The panic attack that changed my life

It was about 7pm, in late November 2018. I was boarding a flight from London to Dublin following a meeting with one of our clients where I had presented our latest work to a large group of senior execs. The presentation had gone fine, not amazing by my own standards, but it was received well, with plenty of positive compliments and encouraging feedback. I spent the day with my game face on, meeting and greeting, drumming up new opportunities, and networking with a confident air, periodically checking my watch to see how long was left in the day before I could get home and fall into a thousand pieces. As I took my seat on the Aer Lingus flight I knew I had just over an hour before the mask of the ‘in control’ confident entrepreneur could slip, and I could go through the nightly ritual of slowly numbing myself with a couple of socially acceptable glasses of wine, and a sneaky sleeping tablet or two, to get some semblance of rest before getting up bleary eyed to jolt myself into action with coffee and do it all over again.

As the plane taxied down the runway, my headphones abruptly died, denying me of the distraction of some music that I badly needed. With the volume of my thoughts unchallenged, my mind began to spiral out of control. “That was a disaster, we’re going to lose that client. What about the staff? They work so hard, am I going to have to let them go? And Sue? And the kids? How will I support them?”. Before we had reached cruising altitude my mind had settled on an inevitable future of destitution and hopelessness, with the unbearable realisation that I was to blame for everything. As I politely refused the offer of tea or coffee, it was only the air hostesses concerned look that made me realise tears were streaming down my face. I started struggling to breathe. Swallowing was an effort, with each action feeling like it was closer to my last, my throat tightening by the second. Niall, my business partner, and best friend was sitting across the aisle, but I was too paralysed by fear to move or catch his attention. This was it, I was going to die, and it was horrible. I closed my eyes and tried to calm myself. I focussed on taking some deep breaths, one after the other. Each one an almost unfathomable effort. After what seemed like hours of struggling to breathe, the captain announced we were making our descent. Just 10 more minutes. I can hold it together for 10 minutes.

We landed, I got myself together, and delayed so I could get off the plane last without talking to any of my colleagues. I knew I was in a bad way, and I didn’t want anyone to see me. “I’m the boss, if they knew I was like this, they’d lose all respect for me”. Niall had clearly noticed something was up on the flight, and was waiting for me at the door. “I saw what happened, are you OK?” he said. “Fine, I’m just tired, just need to get home” as I tried to squeeze past him and make small talk about the meetings we had on the next day. Having known me since the age of 8, he wasn’t letting me away with it. He patiently let me waffle on through customs, until we got outside into the taxi queue. “OK, what’s up, you looked like you had a panic attack on the flight. Talk to me.” And then I burst into tears and cried uncontrollably for a solid 10 minutes. In the taxi queue in Dublin airport. I simply couldn’t stop. I think it was the relief of someone finally forcing me to admit that something was wrong, of being able to admit that I wasn’t able to cope. That I was scared. Petrified. Out of control, yet having to be in control, in charge, every day.

The end of that trip was the start of a long journey. A journey of realising I had a mental health problem. A difficult voyage of learning to accept it, to manage it, and to rebuild myself from the weakest point I’ve ever been. Niall called my wife, Sue, and told her what happened, got me into a taxi and I went home and slept for the first night in months. I took weeks off work, telling staff and clients I had a bad flu, and tried to ignore all the pressure and extra stress I was putting on the team by not being fit to work. I went to see a therapist. She empathised. I cried some more. It didn’t help much. I went to see a doctor. He gave me medication. It made me worse. Weeks passed and I felt like I wasn’t getting better. But those close to me had been so supportive, how could I not be making any progress? I started telling people I was feeling stronger. Putting the mask back on slowly but surely. I started rationalising that I could make some subtle life changes, maybe not take as many sleeping tablets, maybe drink a little less and I’d be grand. Sure hadn’t I done alright until now? I’ll be grand. Christmas came and went. It was a bit of a blur. I was going through the motions, but I knew I wasn’t OK, and began to really worry if I ever would be again. My anxiety about my anxiety became the loudest noise. Sometimes all I could hear. Sue took me away for a couple of nights in Powerscourt, a beautiful hotel outside of Dublin. We went for dinner. I had to leave. I went back to the room and cried again. What the fuck was wrong with me? I saw Niall Breslin at another table and remember hearing him speak at a conference about mental health. Maybe I’d look that up again – I got a strange glimmer of hope from seeing him and remembering that it was ‘a thing’, and maybe not just me. I went out for a walk on my own. I could tell Sue was worried I might not come back. Dark. Fucking. Days.

