Music
Okay, I'd like to welcome everyone here and thank you all for coming this evening.
At this time I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Kathy Hauer
and I work at the Midwest Center.
At the Midwest Center I do phone support and correspondence support
with our home study program.
We hear from people all over the country and I help support them through phone conversations,
writing to them, and just sometimes helping them by just giving them some moral support.
For approximately six years I suffered with anxiety and stress.
At which time I had body symptoms ranging from nausea, severe stomach pains,
to sleepless nights, insomnia, and I avoided going places that were not in my comfort zone.
And my comfort zone was going to be smaller and smaller.
My husband and children were my safe persons.
Also, they received a lot of my anger that I felt inside due to my anxiety.
Approximately a year and a half ago I had a very serious injury which caused me a lot of anxiety.
And with seeing a doctor for that and many other reasons over the years,
they always told me I had to deal with my stress.
But no one ever told me how to deal with my stress.
One day on my recovery from my injury I opened up the paper
and I ended up sitting in a seminar just like you are tonight to listen to Lysinda Bassett speak.
From that day on it was a turning point for me.
I learned that I was my only safe person.
No one else was.
I no longer suffer from my body symptoms.
I'm able to control them with coping skills.
And I don't avoid things anymore.
I travel.
I go places I never would have gone before.
And I do all kinds of really neat and wonderful things with my family and on my own.
Where there once was anger, now there is happiness and joy.
Thanks to the program Attacking Anxiety, I have regained my self-confidence and my self-esteem.
Lysinda Bassett and Midwest Center gave me back a most wonderful life.
Eight years ago our next speaker avoided doing many things due to anxiety and stress.
One of the things she avoided was talking on the phone.
And now as part of her job she talks on the phone.
She also is a support person at our center.
And she works with many of our home study programs.
She spends approximately eight hours a day speaking to people all over the country,
giving them feedback on their homework and encourage them to take their steps,
to go to the mall, to go around the block, to do whatever it is that was the limitations.
She also presents seminars all over the country.
She is a living proof that you can change your life.
She is a very special person.
And she has broadened my horizons and given me a deeper confidence in myself.
Ladies and gentlemen, I introduce Carolyn Dickman.
Thanks everybody.
I am a very, very fortunate person.
One of the most fortunate people in the whole world.
Because I work with a crew of people that's unbelievable.
Since I came to work for the mid- became recovered and went to work for the Midwest Center,
I can't tell you what being around the encouraging, uplifting people
that encourage me to do things that I'm scared to do, but to do them anyway and that I can do them.
I can't tell you what that does for your self-esteem.
Surround yourself with people that care about you.
Surround yourself with people that want you to get what you want out of your life.
Self-esteem is a very important subject to most people that suffer with anxiety disorders.
We usually don't have very much self-esteem.
One of the nicest stories I've ever heard about self-esteem was about a young mother
who was very, very aware of how important it was that her child grow up with self-esteem.
And so from the time he was an infant, she would play this game with him and she would say,
why does mommy love you?
And the answer was, because I'm Matthew.
And she did this from the time he was an infant all throughout his toddler stage.
Why does mommy love you? Because I'm Matthew.
And as happens, there was another child that came along, Megan.
And as happens with a second child, third child, whatever child,
you sort of don't take as many pictures and that type of thing.
And so the game wasn't played real often with Megan.
But one day, mom became very aware of that and said, I'm going to correct that right away.
And she went to this little three-year-old and she said, why does mommy love you?
Because I'm Matthew.
We're here tonight to share some smiles, to share some sincere encouragement to you
if you have been suffering with anxiety.
In the very short time that we have together tonight,
we wish to offer you new hope and help for those of you that are not living your life
as you would like to because of anxiety.
If you have heard in the past that you must learn to live with your condition,
I'm here to share tonight that after spending 30 years of my life struggling with agoraphobia,
panic attacks, anxiety disorder, depression, I am no longer struggling.
I'm living proof that it's not a question of learning to live with this condition,
but rather learning how to live.
We could trade war stories until four in the morning, I'm sure.
And I'm going to be very brief about my story.
I began having panic attacks when I was 14 years old.
And these episodes came and went in my life, throughout my life, on and off.
The older I got, the more often they came and the longer they stayed.
At one point, I can truly say I was no longer living.
I was merely existing.
Toward the end of my experience, I spent my days tensed as if a 20-foot ocean wave
were going to roll over me at any moment and I didn't know how to swim.
I was taking aspirin every four hours for the pain in the center of my chest.
I was drinking alcohol to take the edge off.
I was avoiding anything that I thought might give me a panic attack.
If you can relate to what you hear tonight, please look at us and know that there is hope
and that there is help.
I'm real.
It was I that flew by myself to Manhattan and did the show, Attitudes.
It was I that last year spoke to 500 people in Phoenix, Arizona.
I'm real and I'm no stronger and I'm no smarter than anyone in this room.
And if I can change, you can change.
It's time to take your life back.
I wonder how many of you know that the number one reason people visit their family physician
is related to stress and anxiety.
I wonder how many of you know that in this country the number one emotional condition,
diagnosable emotional condition, is anxiety disorder.
What do you think is one of the very top three prescriptions written in the United States?
Anti-anxiety medication, you're right.
Anti-anxiety medication.
When we think about all of the serious disease and put that up there as a fact, it's pretty awesome.
And if you ever had the notion that you were all alone, like I did for 30 years,
and I better not tell anybody because if there was nothing wrong, the test came back all positive or negative,
and there's nothing wrong with my body, there was only one other place I could go to look for what was wrong.
So I decided I better not tell anybody.
If you've been in that position and felt you were the only one in the whole world living like this,
look around this room.
Look around this room.
There are 18 million people in the United States that suffer with anxiety disorder in some form.
There's a reason why this room is full.
There's a reason why two weeks ago there were 600 people that came to hear us speak in St. Paul.
There was a reason why there were 800 people and we had to turn people away in Buffalo.
And I personally will never forget the day that Lucinda appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show.
I was one of the people that was manning the five lines that came into our office for 13 hours.
You're not alone.
That particular TV show was the culmination of years of hard work and research on the part of our speaker tonight.
At one time she was unable to drive three miles from her home.
She has literally used her life as a science project at times.
Her tenacity and her strength led her to the answers that have enabled her to change her life.
Then she did what any one of you sitting out there would do.
She shared it with the rest of us.
And she continues to share what she's learned with audiences all over the United States.
She's very, very well known for her stress management presentations and sessions that she's given to AT&T,
the Chrysler Corporation, Ford, McDonald's, and the list is too long, too many to mention.
