuana first thought, in

00:33:10.000 --> 00:33:14.999
the unsoothe(ph) of anxiety.
And I think my ah,

00:33:15.000 --> 00:33:19.999
dabbling with ah, of ah,
psychedelic universes was a

00:33:20.000 --> 00:33:24.999
dangerous thing for someone of my
particular pre-disposition. And

00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.999
now one psychia... psychoses quite common. And if...
For a long time in, in the 60s, you know, we all in,

00:33:30.000 --> 00:33:34.999
in early 70s, it was all like, \"Hey! That\'s the old...
Oldies telling us that.\" But it\'s not. It\'s true.

00:33:35.000 --> 00:33:39.999
But this one that I use. Ah,
I had to magic mashes and

00:33:40.000 --> 00:33:44.999
ah, the potency of the drugged ones is very
hard to regulate, apparently they can be

00:33:45.000 --> 00:33:46.000
found more potent and (inaudible)

00:33:46.001 --> 00:33:49.999
. And uhm, and I suddenly looked at these

00:33:50.000 --> 00:33:54.999
cars going pass in a colored three-dimensional
scene as though robotic quality

00:33:55.000 --> 00:33:59.999
and the people in them, also
became these two-dimensional

00:34:00.000 --> 00:34:04.999
cold, unfeeling robots. And uhm, I don\'t
know. Just the world\'s so (inaudible)

00:34:05.000 --> 00:34:09.999
at that moment and I started feel like I\'d

00:34:10.000 --> 00:34:14.999
lost my connection. And this
rage is done for 12 hours

00:34:15.000 --> 00:34:19.999
ah, this feeling. And ah, in the end, I, I

00:34:20.000 --> 00:34:24.999
was exhausted and was saying to myself, \"It\'s, it\'s just
a dragon. It\'s just a dragon. You\'ll be okay.\" You know,

00:34:25.000 --> 00:34:29.999
when I get some sleep, it will be gone.
Hmm-hmm-hmm... It wasn\'t. And it wasn\'t the

00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.999
day after or the day after or the day
after. So welcome to panic attacks.

00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.999
[sil.] You look at all the

00:34:40.000 --> 00:34:44.999
cultures. They talk about ah, using priority
and, and various other substances. But

00:34:45.000 --> 00:34:49.999
they use it in a, in a very ah,
clear way that connecting with

00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:54.999
the higher selves or better path of the
spiritual path. And ah, and if were on

00:34:55.000 --> 00:34:59.999
the very controlled conditions in many ways,
these people think toward of that ah,

00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:04.999
the, the possibilities of the, of the
anxiety having no limits. In the

00:35:05.000 --> 00:35:09.999
ways we\'re not trained for this sort of stuff. And
so we\'re, we\'re going into rush at all, we\'re

00:35:10.000 --> 00:35:14.999
going into the darkest, the darkest corners
of ourselves. We\'re playing with stuff we

00:35:15.000 --> 00:35:19.999
just don\'t understand.

00:35:20.000 --> 00:35:24.999
[music] I think there are a lot of
things that traditional Chinese

00:35:25.000 --> 00:35:29.999
medicine can offer compared
to Western medicine by way of

00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:34.999
providing a broad framework. But I
think we are entering an even now

00:35:35.000 --> 00:35:39.999
where in the mind, the body
and the spirit have to

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:44.999
come together and be addressed as one.
That way of thinking

00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:49.999
whereby we always have to divide,
separate the body and then

00:35:50.000 --> 00:35:54.999
address it bit by bit. I think that way
of thinking should be consigned to

00:35:55.000 --> 00:35:59.999
the dust bin of history. The
doctor uhm, after he diagnosed me,

00:36:00.000 --> 00:36:04.999
put me in an antidepressant called
anafranil. I went from one to

00:36:05.000 --> 00:36:09.999
three of those over the period of time.
Well I\'m on

00:36:10.000 --> 00:36:14.999
uhm, it\'s now... it\'s called Zekton
but it used to be called Prozac.

