The Nerdist Way_ How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life) - Chris Hardwick [28]
I hope you’ve gained some insight here and that, if you are a panic sufferer, you know that you have hope, which sometimes by itself is enough to make the panic dragons stop dining on your soul. But keeping that heart rate below NASCAR isn’t just for panic attacks anymore! It’s also good for quelling anger, hysteria, and just plain old stress (the vanilla of neuroses). Why share my failures and deeply personal experiences with you? Because I want you to feel better. No one should have to live in fear of oneself, ESPECIALLY when the threat isn’t real. Don’t let your body trick you. Ignore that brain again. It’s a process, but you can do it. If you forget any of this stuff in the middle of the night, you can always tear out this page and glue it to your face. Just make sure you don’t cover up your air passages. You might have a panic attack.
REEXAMINE YOUR FEARS
Ah, fear. That biological device that’s supposed to keep us from running into fire and shark mouths. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always do the best job of discriminating between rational and irrational fear. Here are some examples if you’re not sure:
Rational: This roller coaster just separated from the track mid-loop. I am now afraid.
Irrational: My foot’s asleep. It may be because of a crippling neurological disorder or some type of rare foot cancer.
Rational: I don’t think it’s safe to eat that bleach.
Irrational: What if I fail at life???
Rational: I fear that if we jump into that lava, our skin will burn off.
Irrational: Everything outside my house might kill me.
Rational fears keep us safe. Irrational fears keep us inert. They usually start with the interrogative what-if and posit the WORST. CASE. SCENARIO. Rest easy because these types of fears almost never come to pass. (“B-b-b-ut you s-s-s-aid ALMOST! That means sometimes . . .” I KNOW! I obviously can’t say 100 percent of the time, but just trust that it’s a high, high percentage, enough that you should feel OK! [smiley emoticon]) Remember, if you hear hoof clops behind you, it’s probably a horse and not a zebra. In other wordsies, it’s much less likely that something rare is gunning for you and much more likely that it’s something common and harmless. Unless you live on an African savanna, in which case you will probably be assaulted by goddamn zebras. (Zebrae?)
Worry—a gifted therapist once told me—is a misuse of your imagination. It really is the glorious burden of the thinker: We create a problem out of nothing, and then make it as real and horrifying as possible by steering into the worst possible places it can go. The Nerd brain is a fix-it center. It’s always analyzing, calibrating, and hypothesizing. Guess what happens when it runs out of things to assess in the external world? IT TURNS INWARD. But think of all of the world-solving answers you could conjure if you turned those outrageous powers onto actual problems! In a pinch, focus on an external problem. If you can’t find one, think of something you are thankful for and focus on all ways that it is awesome. If you’re not thankful for anything, breathe slowly and focus on nothingness.
Fear! It’s learned. It’s contagious. It’s an asshole! When I was a kid, I wasn’t really afraid of much except for Nerd-punching bullies, lightning storms, and the opening title sequence of Tales from the Darkside. Then as I got older I began to become afraid of things. It was cumulative. Being afraid of one thing led me to be afraid of similar things. When I was seventeen, I was in an elevator with my mom. The doors took quite a bit longer to open than they should have and I noticed my mom start to tense up. Apparently she had been stuck in an elevator as a young’un and didn’t much care for the experience. That tiny moment yanked a cord in my brain that started it like a speedboat: “Yeah . . . what if the doors didn’t open?? We’d be . . . TRAPPED!” [cue adrenaline flush and internal scream]