She's a member of the National Speakers Association and she's just recently returned from the
National Conference of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America,
used to be called the Phobias Society of America, where she was a presenter for the fourth year in a row.
I would like to present Lucinda Bassett.
Let me get myself all hooked up here folks.
Hi Cleveland. How you doing? I am really excited to be here.
You know, I have a little cartoon hanging on my desk and it's got this picture of this big stadium
and there's a big sign out front and it says, Seminar on Agoraphobia.
And there are two people sitting in the audience and all the chairs are empty.
And the speakers are standing up on the stage and they're looking at each other and they're saying,
good turnout, don't you think?
And I think a lot of you are amazed that there are so many people here.
And you shouldn't be because as Carolyn was saying, statistically speaking,
it is amazing how prominent this problem is.
It is the number one emotional problem in our country.
85% of the visits to the family physician are anxiety based.
People go in complaining of problems like, I don't know what's wrong with me.
Sometimes I just can't catch my breath and I just don't know why.
Or my heart pounds so hard sometimes it feels like it's going to pop right through my chest
and I don't understand it.
Or sometimes I just get this overwhelming sensation of depression.
Or I feel like I just want to cry for no reason at all.
The symptoms vary from heart palpitations to feelings of nausea to irritable bowel syndrome and diarrhea
to just overwhelming feelings that you might lose control and embarrass yourself in front of other people.
And if you've gone to the family doctor and then checked out,
and by the way, on the profiles that we do on people that come to our clinic,
that's usually what they do first.
They start experiencing these symptoms and it's usually sometime, somewhere in their life
when they've been through some stressful event.
And they have some of these body symptoms that we're talking about and they go to their family physician
and very often they go through a series of tests and they don't find anything.
And so then they may go to another family physician because they think, no, no, they just didn't find it.
There's something wrong.
And they go off to another doctor and they spend more money and they have more tests and they don't find anything.
And then maybe by the third or fourth doctor, and that's what happened to me,
they begin to think, gee, maybe it's not physical.
Maybe I need to see a psychologist or a psychiatrist or a good therapist of some sort.
So they go off to a therapist.
And what's happening now, a lot more therapists are more educated about anxiety disorders.
But for a long time, a lot of people weren't familiar with the term agoraphobia or anxiety disorder at all.
They really didn't understand how common it was.
And for me, I ended up going to five family doctors.
I went to one of the best psychiatrists in the city of Toledo and I was completely lost.
I had no idea what was wrong with me.
And I remember going into this one family doctor and I said, something is wrong.
I have these strange feelings anymore.
When I'm trying to drive down the road, all of a sudden I have these overwhelming feelings that something awful is going to happen.
And I can't really tell you what it is.
It's just this overwhelming sensation of fear.
And I'm just scared that I'm going to just lose control and maybe drive off the road or get in an accident or hurt myself.
And I remember this one doctor saying, well, it's just stress. It's just stress.
And I thought, well, what do I do about it?
And one day I was so overwhelmed by it, I ended up in the emergency room.
And this one doctor came up to me and he said, you know what you need to do?
And he put a baby in my arms.
This is what you need, honey. You need a baby.
Well, I was 20 years old. I wasn't married.
I have a five-month-old and a six-year-old, as I mentioned.
And I know now that that's not what I needed back then.
And yet I went searching for answers.
And I ended up in a group with a bunch of other people with a very expensive psychiatrist.
And this psychiatrist, the first thing he said to all of us is, you are all mentally ill.
Now, there is a big misconception about mental illness.
You don't need to be afraid of mental illness.
Mental illness is a very real problem.
And if you took a look at every person and their genetic background, almost everyone has some type of problem
with anxiety or depression, either themselves or in their background.
We all have skeletons in our closet, and there's nothing wrong with that.
And mental illness is something that we all need to understand more and be more comfortable with.
However, we at the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety happen to think that anxiety disorder is not a mental illness.
It is an emotional disorder.
And it is one of the easiest problems to overcome with the right treatment.
Unfortunately, very often what happens is people go to their physician,
and they might possibly be put on medication for anxiety disorder.
And now we're speaking specifically about anti-anxiety medications.
And anti-anxiety medications can be a very beneficial tool.
The problem is that sometimes you have to take a little bit more over a period of time to get the same results.
And I want to give you a little bit of an analogy here.
If I had a sore on my arm, and I looked down and I saw that sore, I'd think, oh, gee, that's kind of interesting.
I wonder where that came from.
Well, I think I'll go get a band-aid.
So I put a band-aid on that sore.
And then about a week later I looked down, and that sore is still there.
So I'd take that old band-aid and I'd throw it away.
And I'd get another band-aid, and I'd put that band-aid on the sore.
And I'd say, gee, I wonder why that thing won't go away.
And then it would start maybe itching around the sore.
So I'd get another band-aid, and I'd put that band-aid on the sore.
And maybe that would help stop the itching.
Well, wouldn't I be ahead to go to a doctor and find out what caused the sore so that it wouldn't come back anymore?
And that way I could save money on all those band-aids.
I don't want you to think that I'm trying to put down any particular type of medication,
because I'm not, and I don't want to scare you about that.
But you need to think about this.
The problem with certain types of anti-anxiety medication is that they give you a false sense of recovery,
in that if you take it, it alleviates the symptoms, but it does nothing to treat the cause.
Because the cause of your anxiety is very often the way that you react and respond to things that are going on in your life.
I want to define the definition of anxiety.
There is a misconception that anxiety is agoraphobia, or that agoraphobia is anxiety.
And one woman here tonight asked me, are you going to be talking about other things, too, other anxiety disorders,
such as obsessive-compulsive disorder?
Well, there are a group of anxiety disorders that different people in the professional world refer to,
such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, and generalized anxiety disorder.
But over the past ten years, what they've been doing is they've been realizing in tests and in clinical studies
that a lot of people who have agoraphobia also have post-traumatic stress disorder,
or people that have generalized anxiety throughout their day also are experiencing anxiety attacks.
And that really treating them is very similar, and a lot of these conditions run together.
So we're here tonight not to talk about one specific one, but we're going to generalize all of them a little bit and talk about anxiety disorder.
In our brochure is one of the most powerful definitions of anxiety disorder I have been able to find.
And what it says is it says, anxiety is a painful uneasiness of mind.
It's on the front cover, on the inside cover, over an anticipated ill.
Abnormal apprehension and fear, often accompanied by physiological signs such as sweating and increased pulse,
by doubt about the nature and reality of the threat itself, and by self-doubt.