00:36:15.000 --> 00:36:19.999
And it ah, of all the thing, very fortune
of any two had draw the one drug, you know,

00:36:20.000 --> 00:36:24.999
did ah, had of use sort of fix also
adjusting to it. I was having the

00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:29.999
anxiety feelings all day long. So
uhm, within days I was taking these

00:36:30.000 --> 00:36:34.999
pills all day long. And uhm,
I think one of the most

00:36:35.000 --> 00:36:39.999
embarrassing things was hearing
from a, a third party that people

00:36:40.000 --> 00:36:44.999
at work had, I don\'t know whether
it was customers or the people I

00:36:45.000 --> 00:36:49.999
was working with, assuming
that I was on heroin.

00:36:50.000 --> 00:36:54.999
When I went on to Aroma uhm, some of
my symptoms disappeared and that\'s

00:36:55.000 --> 00:36:59.999
when I found out what the symptoms
were because they were gone. Well

00:37:00.000 --> 00:37:04.999
interestingly I did start medication.
I\'d resisted that for three months.

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:09.999
But the distress that I was feeling
that night suggested that this

00:37:10.000 --> 00:37:14.999
was getting a bit too heavy for me
to handle. I remained very hmm...

00:37:15.000 --> 00:37:19.999
And bevel on about the idea of
medication, but I think on a

00:37:20.000 --> 00:37:24.999
very, very temporary level, at... in the
early stages of this, it can be this

00:37:25.000 --> 00:37:29.999
overwhelming and, you\'re just not getting the
rest you need to be able to step back from

00:37:30.000 --> 00:37:34.999
ration... see it within any rational
distance. So in the short term

00:37:35.000 --> 00:37:39.999
uhm, possibly that\'s the road to go. There\'s kinda
a number of different classes of drugs that

00:37:40.000 --> 00:37:44.999
have been used over the years. These, if you like
tranquilizers, which ah, them... just a kind of

00:37:45.000 --> 00:37:49.999
them ah, sedate people or make
the anxiety seem less important

00:37:50.000 --> 00:37:54.999
if you like. I mean ah, it\'s not... it
doesn\'t dispel the anxiety, things were

00:37:55.000 --> 00:37:59.999
not... just makes the experience less
personally significant. I\'m not sure when the

00:38:00.000 --> 00:38:04.999
addiction to the tranquilizer\'s actually developed.
I know that as I was always really stunning to, to

00:38:05.000 --> 00:38:09.999
break free of the disorder, I decided I\'d had
the tons right for me to come off. And we...

00:38:10.000 --> 00:38:14.999
I came off very, very slowly uhm,
but that didn\'t stop the symptoms.

00:38:15.000 --> 00:38:19.999
The pills help me to escape like
disappear the demounted world to

00:38:20.000 --> 00:38:24.999
just be alone and truncate with
the feelings I was having.

00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:29.999
[sil.] I found it pretty easy to

00:38:30.000 --> 00:38:34.999
convince my doctor that to save money
and to just make prescriptions

00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:39.999
easier that he should just give me the uhm,
the bottle with twice the dose uhm, in

00:38:40.000 --> 00:38:44.999
milligrams per tablet. And I would quarter
them, you know, I quarter them for about a

00:38:45.000 --> 00:38:49.999
day. And then, the second day I was
like halves and that sort of thing.

00:38:50.000 --> 00:38:54.999
And uhm, they came in bottles of 200.
I ended up winging a crosses(ph)

00:38:55.000 --> 00:38:59.999
loan. She said don\'t stop doing what you\'re
doing. Try and take a little bit less,

00:39:00.000 --> 00:39:04.999
but don\'t actually stop. And...
Because stopping suddenly

00:39:05.000 --> 00:39:09.999
might have been as dangerous for my
body as just keeping, going with

00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:14.999
what I was doing. I guess it\'s a
clinical pharmacist that I don\'t make

00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:19.999
much advertisement for drugs because
I, I, in particular, in this ah,

00:39:20.000 --> 00:39:24.999
circumstance, I believe that the non-drug
therapist buying large are genuinely

00:39:25.000 --> 00:39:29.999
more appropriate. I know I\'ve had
people can now have in... with the...

