How I Turned a Worried Mind into My Best Friend By Dan Ryckert @2015 Up To Something Publishing Introduction I’m as far removed from being a doctor as a human being can possibly be. I went to college for the most slacker-y of slacker majors (Film Studies), and it still took me five and a half years to actually get a degree. After graduating, I went on to early jobs at a local television station and a GPS company before eventually landing dream jobs where I play video games and talk about them for a living. None of my educational or vocational history points towards expert knowledge of the workings of the human mind, but a couple of pesky psychological conditions taught me that I better learn more about them if I didn't want to become a victim of them. While I'm not a doctor, my 12-year battle with panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (along with a fun sprinkling of OCD and ADHD) has placed me in offices with many of them. I've been tested by MDs, spent countless hours speaking with psychologists, sat in chairs with needles in my head, tried various medications and herbal supplements, joined mental health message boards, discussed my problems with support groups, and tried many more things in the relentless pursuit of understanding and easing my anxious mind. Without a doubt, it has been the most difficult thing I've ever been through in my life. Despite this, I sit here in 2015 happier and more successful than I've ever been. It's taken a dozen years, but all of those different approaches I've tried have left me with an assortment of techniques and reminders that keep me sane, healthy, and optimistic. I have a job that's been my dream since I was nine years old. I have a positive disposition that's virtually never compromised. For at least half a decade now, each year of my life has been significantly more enjoyable and fulfilling than its predecessor. In an odd way, I owe much of if not most of this to my struggle with anxiety. It's a safe bet that many of you are familiar with my work online, whether it's from Giant Bomb, Game Informer, or Twitter. On the internet, I rarely speak up about serious subjects. Discussing things like my anxiety issues can be tricky, and it takes me out of my comfort zone. That's part of why I'm writing this book. Identifying something that scares you and tackling it headfirst regardless is one of the many approaches that I've found to help. Because of this, I've turned my initial hesitance to talk about this subject into a reason that I have to write it. Talking about these issues is an important step to recovery, and I hope that reading about my experiences and successes in the realm of anxiety disorders will be of help to others that haven't yet attained a firm grasp on them. Most of this book is a chronological history of my experience with anxiety disorders. It starts with my first panic attack in 2003, and moves on to cover my college years of struggling to find ways to combat panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. Later, you'll learn about my slow realization of which methods worked for me and which didn't. My years of experimenting with a variety of remedies eventually paid off, as the strategies I taught myself prepared me for my jobs in the gaming industry. In the final chapters, I'll break down my most important tips for quick reference. It took me twelve years to get to this point of having a relatively anxiety- free life. I hope that by discussing how I got here, I can provide some tips on how to accelerate your own process of eliminating anxiety. Your solutions may differ from mine, but this book will give examples of positive mindsets and methods that should apply to anyone even if my path isn’t exactly the same as yours. In addition, I hope that this is a book that you can give to family and friends that struggle to understand what it's like to live with anxiety disorders. Anxiety is a chronic condition. At no point in my life can I climb a hill and confidently yell "It's over!" It will be with me until the day I die, but I've learned how to harness it as a positive force instead of being burdened by the difficulties it comes with. It's my hope that as you read this book, you'll identify with many of these struggles and find benefit from the same approaches that have changed my life for the better. The Beginning My full-blown anxiety disorders didn't go into effect until a specific moment at the beginning of 2003, but evidence of me being a high-strung kid had long been present. I was socially awkward throughout all of my pre-college schooling, leading to plenty of name-calling and punches being thrown my way for years. I was a kid that was obsessed with video games and professional wrestling, couldn't talk to a girl to save my life, and never went to any school functions or parties. This wasn't unique to me, as it's a common story among many kids whether they were destined to develop anxiety disorders or not. Despite never feeling fully comfortable in these early years, I had never experienced a panic attack, nor had I any knowledge of them. While my first panic attack was still months away, I entered a college preparatory program in the summer of 2002 with a great deal of nervousness. I had graduated high school in May of that year, and my mother convinced me to enroll in a one- month "Freshman Summer Institute" program that would prepare me for the full transition to come in the fall. It was a bite-sized version of a real college semester, requiring me to live in the dorms and attend a couple of summer classes. This was my first time being forced out of my long-established comfort zone of playing video games at home on a near-nightly basis, and I can't say I handled it particularly well. I lived on campus in Lawrence, Kansas, which was only half an hour from my childhood home in Olathe. It may have been a stone's throw from the familiarity of home, but the forced social interaction made it feel like I might as well have been stationed in Siberia. Within a week, I was pacing in the lobby of the dorms, explaining to my parents on the phone that I had nothing in common with my peers. They drank and smoked pot, they listened to music I didn't like, and yet they all seemed happy to be there and had an instant kinship with each other. In retrospect, they probably harbored many of the anxieties I felt at that pivotal moment in our lives, but they did a much better job of hiding it. In my mind, I didn't belong there and I dreaded the years to come as I continued transitioning into the real world. Early on, I found respite in the two classes that I was enrolled in. I never really enjoyed