Now for those of you who have ever suffered with anxiety and depression,
I'm sure you know that painful uneasiness of mind can sometimes be worse than physical pain.
Have you ever been caught up in a real scary thought, where you just sat there at night by yourself in bed and obsessed and obsessed,
that maybe you had a disease and no one had found it yet and maybe you were going to die?
Or have you ever sat by yourself in a traffic jam and thought, what do I do if I can't get out of here and I lose control of myself right here in public and I'm going to make a fool of myself?
Or have you ever been going up an elevator and said, oh my gosh, there's so many people in this elevator, what if the elevator stopped and I couldn't get off?
Have you ever been in an airplane and said, what if we get stuck in turbulence and I get sick and I can't handle it and I can't get off the plane?
Or what if my husband would leave me and I would be all alone?
A painful uneasiness of mind over an anticipated ill, that is anxiety.
If your anxiety is to the point where it's disrupting your quality of life or you find yourself worrying about the way that you physically feel or the way that you think,
then you might have a problem with anxiety and you might need to address it.
I want to give you just a couple of scenarios, a couple of case histories.
There are some people that have gone through our program that just totally amazed me and I want to tell you about Julie.
She was 18 years old and she had the whole world in front of her.
She couldn't wait to get out and start living.
She wanted to go off and go to college, but she worked for a corporation in Toledo and she was just getting ready to move out of the nest.
She lived with her mom and dad most of her life and she was just getting ready to make that break and move out of the nest and go away to school.
All of a sudden at work she started having these stomach aches.
Well, the stomach aches turned into diarrhea.
The next thing you know she's having these really strange bewilderment feelings at work, like she just wasn't there.
Then she started obsessing all the time at work about am I going to feel this way all day?
How long is it going to last? Am I going to be able to stay here?
What if I lose my job because of this?
Then she started obsessing at home about what was her day at work going to be like?
Can anybody relate to this?
What happened to Julie is she didn't tell her parents because she was afraid there was something wrong with her.
She didn't tell her coworkers because she didn't want to lose her job and that's exactly what happened.
She ended up obsessing so much that she lost her job.
She couldn't go to work because she scared herself about going to work.
She ended up in a psych unit of a major hospital on antidepressants and some anti-anxiety medication.
She was a mess and she was scared.
It was anxiety.
It was anxiety about leaving her safe place, leaving home and going off on her own.
She finally came to the Midwest Center and happily she is now married.
She lives in Philadelphia.
She's traveling around in a sales job with an insurance company and she's off all of her medication.
That's Julie.
Now there's Doug.
Doug is a 56-year-old CEO of four companies in Michigan.
This is a very powerful man.
Doug has a hard time going through a car wash.
Every time he gets in a car and goes through a car wash, his heart starts to pound like it's going to pop through his chest.
His hands break out in a sweat and he has this overwhelming sensation that he needs to get out of there and he doesn't know why.
When people would come in on business, he couldn't sit in the back of cars.
Here's this 56-year-old man who can't sit in the back of cars, cannot get on an elevator.
It's anxiety.
I was sitting in our clinic one night on a Sunday night.
I like to go in on Sunday nights because the phones aren't ringing off the walls.
I was up on my cell and the phone rings.
It's this very gentle voice.
She said, hello.
I said, hi.
She said, is this the Midwest Center?
I said, yes.
I said, this is Lucinda.
Can I help you?
She said, oh, well, I didn't think there would be anybody there.
I thought, well, why did you call?
I didn't say that.
I said, yes, well, what can I do for you?
She said, well, and she started to cry.
She said, I don't know where to begin.
She said, my husband left me about six months ago and both of my kids are grown.
I don't have any working skills.
I haven't worked since I was 20 years old and I'm alone.
I don't know what's wrong with me.
But every night I have nightmares.
I wake up in a sweat and I'm scared to death and I'm afraid I'm going to die and there's nobody here.
And I'm afraid I'm going to die all by myself.
That is anxiety.
And then there's this guy who was one of my favorite guys in group, Big John.
And I mean this guy was like six foot five.
And he came in and he looked like a motorcycle guy.
And he was like, if you give me a hard time, I'm going to punch you out.
This guy could not drive.
Here's this big six foot five dude who was afraid to drive to work.
And he would come in and he was on five milligrams of an anti-anxiety medication that I will not mention, name,
and moving his way up to six or seven.
And he was scared to death.
And you know what he did when he got home at night?
On top of all that anti-anxiety medication, he drank.
Because that's the only way he could cope with all of those body sensations of anxiety.
And you know, anxiety is a real problem.
As a matter of fact, again, it is the most common problem in our country.
It even surpasses depression.
But you want to have a real problem, alcoholism is a real problem.
My father had a problem with alcoholism.
And alcoholism was very strong in my family.
And it's very difficult to overcome.
So if you're someone who is self-medicating with alcohol, please get help for your anxiety.
Because once you control the anxiety, you can control the alcohol.
But you can't control the alcohol without getting a hold of the reason you're drinking.
Okay?
All right.
Just to give you some examples, there was one lady, I think, too, that was really interesting.
You know, this lady was beautiful.
She came into our clinic and she had three beautiful girls, actually.
One was off to college, a beautiful home and a great husband.
And to look at her, you'd think she had everything.
But this person was never happy.
She went through her whole life having these dreams that she never went after.
And now here she was in her 40s and she blamed everybody around her for her unhappiness.
She blamed her husband because she took care of him all these years.
She blamed her children.
I've never went out and done what I want to do and it's because of you.
She blamed everybody around her for why.
I see a lot of women in this audience smiling right now.
For why she never went after her dreams.
And to this day, to this day, she's doing some of the things she's always wanted to do.
But you know why she didn't do all those things and why she blamed everybody else?
It was anxiety.
Anxiety can sabotage your dreams and your goals.
And you know what we want to do whenever we're miserable or whenever we don't feel good
or when things aren't going our way, we want to point the finger at somebody else.
I wanted to blame everybody.
You know and that's so easy in our society today because our society is filled with all these reasons
why it's not our fault we're not happy.
It's our childhood.
Adult children of alcoholics.
Coming from a dysfunctional family.
Child abuse.
And you know those are all good reasons to grow up as an unstable adult.
And I kind of think that by the time you're 21, you need to take a serious look at who really is making you happy.
Who really is responsible for the way that you feel now that you're 21 and away from the house.
My dad is not the reason that I wasn't happy and I wanted to blame him for a lot of years.
I was the reason.