00:39:30.000 --> 00:39:34.999
That anxiety sort of me on medication. They\'d been told there gonna
be a medication for the rest of their life, and it\'s rubbish.

00:39:35.000 --> 00:39:39.999
They\'re tremendously successful for the drug
companies\' points of view because it\'s a huge...

00:39:40.000 --> 00:39:42.999
It\'s a common problem. It\'s kind of,
you know, drug campaigning (inaudible)

00:39:43.000 --> 00:39:44.999
to discover a drug for a

00:39:45.000 --> 00:39:49.999
very, very common problem that lots of people can
prescribe. And especially one that\'s madly addictive.

00:39:50.000 --> 00:39:54.999
That\'s if, you know, home and host there.
There\'s a time and place

00:39:55.000 --> 00:39:59.999
for medication, but it doesn\'t have
to be for the rest of your life.

00:40:00.000 --> 00:40:04.999
We wondered early on whether
uhm, we had a hereditary

00:40:05.000 --> 00:40:09.999
thing for our family with the anxiety
stuff. Mine is very much social

00:40:10.000 --> 00:40:14.999
anxiety. Uhm, whereas my dad
is quite, quite different.

00:40:15.000 --> 00:40:19.999
It\'s uhm, developed into obsessive
compulsive with lacking dose and that

00:40:20.000 --> 00:40:24.999
sort of thing. That well, we\'ll see
how she goes without a tablets

00:40:25.000 --> 00:40:29.999
and yet the mood swings came
back ah, up and down. Sort of

00:40:30.000 --> 00:40:34.999
depression came back. So, yeah. I mean I don\'t
wanna be dependent on them, but, I mean,

00:40:35.000 --> 00:40:39.999
what I have is a chemical balance in
my brain and if I need tablets to

00:40:40.000 --> 00:40:44.999
balance it all out, so be it. Yeah.
The chemical imbalance in the

00:40:45.000 --> 00:40:49.999
brain serie(ph) or the
gene serie(ph). Well,

00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:54.999
I\'m not too crazy on going with those.
Ah, I think that is up in the

00:40:55.000 --> 00:40:59.999
person suffering this ah, a
sense of being a victim. A drug

00:41:00.000 --> 00:41:04.999
supposed to create balance is
creating further imbalances. Uhm, you

00:41:05.000 --> 00:41:09.999
get short-term balance, but you get long-term
imbalance. Uhm, I think there is a place for

00:41:10.000 --> 00:41:14.999
drugs, but the point is, the problem
is overused. Oh, well. That\'s my life.

00:41:15.000 --> 00:41:19.999
I rely on drugs, I rely on a therapist.
I do not rely on myself

00:41:20.000 --> 00:41:24.999
anymore. I\'m helpless. And the same
time, the very fact that I continued a

00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.999
quest to, to healing has suggest
there\'s a part of them that

00:41:30.000 --> 00:41:34.999
refuses to believe that. There was
no one ah, practicing (inaudible)

00:41:35.000 --> 00:41:39.999
behave therapy. It was
still the new therapy. And

00:41:40.000 --> 00:41:44.999
so, I taught myself. And
I taught myself based on

00:41:45.000 --> 00:41:49.999
the meditation traditions, and that just opened
up a whole new way thinking and feeling for me.

00:41:50.000 --> 00:41:54.999
So I... disorder just try to
find something that ah, keep

00:41:55.000 --> 00:41:59.999
me with people socially and
so I started to achieve. And

00:42:00.000 --> 00:42:04.999
then, when I started to achieve,
yeah, well I never look back.

00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:09.999
Full weight still on the back leg.
Transfer the white through.