sitting in classrooms (and that feeling intensified as time went on), but it was a setting that I was at least familiar with. One was a basic introduction to the university and college life, and the other was Psychology 101. The latter was taught by a friendly, middle-aged professor named Buddy, and I hung around after most classes to chat with him. As a kid, I always felt more comfortable speaking with adults than with those my own age, and that had apparently carried over into (almost) adulthood. He always struck me as a genuinely happy person, so I enjoyed hearing his thoughts on life and how the mind works. Because of Buddy's obvious intelligence and positive disposition, I gave something a chance that I normally wouldn't have. One day in class, he started talking to us about meditation. I knew nothing about it, and had always just assumed it was some pseudo-religious thing that hippies did while repeating weird chants. But because of how much I respected Buddy, I temporarily shut down the "this is a bunch of hippie crap" alarm that was blaring in my head, and I gave it a shot. He had the entire class close their eyes, and guided us through a simple meditation for ten minutes. He instructed us to focus on our breath as it moved in and out, and had us direct it to specific parts of our body in sequence (feet, calves, thighs, stomach, etc). This is all very basic Meditation 101 stuff, but it was new to me at the time and was completely different than I expected. There was no chanting, no mantras, no praying to some god that I had never heard of — just breathing. He had a way of making it easy for even a class full of first-timers to fully focus on his instructions, and rarely did I find my mind wandering for those ten minutes. At the end, he instructed us to open our eyes and note how we felt. Even though I had yet to experience panic attacks or generalized anxiety, I noticed a distinct calm once the meditation was complete. I was floored by the feeling, and I remember Buddy saying "Note how you all feel after just ten minutes. If you do this for an hour a day, it will change your life. I promise you." As impressed as I was by the effects of the ten minutes, I didn't continue to do it after that class. I felt like learning how to talk to girls was a more pressing issue in my life, but that still seemed too daunting so I stuck with the safety of video games in my free time. The ensuing months played out in predictable fashion. I remained unsure of how much I liked this new college life, but was slowly coming around to the idea of meeting like-minded new friends in this new environment. I started playing video games with my door open, and would even walk in to other rooms and introduce myself when I noticed other people doing the same. Gaming became the common ground for me and many others on the floor, and my social anxiety was becoming less of an issue on a weekly basis. Before long, I was printing up flyers for a Soul Calibur tournament and putting them up all over campus. I went from hating the idea of socializing with my peers in the summer to gathering dozens of them in front of a TV and a Dreamcast in the dorm lobby by the end of 2002. Things were changing quickly, and I was actually starting to like college. My first panic attack was on New Year's Day, 2003. It's very clear to me now that it was a panic attack, but as an 18 year-old kid with no previous knowledge of them, it was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I was fairly hung over after a fun New Year's Eve with some newfound friends (I'd learn the hangover/anxiety connection years later), and we went to see Gangs of New York. I had seen hundreds of movies in the theater, even spending four years working at an AMC prior to college and seeing just about everything that came out during that period. I'd usually sit dead center in the row to get the best view of the screen, as I did on this night. It was a holiday and the movie had only been out less than two weeks, so it was a packed house. Near the end of the 160-minute running time of the film, I started feeling woozy and noticed a tingling sensation in my extremities. It was near the end of the movie, and I was getting pretty into it, so I initially chalked it up to excitement. As Leonardo DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis fought during the climax, I could tell that something much worse was happening. The most frustrating part was, I couldn't place where this sudden feeling of complete dread was coming from. I started sweating and placed my head in my hands, and my feet began to tap involuntarily. My breathing and heart rate became rapid, and my body and mind just couldn't take it any more. Despite being really into the movie for the previous two and a half hours, everything inside of me was suddenly screaming that I had to get out of the room. I was even too rattled to feel like a jerk as I scooted past everyone in my row, obstructing their view during a pivotal scene. I rushed into the bathroom with no real intention other than getting away from people. Hurrying into an open stall, I shut the door behind me and immediately started dry heaving into the toilet. My stomach felt fine, but my mind decided that dry heaving was the way to deal with this situation for some reason. Producing nothing, I wound up sitting on the toilet fully clothed and resting my head in my hands again as I tried to steady my erratic breathing. I was sweating profusely at this point, and more scared than I had ever been in my entire life. This wasn't "feeling sick," this was feeling like I was about to die at any moment from some unknown cause. When I felt composed enough to face people again, I went to the sink and splashed some water on my face, then exited the bathroom. My friends were waiting outside, and were understandably wondering what the hell was wrong with me. I had left during the climax of a movie, and I was covered in sweat and clearly rattled the next time they saw me. I remember muttering something about feeling sick or hung over, and said I just needed to go home and rest a bit. While it was a terrible and confusing night, I told myself that it was nothing more than a freak occurrence. My body felt fine when I woke up the next morning, and my mind wasn't giving off any red flags that anything was wrong. I continued as normal for the next week of the long holiday break (our school didn't start up again until three weeks into January), and nothing flared up. A week after seeing Gangs of New York, I ventured back into the theater to see an even longer movie, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It was the same