I was a perfectionistic, overreacting, negative thinker who took everything very seriously
and I had these really high expectations of everybody and especially of myself and I was miserable.
But boy, you would never have known it.
People with anxiety disorder value looking in control, appearing to be in control more than anything else.
They want people to think that they are in control even though underneath they feel totally out of control
and that is what is so anxiety producing.
But you know when you point your finger at somebody, you'll notice there are always three fingers
pointing back at you because really you're the one and you're the only one who can take control of your life
and take control of your thinking and that's how I recovered.
Just for fun, I would like you to take a minute and take the little quiz that you are now turned to in your handout.
And now let's just kind of review that together so that you know how to do it properly.
It's real easy.
The first statement says, I like to be in control at all times.
What you want to do is you want to read the statements and then look up at the little scoring.
It says, if you circle a one, that means, no, I almost never feel this way.
I'm out of control all the time.
It doesn't bother me a bit.
If you circle a two, it means, oh, I occasionally feel this way.
Three means, no, I frequently feel that I need to be in control at all times.
Four means, no, I got to be honest.
I almost always need to be in control of myself at all times.
So read the statement.
Things should be fair.
I almost always feel that way.
I like things to be fair.
I'm a fair person.
You'd want to circle a four.
Okay?
The more strongly you feel about the statement, the higher number you circle.
So go ahead, read the statement, and then circle the appropriate number.
And then once you do that, I'll tell you what to do next.
Okay, just for fun, we're going to just go over this little test and tell you a few things about yourself.
How many of you scored between 16 and 25?
Okay, a few of you.
Okay.
26 to 35?
A few of you.
Over 35.
Get your hands up.
All right.
Okay.
How many of you have heard of a test called the Holmes-Reyhi Life Events Test?
It's a test they use that goes around.
It says, death of a spouse, purchased a new home, bought a new car.
And supposedly, the more of these things that you've been through, the more prone you are to problems with stress and anxiety.
Well, they were giving this test all over the place, and it's a very nice test.
But what they saw is they saw that some people were scoring very high on the test.
They had been through a lot of stressful events, but yet they seemed to be very much in control of their anxiety.
And then other people were scoring very low, that they really didn't have anything stressful going on,
but yet they seemed overstressed and very anxious.
And they said, you know, something's going on here.
Maybe it's not quite as important what's going on in your life as it is how you choose to be affected by what's going on in your life,
how you react and respond to what's going on in your life.
And this test says exactly that.
The statements on this test are ridiculous.
They are extremely perfectionistic statements.
They are really fitting for someone with very high expectations.
Let's take this a little bit further.
You've circled a three or a four on statements one, four, five, seven, or nine.
Raise your hands.
Well, hello, all you perfectionists, you.
The more of these you've circled, the more perfectionistic you are.
Now, perfectionism isn't all bad.
You're one of these people that, you know, your favorite song is My Way by Frank Sinatra.
And you like the toilet paper to go over the top.
And when people put it on the other side, you tend to turn it around, you know what I mean?
You're one of these people that say, I better do it myself, because if I don't do it myself, it won't be done right.
I remember my husband David, you know, I got so busy I started asking him to please help with the laundry.
And he did my laundry.
And one of my very best sweaters came out about this size.
I think he did it on purpose so I wouldn't ask him to do the laundry anymore.
But, you know, I was like, ah, and I had to step back and say, okay, now wait a minute.
If you want him to do the laundry again, you need to take the time to explain to him that you don't put wool sweaters in the dryer.
So that's what I did.
Okay, if you circled three or four on statements three, six, eight, ten, twelve, or fourteen, raise your hand.
Three, six, eight, ten, twelve, or fourteen.
You need to be more assertive.
Without question, a lot of your anxiety is coming from not being assertive.
And these are skills, folks.
These are things that you somewhere down the way just haven't learned yet.
If you circled three or four on statements two, five, seven, nine, or ten.
Two, five, seven, nine, or ten.
Raise your hand.
Okay, you have very unrealistic expectations.
And you're someone who's easily disappointed.
And that's where some of your anxiety comes from.
Just one more.
If you circled three or four on statements two, eight, ten, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen.
And you know, you feel sorry for yourself way too often.
And you tend to see yourself as a victim.
Now, this little quiz, don't take it too seriously.
It's just a way to show you that so often we want to say the reason I'm so stressed out, it's my husband.
That's what it is.
He drives me crazy.
He comes home every night.
It's two hours late.
I don't know what he's doing.
Or he expects dinner on the table.
And I'm working full time.
And he doesn't clean the house.
And when he cleans the house, he leaves crumbs all over the counters.
Or it's the kids.
I don't know why it is.
When I'm at work, I'm as calm as I can be.
Somebody says, you want to do this for me?
You don't do that?
Yeah, yeah, no problem.
But when I get home, a spilt glass of milk can send me over the edge.
And I scream and I yell.
And I go into the bedroom and slam the door.
Why is it when we're at home, you know, we can make total fools of ourselves.
But at work, we're totally in control.
We make the best employees as long as we can get to work and stay there.
We're great employees.
But the thing is, I remember when I was agoraphobic.
And I was so agoraphobic that I was avoiding driving, flying, and everything.
Even talking on the phone made me very, very uncomfortable.
And I didn't know what was wrong with me.
And I went to all these places for help.
But I was writing a book.
And I want to share a little excerpt from that book with you.
I want you to know how bad I was feeling.
I'm afraid I'll lose control.
I'm afraid of my father, of God, of what people will think of me.
I'm afraid it will catch up with me.
I'm afraid my parents will embarrass me.
I'm afraid I'll embarrass myself.
My heart will stop.
I'm afraid I'll throw up in front of everybody and people will talk about me.
I'm afraid I'll jump off the balcony.
I'm afraid I'll die.
I'm afraid I won't.
I'm not good enough for my friends.
I'm not good enough for God.
I'll be found out.
I'm afraid of the shadows on the wall.
Someone's right outside my window waiting.
I'm afraid of myself.
I'm not talented enough.
I'm not pretty enough.
I'll panic.
I'm afraid my parents won't love me anymore.
I'm afraid I won't get everything done.
I'll choke.
I'm inadequate.
I'm afraid I'll go crazy.
I'm afraid they'll lock me up and no one will care anymore.
They won't like me if they really know me.
My heart will be broken.
I'm not rich enough.
I'm not strong enough.
I'm not smart enough.
No one will ever be able to love me if they really knew me.
I'm afraid to be myself.
I'm afraid I have no self.
I'm afraid I might fail.