00:42:10.000 --> 00:42:14.999
Right hand down, and the left hand up.

00:42:15.000 --> 00:42:19.999
Striking the bird\'s tail,
and bird flies off.

00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:22.999
I do it any way a lot. I break it
up in a little bit (inaudible)

00:42:23.000 --> 00:42:24.999
from up to it somewhere. I (inaudible)

00:42:25.000 --> 00:42:29.999
in the toilet, which I do quite regularly,
and do a bit of Tai Chi in there.

00:42:30.000 --> 00:42:34.999
When I\'m relaxed, I come back and
join in again. And stepping back.

00:42:35.000 --> 00:42:39.999
And tossing off.

00:42:40.000 --> 00:42:44.999
In fact, we\'ll be driving along the road and I\'ll say to my
wife, \"I like the tree over there and I\'m gonna do some Tai

00:42:45.000 --> 00:42:49.999
Chi.\" \"Okay,\" she says. Then off we go
into the Tai Chi. My son likes to join in,

00:42:50.000 --> 00:42:54.999
too. He is standing in front of me and say, \"I\'m
the instructor Dad. You do what I did.\" And I do

00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:59.999
what he did coz whatever I am, he
wants to be. So it\'s just fantastic.

00:43:00.000 --> 00:43:02.999
Meditation in (inaudible)

00:43:03.000 --> 00:43:04.999
pure sins.

00:43:05.000 --> 00:43:09.999
It\'s the oldest cognition technique in the
world. And that\'s really what meditation\'s all

00:43:10.000 --> 00:43:14.999
about. And meditation taught
me how to stop to work

00:43:15.000 --> 00:43:19.999
with my mind. It began to teach me
so much about the way that I was

00:43:20.000 --> 00:43:24.999
thinking. And I began to see how
the way that I was thinking was

00:43:25.000 --> 00:43:26.000
increasing my symptoms and my (inaudible)

00:43:26.001 --> 00:43:29.999
incredibly worse. When I first started

00:43:30.000 --> 00:43:34.999
meditating... I mean I was, I was extremely lucky because I
mean, you\'re not all I\'ve... I\'d done healthy Yoga when I was

00:43:35.000 --> 00:43:39.999
about 21. Uhm, and I\'d read a lot
about Yoga and I\'d read about

00:43:40.000 --> 00:43:44.999
Kundalini. And I thought, \"Oh, yeah? This is something that
doesn\'t happen to anyone.\" I mean, in the latest diagnostic

00:43:45.000 --> 00:43:49.999
manual uhm, DSM IV, in the
culture-related disorders,

00:43:50.000 --> 00:43:54.999
ah, there\'s a very, very tailing piece
about uhm, what\'s called qi-gong.

00:43:55.000 --> 00:43:59.999
And we, we really had a quite a good
look at qi-gong. And the disorder begins

00:44:00.000 --> 00:44:04.999
after extensive medication practice.
And we looked at the

00:44:05.000 --> 00:44:09.999
descriptions of qi-gong and found
that those descriptions were

00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:14.999
identical toward people with spontaneous
panic attack experience. Those

00:44:15.000 --> 00:44:19.999
sensations are certain sensations and they
do occur in the process of doing qi-gong.

00:44:20.000 --> 00:44:24.999
The important thing, first of all, is
not to panic. And that secondly, to

00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:29.999
work out to the... to employ certain
techniques that you can use to settle

00:44:30.000 --> 00:44:34.999
down that energy. I think I burst
the tears. And, and then I sort of

00:44:35.000 --> 00:44:37.999
start at laughing at it. It was extraordinary. I
mean, it\'s where you have been impulsive (inaudible)

00:44:38.000 --> 00:44:39.999
. But it was...

