How I Tamed Panic

For most people negative emotions are like being stuck in neck-high water. We have the feeling that if we just tense up, stand on our tiptoes, and wait it out while we keep focusing on what we need to do, the water will eventually recede. Usually, it does.

But sometimes, for some people, the water keeps rising until first our mouths are submerged, and then our noses go under. It keeps rising until we feel like we are literally drowning. We experience a burning sensation in our chest, which demands to be filled again and again with air until we’re gasping loudly and clutching our rib cage while our loved ones stand over us wondering if they should call an ambulance.

This is a panic attack.

When it first happened to me, it felt like a terrifying one-time event. When it kept happening over and over again, it felt like something that might ruin my career—and maybe even my life. 

It took me almost 10 years, but I eventually learned that I could start to see my first panic attack not as the end of the road for me, but as the start of a new way to be in the world. A way to play in the deep water, rather than paddle desperately to avoid it.

This is the story of my first panic attack, what I learned about the science of panic, and what helped me tame it.

My first attack

In 2014, I was in the middle of a big transition. I sold a startup I had co-founded, graduated college, and moved to New York all in the span of a few months.