What if I succeed?
What if it doesn't happen?
What if it does?
Why am I so afraid?
That, for me, summed up where I was at.
I was totally obsessed with why I was so unhappy.
Now, I want you to just think about this for a minute.
I had so much negative energy flowing inside of me.
I was a type A personality.
Always had 500 things going on.
But I took all of that energy and I crammed it into my head and I worried.
I worried about everything.
I worried about my father.
I worried about my health.
I worried about my mother.
I worried about money.
I worried about what people thought of me.
I worried about what people didn't think of me.
I worried about how I looked.
I worried about how I didn't look.
I worried about God.
I worried about everything.
Can you imagine what potential I might have had if I could have taken all that negative energy
and turned it into positive, productive goal setting?
And that's all I did.
And for some reason, you all came out to see me tonight.
And I'm no different than any of you.
And I never thought of it like that.
I still have all the energy I had before.
But now instead of wasting my precious present moment, as Carolyn talks about,
worrying and obsessing about everything that's out of my control anyway,
I spend that valuable time organizing and planning and goal setting.
You know that worriers are fabulous goal setters because all worry is is negative goal setting.
Do you know that?
Think about it.
You're anticipating bad things happening.
And you know 90% of the time they don't and never will.
So why not take all that energy, think about the time that you spend worrying.
Think what you could do if you took that time and used it on something positive
that you wanted to do with your life.
You know, who's the guy that wrote All I Ever Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten?
Robert Fulcrum, thank you.
He had this little story in Reader's Digest.
Reader's Digest is a wonderful magazine.
I don't know if you get that, but it's still a wonderful magazine.
It was back when I was a child and it still is.
And he had this article in there and he said, you know, I speak to corporate executives
and I speak to kindergartners.
And there's not a whole lot of difference.
But the big difference is you go into a room of kindergartners
and you say to these kindergartners, how many of you can sing?
Oh, oh, I can sing.
Do you want to hear me sing?
I love to sing.
Well, how many of you can paint?
I can paint.
You want to see me paint?
I love to paint.
I can paint a horse, walking a dog.
I can paint anything.
Well, how many of you can dance?
I can dance.
Let me dance.
I want to dance first.
Then you go into a room of people like us.
How many of you, let's see the hands of the people that can sing.
Let's hear those people sing.
Come on now.
Now, now what do you think would happen in kindergartners there?
They'd be flying up here.
You know how I know that.
I have a six-year-old, I took her to a seminar with me,
and there were so many people there, I brought her up on stage with me,
and she sat behind me because I didn't want to lose her.
And she's sitting there pretty soon, she goes, Mom, Mom.
Now, there are 1,800 people out there.
And I said, yes, Brittany.
She said, give me that microphone.
Some lady up front says, give her the microphone.
And I gave her the microphone.
That little stinker stood up here and she's just yacking away,
Hi, I'm Brittany.
And she went on and on.
They don't have any fear.
They don't have a lot of negative input.
Some do, but a lot don't.
Where do they get that negative input?
What happened to you, to all of us, that now when we're 20, 30, 40, 50,
when I say to you, I want to hear you sing?
Well, come on, how many of you dance?
Now, see, no one's putting their hands up because I said,
they know I'm going to say, I want to see you dance.
Why are everybody dancing out of here?
What happened to us in that 20-year period?
You know, I do a lot of seminars for Chrysler and Ford and AT&T
and different companies.
And I have to go into a group of people who have been laid off from their jobs
and I have to convince them that this might be a positive thing in their life.
You talk about stress.
And one of the things I do is I say, if I were a fairy princess
and I could say to you, I've got a magic wand
and I'm going to tap you on the head and you can be anything you want to be.
You can do anything you want to do.
What's your dream?
You know what amazes me?
A lot of them don't have any.
They're in their comfort zone, as Kathy mentioned.
If you are in a comfort zone and you're happy there, great.
How many people do you know that are happy?
And what's happiness anyway?
I'm pretty happy.
I didn't used to be.
I used to get caught up in this, I'm going to really start living
when I get a different job.
I'm going to really start living when I move out to California.
I'm going to really start living when I get over this agoraphobia.
I'm going to really start living when I get out of school.
Well, guess what, folks?
This ain't no dress rehearsal.
This is it.
You better be living right now in your precious present moment.
And that's hard for people with anxiety disorder because we are
constantly worrying about the future or dwelling on the past.
And it's such a waste of time.
We go in and we train big corporations how to think differently
because a lot of doctors agree on a lot of things.
And one thing that, and they disagree on a lot of things.
But one thing that most people who deal with anxiety disorder agree on
is, yeah, there are four factors you have to take a look at when
you're dealing with anxiety disorder.
Genetics, do you have a family member or a parent who had a problem
with anxiety disorder?
Environmentally, what was your life like as a child?
Were you exposed to a parent who was nervous and anxious and
overreacted to things and maybe avoided certain things or took nerve medication?
Okay, also you have to look at the biochemical factor and your
biological makeup.
Is there anything physiologically going on in your body that might be
causing some of this anxiety?
But most importantly is the psychological aspect, the personality traits.
And if you look in your handout on page one, profile sheet, this is the
most important message that I want you to get tonight.
We so often want an easy way.
We so often want somebody to make us feel better.
We want somebody to make us happy.
This is it, folks.
You make yourself happy.
You make yourself feel better.
Yes, go to the doctor.
Find out if there's something physically wrong.
But if you can relate to what I'm talking about tonight, you can
control your own feelings.
You can control your own emotions.
And you, only you, can control your own anxiety and probably alleviate it.
You're never going to eliminate it completely.
If you're alive, you're going to have anxiety and you're going to have
stress.
But you can use it for something positive.
All these people that you heard from tonight, and there's a lot more that
you didn't that came along tonight, had problems with anxiety.
Now they're just doing all kinds of things that they never dreamed they
would do before.
And it's because they changed the way they think.
No, it's not a physical reason.
If you've been to the doctor and there's nothing physically wrong with you,
which is the first thing you want to do, then there is a good chance it's the
way that you think.
It is the way that you think.
If you're not doing something in your life that you want to be doing,
whether it's getting out of a bad relationship or taking a chance with your
career or going after a dream you've always wanted to go after, you know
what's holding you back?
Anxiety.
It sabotages you.
You know what anxiety was for me?
It was my excuse not to.
It was like, well, I can't, I have this anxiety.
I was in a bad relationship, but if I got out of that relationship, I wasn't
sure I could take care of myself.
And I always had this dream to kind of move out to the West Coast.