00:44:40.000 --> 00:44:44.999
But that happens to me, it\'s, it\'s weird. I mean I
knew what it was coz uhm, ah, of, of reading with

00:44:45.000 --> 00:44:49.999
healthy Yoga. I\'ve experienced Kundalini.
I absolutely gassed that this could

00:44:50.000 --> 00:44:54.999
happen, you know. And that\'s... a lot of people
get it just with their anxiety technique to get

00:44:55.000 --> 00:44:59.999
that energy and it\'s like ahh-ahh-ahh... People are
reporting its electric shock living through the

00:45:00.000 --> 00:45:04.999
body or this burning trembling
heat moving through the body

00:45:05.000 --> 00:45:09.999
and the people describe it as
uhm, ah, an unusual vibration

00:45:10.000 --> 00:45:14.999
or, or unusual energies moving through
their body. But get it in the meditation.

00:45:15.000 --> 00:45:19.999
I\'ll be sitting there and I\'ll be... and then suddenly I\'ll
get this bang! This punch in the head. It\'s like, whoa!

00:45:20.000 --> 00:45:24.999
Oh! Originally what it stimulates to...
For alive and they go, \"God!\" And yet

00:45:25.000 --> 00:45:29.999
that is the precipitator or one of
the precipitators for the actual

00:45:30.000 --> 00:45:34.999
panic. Now I mo... move all the hard
objects, you know. And... but I

00:45:35.000 --> 00:45:39.999
Within the indigenous
cultures, within the

00:45:40.000 --> 00:45:44.999
meditative traditions, this
particular phenomena is, is respected

00:45:45.000 --> 00:45:49.999
totally and completely. This pana...
Particular phenomena is encouraged in other

00:45:50.000 --> 00:45:54.999
cultures because it is
actually seen as a part of the

00:45:55.000 --> 00:45:59.999
on-going development of the individual.
I\'m very

00:46:00.000 --> 00:46:04.999
reluctant to think of things like anxiety
disorders as kind of... as growing to

00:46:05.000 --> 00:46:09.999
another stage of being. I mean, I, I
don\'t... I\'m... I see the distress in those

00:46:10.000 --> 00:46:14.999
experiences. It\'s so powerful and
it\'s not easy to see them, for me,

00:46:15.000 --> 00:46:19.999
as, as beneficial experiences. I\'ll be fine.
I\'ll just gonna do this. People look at

00:46:20.000 --> 00:46:24.999
anxiety, \"Pull yourself together.\"
\"Yeah, okay. How do I do that?\" Being

00:46:25.000 --> 00:46:29.999
frightened of death to create some messy
fear of living. We are constantly worrying

00:46:30.000 --> 00:46:34.999
about what other people think and look at what
it\'s doing to us. Is that the price that you wanna

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:39.999
pay? All of these \"what if?\" What if
I had a heart attack? You know, what

00:46:40.000 --> 00:46:44.999
if I do die? What if I do go insane?
Recovery means we go to \"so what?\"

00:46:45.000 --> 00:46:49.999
So what... and going to the point,
\"Well, so what if we do die?\" \"So what

00:46:50.000 --> 00:46:54.999
if we do go insane?\" \"So what?\"
I went with the people who have

00:46:55.000 --> 00:46:59.999
very, very, very long standing
difficulties. And I don\'t... myself find a

00:47:00.000 --> 00:47:04.999
kind of the concrete nature of
cognitive behavior or treatments helps

00:47:05.000 --> 00:47:09.999
for those individuals because the, the
core of their anxiety is so wrapped about

00:47:10.000 --> 00:47:14.999
by a whole range of issues to deal
with the long lives that they\'ve lived

00:47:15.000 --> 00:47:19.999
since these problems. And that
I, I try to kind of take a

00:47:20.000 --> 00:47:24.999
slightly broader view with this. When
I thought of alcohol or drugs coming

00:47:25.000 --> 00:47:29.999
to my mind today,

00:47:30.000 --> 00:47:34.999
it\'s uhm, I\'ve got to be very

00:47:35.000 --> 00:47:39.999
aware of what ah, uhm, where the thought
is coming from. And sometimes it

00:47:40.000 --> 00:47:44.999
does indeed seem to come out as sin. A, a lot
of people would swear that that\'s the case.