January 2019 came, and something came over me. Actually, two someone’s came over to my house. My brother in law Mark, and his cousin and my close friend Colin. They had a plan for me. I’m a get shit done guy, so the plan was to get me back on track. Mark is a personal trainer, and Colin is one of life’s greatest humans. They set out a plan of diet and exercise, and a schedule where we’d meet once a week and review my progress. Sleep was a big issue for me, and it had become inconceivable to me that I could fall and stay asleep without alcohol or tablets. Colin put it in the simplest terms you could imagine. “You’ve done loads of hard stuff. Stuff not a lot of people have done. This is just going to sleep. Everyone can do that.”

All of a sudden this was a project. I was good at projects, and I liked to succeed. I started a sleep routine. No phones/screens 30 minutes before bed. Journaling at night, writing what I was worried about, but also what I was grateful for. Three good things that happened that day, not matter how bad the day. I bought a book called the 28 day alcohol free challenge and read it in one sitting. I decided to give up drinking for the month. I was recommended another therapist. We sat and I told him my story. He didn’t hand me tissues, that wasn’t his style. He told me I had suffered stress related burnout, and it sounded as if I was weeks away from a full breakdown, one which could take years to recover from. The panic attack was a warning sign, and maybe, just maybe I had caught it in time. We met every couple of weeks, and began to work through all the things in my life that had driven me so close to the edge. I was working too hard for too long, trying to control the uncontrollable, trying to pretend that everything was under control, and when it wasn’t, working harder to fix problems I couldn’t fix.

Writing this now in October 2020, in the depths of a pandemic, I realise how unbelievably lucky I was. I am so thankful for that shit presentation. That panic attack. The tiny number of people who I let into my world of fear and panic. They saved me. I have managed to create a balance in my life which I hope will mean I never have to go through the same experience again. I no longer drink. Not ‘off the drink’, I don’t drink. It wasn’t really the problem, but it certainly wasn’t the solution. I get up at early and go to the gym or play golf before work. I put in hard hours at work, but then I stop. I spend time doing things for myself, for the kids, for others, but I do everything with a focus on balance. This is what I learned through therapy, which I do every two weeks. Balance. It’s the single most important thing to my sanity – it stops any one aspect of my life becoming an overbearing dominant force. Work had been that for too many years. But if it wasn’t work, it would have been something else for me, that’s just how I’m wired.

Every morning, I make a decision in the first 30 seconds of the day which dictates with alarming reliability how that day will go. Podcaster Joe Rogan said in a recent episode ‘Life has pain. You either choose the physical pain to avoid the mental pain, or avoid the physical pain and welcome the mental pain’. This resonated with me as one of the truest statements I have ever heard. When I wake up, if I give in to the demon who wants to stay in bed, maybe miss the alarm and have a lie in, I will inevitably feel stressed and anxious and behind all day. If I get up, hit the gym/pool/practice range, the day is mine, and I’ll take all the problems in my stride. It’s a daily struggle. I don’t always win. But I win more often that I lose, and that’s the most important bit. And it is something that so many people battle with, and like I did, do so in silence, in fear of the stigma of what admitting you struggle with your mental health will result in.

So that is why I have decided to talk about it, little by little, to people close to me, and now I guess to people I don’t even know. I am one of the lucky ones, who had the right person see me struggle at the right time, and thankfully help me do something about it. So I want to help others. Serendipitously, Niall Breslin came back into my life through work, and I got involved with the incredible people in the mental health charity A Lust For Life last year, helping them in small ways in their mission to bring mental health conversations into the mainstream. My company is involved in using our skills in Virtual Reality and content in creating mental health related technology for our clients, and I have just been asked to serve on the Board of Directors of A Lust for Life, which is one of the greatest honours I could imagine.

If you are reading this and any of this resonates, please reach out. To me, to a friend, to anyone who will listen. There are lots of resources out there, but just knowing that you are not alone is sometimes the biggest comfort and the start you need to do something to help yourself. For me, therapy, exercise, playing music, living alcohol free, meditation and having a balance with the energy I give to work and things I can’t control have been the solution. For you it may be different. But one thing is for sure, ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away. It makes you cry in a taxi queue. And nobody wants that!