But gee, what if I moved way out there and I lost control of myself?
Who would help me out?
And what if I always wanted to change careers, but what if I did that and my
anxiety got worse?
So it was my great excuse not to.
And you need to think about that because if you get over this problem, you have
no more excuse, do you?
Maybe you'll be up here next year instead of me.
Let's look at this profile sheet.
The personality traits on this sheet are extremely important.
People with anxiety disorder have all the different things we talked about, and
they're all different.
But they all seem to have various symptoms, and that's an inner nervousness,
heart palpitations where their heart pounds real fast, that feeling that
there's just something bothering them and they don't know why they feel
agitated.
Some people have panic attacks where they just feel like they've got to get
away, they've got to get out.
Some people don't.
Some people think they don't.
Some people just have anxiety all through their day, a lot of what we call
generalized anxiety.
Some people it'll come and then it'll go away for years at a time, and then it
will come back again.
Okay?
Perfectionist, extremely analytical.
We think and think and think.
You think too much.
People with anxiety get into trouble when they don't have anything to do.
When they've got time on their hands, they make themselves anxious because
that's when they start obsessing, and we are all obsessive thinkers.
Sensitive to criticism.
No one has to put you down.
You put yourself down.
Again, obsessive thinkers, emotionally very sensitive people.
They make great friends, very supportive people.
They're always there for everybody else, but they're also very easily
manipulated because they are so sensitive.
You know, I could never figure out why do very sensitive people like us marry
insensitive obnoxious people like you guys?
No.
I have this husband, and bless his heart, when I was agoraphobic, he used to
come up and he'd pick me up to go out on a date, and I was no fun on a date,
folks.
For one thing I had, if somebody's got to talk about it, it might as well be
me.
I had irritable bowel syndrome, all right?
And every time I would eat anything I felt like I had to go to the bathroom.
So we'd go out to a restaurant, and first of all, you'd have to twist my arm
to go to the restaurant, and I had to drive because I had to feel like I was
in control of the car.
Then we'd get to the restaurant, and I had to sit right by the door, and then
I'd be starving to death, and I wouldn't eat.
And I'd say, aren't you hungry?
Oh, no, really.
No, really I'm not hungry.
And I'm starving to death, and David, bless his heart, he's stuck by me.
I remember one day he showed up at my apartment with these people in this little
Volkswagen, and he said, come on, we're going to go to this art festival.
And it was two hours away, and he wanted me to get in the back seat of this
Volkswagen and go two hours.
And I didn't know why I couldn't do it.
I just knew I couldn't.
So I got mad at him and threw a fit and acted like, why didn't you tell me?
Well, this wasn't planned.
Well, I can't go.
Go away.
I don't ever want to see you again.
And he'd say, geez, what is wrong with you?
And so when we got to know each other a little better, somehow he kept coming back,
and I don't know why, I finally said, I just, I have this awful feeling inside.
I got to the point, I remember one night when I was sitting on the couch, and I
said, I called him up because I had come home and I'd had an awful day, and I
came home and I was feeling really anxious, and I turned the TV on.
You know how you turn the TV on just because you want to hear another voice,
like somebody's in the house with you?
And so I turned the TV on and I'm sitting there and I'm totally anxious and scared
and obsessing again, how long is this going to last?
How long am I going to be like this?
Am I going to feel this way tomorrow?
And there's a woman sitting on this television, and it's a black and white show,
and she's going, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, eeeh, and it said, this woman had a frontal lobotomy
in 1929.
I went, oh no, and I called David and I said, you've got to come over.
They're going to do a frontal lobotomy on me.
He comes rushing over and I think he probably thought by now they were because he'd had
it, you know?
And I remember saying to him, I'm so afraid that I'm going to have to live the rest of
my life this way, and I don't think I could handle it.
But I'm afraid that if I do live like this, they're going to lock me up and throw away
the key, but I'm afraid that if I die, I'm so afraid of death I don't want to die, I
don't see an answer.
And he just shook his head because he didn't know.
He didn't know what to do.
He didn't have the problem.
He's Mr. Insensitive.
This lady that I don't even know that well, I just moved into town.
David's born and raised there, so he's a local blood, so everybody likes him, but I'm the
new kid on the block and I didn't know anybody.
And we walk into town and this lady comes up to me on Main Street and she goes, Lucinda!
And I said, hi!
And she said, you know, honey, and then she said, and I know people who don't like me,
and I know people who don't like you.
I mean, I just moved in, right?
What do you want to say to something like that?
What do you want to say to that?
Who?
Why?
And you know what?
I stood there and I backed up and I thought about it for a minute and I thought, I don't
care.
I can't please everybody, can I?
I mean, there's just nothing I could, I want this handsome gentleman to stand up for me.
Could you stand up for me, sir?
Yes, you.
Thank you so much.
And come over here.
What's your name?
Dan Presley.
Dan Presley, that explains it, okay?
All right, turn around, Dan.
Now, see what a handsome man Dan is here?
Okay, now can you imagine if Dan went in tomorrow to the office and Dan went out, his name is
Presley, so we'll just take this to the full health here, and bought a black wig and a
nice big thick one like Elvis, all right, and stuck it on his head.
Now, he may go in there and some people might say, Dan, what would they say to his face
anyway?
What would they say?
Oh, yeah, Dan, yes, very nice, uh-huh, yes.
What would they say behind his back?
Oh, my God.
You know, but actually if it was nice, maybe Dan could just dye his hair black.
What would you think then?
Now, be honest.
No, no, but now some people are thinking, well, you know, yeah, it might be nice.
This must be, is this your girlfriend up front here?
Yes?
You know, some people might think it would be nice if he dyed his hair black, and some
people would say, yuck, so the only thing he could do to please everybody would be to
dye half of it black and leave the rest of it like this, right?
Thank you.
Let's give Dan a hand for participating.
He said he's going to try that tomorrow, and as silly as that is, how often do we go to
almost that length to please people?
Think about this one.
How often do you wear yourself out to please somebody you don't even like?
I spent the better part of my life trying to please somebody that I didn't even like,
and then I stepped back one day and I said, I don't really like that person.
I'm going to stop trying.
You know, when I was agoraphobic, there is no way I would have dreamed in a million years
that I would have gotten up here and talked to you, and you know the biggest reason I
wouldn't have done it?
Because what if you don't like me?
And some of you probably already don't.
I don't want to know, but some of you probably already don't.
And you know, who knows why?
Maybe it's because I have a red neck.
Maybe it's because I got big lips.