00:47:45.000 --> 00:47:49.999
Hmm, I\'ve... I\'m a little dubious
about that, too. If you start

00:47:50.000 --> 00:47:54.999
looking at the history of your
self-esteem and your self-worthy. And

00:47:55.000 --> 00:47:59.999
it can be quite rehealing(ph). I
realized that I had been guilty with a

00:48:00.000 --> 00:48:04.999
lot of stinky thinkings through my life.
Uhm, very, very hard on

00:48:05.000 --> 00:48:09.999
myself, very unforgiving. Stress.
The doctor asked me if there was

00:48:10.000 --> 00:48:14.999
anything I was worried about.
Is there? Not that I could

00:48:15.000 --> 00:48:19.999
think of. Oh! You take after your father.
They could never work out what he was

00:48:20.000 --> 00:48:24.999
worried about, either. You don\'t
just focus on when you\'re

00:48:25.000 --> 00:48:29.999
having the anxiety attack. You actually start to be
aware of the way you\'re thinking this all the time, the

00:48:30.000 --> 00:48:34.999
way you put yourself down where you\'re hard on yourself.
And I\'m not saying you\'ve got a sort of, you know,

00:48:35.000 --> 00:48:39.999
positive thoughts that work or, or you\'re gonna start
to love yourself. That\'s, you know, learning to accept

00:48:40.000 --> 00:48:44.999
yourself is, is terrific, you know, it pretty being for...
Hard to say, \"You\'re gonna have to love yourself. Oh! I,

00:48:45.000 --> 00:48:49.999
I love you Gary. You\'re a wonderful man.\" It doesn\'t,
doesn\'t look like that. I thought I was cured

00:48:50.000 --> 00:48:54.999
and so I am, I am, wandering
for about a year and a half

00:48:55.000 --> 00:48:59.999
before I started to get another attack. I rang up
the therapist Frendhere Melvin(ph) and said to her,

00:49:00.000 --> 00:49:04.999
\"What the hell\'s going on?\" She said, \"Oh! You\'re having a hiccup.\"
What we call a hiccup. She said, \"They\'re good coz... because

00:49:05.000 --> 00:49:09.999
you\'ve forgotten your treatment. \" And she
said, \" It will reinforce it. So just ring up

00:49:10.000 --> 00:49:14.999
your therapist that you\'re into, you know, a year
and a half ago.\" And I did that. And I went back

00:49:15.000 --> 00:49:19.999
and I have one session. And across, I
dropped away immediately. Back in 1990,

00:49:20.000 --> 00:49:24.999
after the... being locked away for so long,
I caught the train to the city and when

00:49:25.000 --> 00:49:29.999
I got into the city or the station was completely
different and it\'s like I just go into a...

00:49:30.000 --> 00:49:34.999
Being in a time where the all the
old stations have gone and we have

00:49:35.000 --> 00:49:39.999
these new make-believe
lies so I called it. I

00:49:40.000 --> 00:49:44.999
thought to myself, \"Where the heck have
all the steam trains gone?\" It\'s very

00:49:45.000 --> 00:49:49.999
hard for me to contemplate how my life
might have been limited by anxiety because

00:49:50.000 --> 00:49:54.999
basically

00:49:55.000 --> 00:49:59.999
it\'s such a big part of my identity. In the end
I\'ve made great friends with these and ah,

00:50:00.000 --> 00:50:04.999
and that\'s the idea coz it is me.

00:50:05.000 --> 00:50:09.999
Munda Gara(ph), my god, grant

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.999
me the serenity to accept
the things I cannot

00:50:15.000 --> 00:50:19.999
change, courage to chance of being okay

00:50:20.000 --> 00:50:24.999
and always calm to know
the difference. Hmm...

00:50:25.000 --> 00:50:30.000
[music]