seating situation at the same theater with the same group of friends, but I didn't go in with any real worries of a repeat of the incident that occurred just a week prior. In almost the exact same situation, the feelings of dread popped up near the end. The same shallow breathing, the same rapid heart rate, the same sweaty face and palms. Again, I rushed out of the theater and took refuge in the same bathroom stall. This is where I really started to worry, as it surely wasn't a coincidence. Why did this feeling seem to overtake my body twice, in the exact same situation? Was I doomed to miss the climax of every movie for the rest of my life so that I could sit on the toilet for mysterious reasons? I was far from an expert on medical issues, but I had never even heard of anything like what I was experiencing. I reacted in the worst possible way – by going home and spending the entire night searching the internet for answers about what could possibly be wrong with me. At one point, I thought I had Lyme disease. At others, I was convinced that I had any number of rare neurological disorders. When nothing seemed to be an obvious answer, I settled on a particularly ominous one – I must be going crazy. Lying in bed that night, it was impossible to quiet my mind. I've had trouble sleeping throughout my entire life, but this was on a level that I had never experienced. The sun came up without me getting a single minute of sleep, and I was frequently hopping out of bed to do more fruitless internet searches throughout the night and morning. Making the situation worse the next day was the fact that I was afraid to tell my mother about it. Growing up, she had always been easy to approach and very helpful whenever I had questions, concerns, or just needed someone to talk to. That said, this seemed like a very different beast. I knew I could turn to her for motherly advice on how to ask a girl out or how I should prepare for college, but "Mom, I think I might be going crazy" seemed like a much taller order for a conversation. Within a couple of days, a combination of factors likely led to me becoming very sick. I'd have to imagine that the lack of sleep and the extreme amounts of mental stress had done a physical number on my body. Not only was I not sleeping, I was so stressed that I wasn't even getting hungry. For days, I'd barely eat as I alternated between laying in bed with a racing mind and scouring the internet for any information I could find. Late at night, I frequently found myself dry-heaving in the bathroom due to panic, but there was rarely any food in my stomach. One of these nights, my mother heard me loudly dry-heaving and came to check on me. "Party a bit too hard tonight?" she asked from the bathroom doorway. "No, I just think I'm really sick," I responded. "Surrre," she said. "You know, you're 18. As long as you're being safe about everything, you don't have to hide it from me if you've been drinking." I initially wanted to explain to her that I hadn't had a drop, but decided that her thinking I was drunk was a better alternative to thinking her son was insane. After days of worsening symptoms (mental and physical), I decided that I had to go to the doctor. I'd avoid talking about the mental aspects that scared me the most, and see if the doctor could find something physically wrong with me that would explain what was happening. When my appointment started, I began with my best explanation of the physical symptoms. I told him that I had been feeling feverish and fatigued, with odd tingling sensations in my extremities and an occasional sensation that made me feel like I needed to vomit. As I explained this, the very symptoms I described came down on me like an avalanche. My breathing and heart rate spiked faster than ever, and the doctor could tell something was wrong. He told me to lie down on the table immediately, and ran out of the room to grab a nurse and an EKG machine. When the nurse arrived, she attached electrodes to my chest as the doctor monitored my heart activity. My heart rate was far above the standard resting rate for a healthy 18 year-old, and he ordered some blood tests to be done. It would take a few days for those results to come back, so he offered little outside of a prescription for some flu medication. The phrases "panic attack" or "anxiety disorder" never came up during this visit or visits to several other doctors in the weeks to follow. Likewise, I never really saw those conditions discussed when I searched for my symptoms online (the diagnosis for just about every symptom on medical message boards tended to be around the severity level of "super cancer"). It seems like there are tons of resources for sufferers of anxiety now, so I'm not sure if I wasn't looking in the right places or if psychological disorders were less of a part of the national conversation in 2003. Looking back, it wouldn't surprise me if this were the case in the 50s or 60s, but I'm still surprised that I wasn't able to find much of any information about anxiety as recently as the 2000s. With another scary experience under my belt and no real answers to speak of, I continued my new routine of laying in bed all day while hoping to feel better. My winter break was about to end, which I dreaded considering that my symptoms had only worsened since New Year's Day. Feeling like hell, I left the comfort of my childhood home and headed back to the hectic world of the dorms with some flu medication and a whole new suite of situations that I could fear attacks in. My blood test results came in, and to my surprise they said that everything was completely normal. Nothing in the results hinted at anything out of the ordinary, which would have been a relief in any other situation but only added to the mystery here. I wanted to hear that some particular part of my body was wildly malfunctioning, and that I'd be as good as new after getting on a specific medication or having some procedure done. Instead, I was back to lying in bed with a 102-degree fever while my mind tried to wrap itself around what the hell was wrong with me. This cycle continued into February with no signs of improvement. At this point, I had felt deathly ill and mentally exhausted for over three weeks. If I wasn't fighting to keep my breathing and heart rate under control, I was dizzy from a high fever. In the times that I was actually able to fall asleep, I'd wake up in the middle of the night, disoriented, sweating, and unable to fall back asleep. Laying in bed hadn't helped anything, so I told myself that getting up and being active would help shake me out of this funk. I asked my friends if they wanted to