Maybe it's because I talk about irritable bowel syndrome.
I don't know.
But the thing is, some people are going to like you.
Twenty percent of the people are going to like you because they like the fact that you
don't have your hair dyed black.
And the other 20 aren't going to like you because they prefer your hair dyed black.
And 60 percent, they can go either way, and that's my favorite kind of person.
They just let you be an open book, and they say, hey, you tell me who you are.
But it's just the way it is.
People judge you before they have a chance to know you.
So you need to stop worrying about what people think of you.
Because you know what?
You shouldn't have to try so hard to be liked.
It's like how many men drive those big pickup trucks?
You know, with the great big wheels, right?
And some women would look at those trucks and men and go, wow, that is fabulous.
That is beautiful.
It's a hot rod.
And that is a wonderful piece of machinery, right?
And so this guy gets out of the truck and he's got his boots on and he's feeling good
and he's looking good.
And some woman would pull up and go, now that is my kind of guy.
Now another woman might pull up and say, oh, no, no, no.
I'm not into hot rods and I don't like those boots.
So they've already made up their mind, haven't they?
By the car that he drives and the boots that he wears and who knows what.
And the point is, we are people pleasers.
We want everybody to like us.
We want everybody to think we've got our act together.
And you need to stop trying so hard because no matter what you do, you can't please everybody.
So we have high expectations of ourselves.
We're very easily irritated.
But we only show our anger to our family.
We would never show our anger at work.
We want everybody at work to think we are totally together.
Okay?
And this is a very, probably one of the biggest understatements on the whole page.
We have a tendency to overreact to things.
We are the biggest overreactors in the world.
Low self-esteem, even though you may think you think highly of yourself.
Lots of people with anxiety disorder really don't.
Hypochondriasis, a lot of people with anxiety worry about their health
and need to appear in control at all times.
One man who went through our program said, I feel like a duck on a pond.
I'm just floating along kind of calmly and I look totally at peace.
But if they could just see my feet underneath going 90 miles an hour, then that's kind of how we are.
Inner nervousness and guilt ridden.
You can easily be made to feel guilty.
And we're very sensitive to negative stimuli.
You shouldn't watch shows like Friday the 13th and, you know, that kind of thing.
One of the things that you need to know is that we're very sensitive to certain types of foods.
How many of you drink coffee?
All right.
People with anxiety disorder tend to have an inner nervousness and caffeine is a stimulant.
And coffee will make you more anxious.
Matter of fact, the worst thing you can do is get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee,
eat a jelly donut and light up a cigarette.
You want to have a real bad day, go ahead and try that one.
Because although nicotine has a way of calming you down if you're addicted to it,
it's very psychological in that you're telling yourself, I'm really stressed.
I'm going to have a cigarette so you feel better.
But actually it depletes certain vitamin B from your system and actually will make you more anxious and nervous.
Sugar is a stimulant.
Caffeine is a stimulant.
And you really need to watch your intake of both of those things.
If you have a problem with irritable bowel syndrome, one of the best things you can do is eat raw bran.
Now it looks like sawdust and it tastes like sawdust.
But you can buy it at your grocery store in a big bag and it's like 69 cents a pound.
But I want to warn you, when you eat bran, it will give you gas.
All right?
I make these wonderful bran muffins.
And my little girl, she just loves these bran muffins.
And she comes home, oh mommy, you made muffins.
And I put big blueberries in them and everything, you know, and they're just overloaded with bran.
She eats like two or three of these muffins and she opens the door and she comes running through the house.
David goes, did you make bran muffins again?
So we always know in groups who's tried the bran muffins and who hasn't.
Sally, yeah, you, yeah, I've tried the bran muffins.
You just need to be aware of that.
I hope I didn't offend anybody.
But I did need to let you know about that.
Okay.
I want to tell you just a little bit about who the Midwest Center is.
The Midwest Center is a national organization and we specialize in the treatment of anxiety disorders.
We are a very powerful organization in what we do because we have a lot of fabulous people working with us that are recovered from anxiety disorder.
As a matter of fact, for a long time that was a prerequisite.
You didn't work with the Midwest Center unless you had gone through the program because we wanted you to know our philosophy.
Well, what happened was once we started treating people in our clinic, people started coming from five and six hours away to get help
because they'd been through so many things that didn't work and they came to our clinic for answers.
So then we created a home study program which is cassettes and written materials and we started offering that around the country.
What happened is we had a psychologist call up and say, one of my patients who I haven't been able to help that well has tried your program
and he's just making such tremendous strides.
Can I get more programs?
So we shipped him a bunch of programs and the next thing we know, we've got all these therapists around the country using our program in their clinics.
The most exciting thing to me though and my biggest success was I had a couple of family members who were hospitalized for various problems that were alcohol related.
I was very disappointed in the help that they got.
I had one of my very good friends a long time ago go into a psych unit for depression and anxiety and I was very disappointed with what I saw there.
They had her throwing little fish into a basket and making little wall hangings and she said to me, Lucinda, am I that sick?
Is that all I can do?
That really scares me.
And this is a professional woman and I went in and I said to her, this is not good.
I started teaching her all the things, all the coping skills in this program and it was so funny
because I'd go in there and sit down and talk to her and people started coming and sitting around us and listening to what I was saying.
And I walked out of there and I said, someday I'm not a doctor but I'm going to make a difference in these psych units because they're not getting what they need.
They need something that's going to change the way that they think so that they stop seeing themselves as a victim of the outside world and seeing themselves in control of how they're feeling.
They need something tangible so that when they leave here they can go on learning and growing and getting better.
Well, our program, Attacking Anxiety, is now going into psych units and that was a lot of work.
And we're making it available in mental health centers so that we can help the financially deprived all around the country get help when nobody else will.
And we're really excited about all the things we're doing and I want to take a few minutes
and show about five or six minutes of a program to you that's kind of neat that I'm really proud of that we did this year.
It pretty much controlled my whole life. I let it control my life. I didn't know any other way to cope.
The biggest fear for me was the panic. I was afraid that I would get somewhere and the panic would overcome me and I would just lose control.
I went to the doctor I don't know how many thousands of times. I just thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was done.
I was the type of person that could go out into public and kind of keep my act together and be nice and pleasing.
But the minute I got home I became instantly angry. I would yell at my husband. I would scream at the kids. I had no patience.
Little things, a spill or something like that would just send me off into an outrage.
I felt like I was totally out of control with my anger. I had no control of my anger at all.
It's hard to put into words. My legs, my arms were like on fire. I didn't feel connected to the car even though I was.
I was convinced that I was headed for the state hospital. No doubt about it.
It was a very, very terrible experience to go through.
Anxiety disorder is the number one emotional problem in our country today.
An estimated one out of five Americans have suffered or will suffer some form of anxiety disorder.
One of the most commonly prescribed medications today is anti-anxiety medication.
Many experts believe anxiety to be one of the primary causes of alcohol abuse.
Anxiety is a feeling of discomfort or panic or nervousness or a feeling that something awful is going to happen to a person.
It's always uncomfortable and it just accelerates and magnifies all of the aches and pains, the fears, the apprehensions that normally people have.
Most people don't realize that their anxiety is caused by an internal thought.
It's something they're telling themselves that's producing the anxiety.
They have to realize that anxiety isn't produced by external events.
Nothing can make you anxious. You make yourself anxious by what you say to yourself.
And if you can learn not to do that, the anxiety will be lowered immensely.
We can all suffer from anxiety.
These kinds of feelings can become chronic and last for a lifetime unless they're controlled.
When people come into my office complaining of anxiety, they don't always say they're anxious.
Oftentimes they complain of other things such as shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing, lightheadedness, dizziness, difficulty concentrating,
being easily distracted, having palpitations.
These are things that are universal with people with anxiety.
Not everyone has every symptom, but a lot of people will have one or more of those symptoms.
And they're very disturbing to individuals because they feel that they're of a serious medical nature
and they want immediate answers and immediate help for what they perceive to be a medical problem,
not really realizing that the problem may be based in anxiety.
I was always concerned about, am I going to die? Am I going to faint? What's wrong with me?
Am I going to flip out? My head doesn't feel right. I was always dizzy.
So many of my mornings were just miserable.
I would wake up and my heart would start to pound and my chest would hurt.
Just an unbelievable tightness in my chest and my throat.
It would feel like my throat was closing, like I was choking.
And I would be in a very, very cold sweat.
And I would feel like I was having a heart attack
before I would know when I would be on my way to the emergency room.
Are we almost there?
Almost there. There's the sign.
Okay.
I hope I'm not having a heart attack.
Okay.
Of those people who believe they are suffering with heart problems,
an estimated 34 percent actually suffer with anxiety and panic.
One of the primary reasons for ambulatory care and trips to the emergency room is anxiety disorder.
People suffering from anxiety oftentimes have depression.
In my experience, over 85 percent of chronically anxious people are also depressed.
When this program helps control anxiety, it simultaneously helps depression.
The cognitive approach used for anxiety also is very effective for depression.
I went to different doctors. My family doctor, he didn't understand.
He would start putting me on different medication.
And then he sent me to a doctor and he couldn't help me.
And I went back home and I went on for six months like that.
Just nothing but getting up in the morning crying and very deep depression.
Just laying on the couch.
And finally my sister came down and she says she had it.
She knew I needed help.
Some people with chronic anxiety and depression self-medicate.
They don't use medication.
They use drugs or alcohol in an attempt to help cope with the feelings of anxiety and depression that they have.
I remember what it was like back then.
It was like looking at my life through a window.
I was using alcohol in order to get through the day.
I lived my life through my children.
I would watch them go off to school and when they came home I would just be hungry for everything that had happened out there where I wasn't.
The fears and the panic attacks and the anxiety attacks.
The excuses came more often as the years went by.
By the time I was 40 years old I was making lots and lots of excuses.
I was lying to my family and to my friends about why I couldn't go places.
How could my mind stand the racing, scary thoughts all of the time?
I just felt like emotionally I was going to break into a million pieces and no one was ever going to be able to put me back together again.
I didn't know that I could do it myself with some help.
At the Midwest Center we've seen thousands of patients.
The results have been tremendous.
Patients have changed their lives, have changed their attitude,
and more importantly feel good about themselves for the first time in a long time.
If I had one thing to say about anxiety it would be this.
Anxiety is treatable, controllable, and it doesn't have to rule your life.
The techniques, the coping skills offered through this program work.
You can't always control what's going on around you and it's very difficult to control another person,
but you can control how you are affected by what's going on around you.
You can control your reaction and your response to another person or situation,
and that's the key to controlling anxiety.
I saw a television commercial on the Midwest Center and they started naming all the symptoms and I'm going, that's me.
I was watching TV and there was an ad on there and somebody was talking about me and I cried and I thought,
maybe I'll take one more chance, I'll take one more chance and I'll go for help.
I'm now in the program, I've changed so much in just ten weeks time.
What this program and the Midwest Center is doing is an efficient way of what a lot of us psychiatrists and psychologists
are struggling to do with our patients, traditionally over a long period of time in a very expensive way.
The main thing I can say to give someone out there hope is that I was, I feel, as bad as you can be with this condition,
and I got over it and you can too. It's the best thing that's ever happened to me.
Don't wait as long as I did. Don't wait as long as I did. I wish I had done this ten years ago.
This is more than just another self-help program. This is a life management tool.
You can change things and you can change them on a permanent basis using the concepts presented here.
Okay, you need to know that that took us two and a half years to put together. It's a half hour long and you saw ten minutes of it.
And that all the people on that program were people like us who, their lives were literally turned around by the program attacking anxiety.
I want to read you just a couple of quotes that I think are really powerful. One is, whenever we're afraid, it's because we don't know enough.
If we understood, we would never be afraid. A friend of mine, I was in Manhattan a couple of weeks ago for this success magazine,
and boy, what a thrill all that was. I was like pinching myself that I was really there.
And someone was nice enough that I met there to send me this book called The Best of Success, and it's got all these fabulous quotes in it.
And I think there's just, there's a couple more I want to share with you.
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure,
than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.
Connie Solasi is one of our speakers, and that's one of her favorite sayings.
And then my very favorite one is about something, it's about a father bird pushing his baby birds out of the nest.
And he says, come to the edge. And they say, no, we're afraid. Come to the edge, he said.
And they came, and he pushed them, and they flew.
Sometimes it's a leap of faith that's all it takes. You have to believe in yourself when everyone else is sending you in 5,000 different directions,
and you're spinning your wheels, and there's nowhere else to look.
I want to thank you all for coming tonight. I hope you got something out of this.
And whatever you do, I want you to leave tonight knowing you're not alone.
And if someone tells you, you have to learn to live with this, or you need to be on medication for the rest of your life for anxiety, they're wrong.
And you need to go somewhere else for help. And this is probably the best place to start.
So thank you very much for your time. I hope you enjoyed this session. Have a great night. Thanks.
Applause