If you’re afraid of public speaking, rest assured, you’re not alone.
It is estimated that up to 75% of the population shares the condition officially known as glossophobia.
And the anxiety associated with public speaking would only be exacerbated for those who have suffered panic attacks throughout their lives.
So making a living as an on-camera journalist doesn’t seem like the most prudent career path.
But that’s exactly what ABC News chief national correspondent Matt Gutman, who is currently on the ground covering the war zone between Israel and Hamas, has been doing his entire adult life, as he details in his just-released book, No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and. You’ve conquered a lifetime of panic attacks.
Earlier this month, the 45-year-old journalist, who has worked for ABC News since 2008, told “Inside Edition” that he had suffered hundreds of panic attacks on air over the years.
Often I hemmed and hawed, choked and physically couldn’t remember how to swallow. I call it the courageous coward paradox, he explained. How is it possible for someone to go past war zones, swim with sharks and yet be afraid to stand in front of a camera and say what they’re supposed to say, he said. he explains.
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TV career hit rock bottom with ‘horrible’ on-air mistake
Although he suffered in silence for decades, Gutman traces the precise moment he decided he could no longer handle it to the lowest point of his professional life: while reporting on the he January 2020 helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, Bryant’s 13-year-old daughter Gianna. , and seven others on board.
While suffering a panic attack during his live shot, he misrepresented the facts that Bryant’s four daughters were on board the plane when it crashed.
The circumstances of the story brought out Gutman’s pain that he had long suppressed.
As he told Chicago ABC-7 affiliate “Eyewitness News” while promoting the book, this one was a little different. There were other things going on in my brain at the time. It turns out that Kobe was almost the same age as my father when he died in a plane crash. And I was the same age as Gianna,” he said. “I’ve been so good throughout my career at compartmentalizing and keeping painful things away. And I guess I failed and made a horrible mistake live on television. And I regret it. And I ended up getting suspended for a month.”
A real assessment with panic disorder
Once he admitted the truth to himself, Gutman took stock of where he was in life.
Over the nearly two decades I worked for ABC News, I cultivated the image of a reporter who emerges from the rubble of a disaster with a story and casually brushes away the dust, he writes. This jovial and fearless public figure obscured a secret, more than 20-year battle with panic disorder. The irony is that when I am thrust into the chaos and peril of the real world, I soar. While I’m expected to play in the calm of a live shot, I crash. A television journalist whose greatest fear is reporting live is like a lonely, free climber who is afraid of heights. So I obsessively hid my Achilles heel from my friends and colleagues.
It is estimated that 85 million Americans, or more than 28% of the nation’s population, will suffer from a panic attack in their lifetime.
So Gutman’s first step was to look for panic attack support groups, but he discovered they didn’t really exist.
And that’s when he started putting his reporting skills to good use, doing a lot of research on the topic and talking with experts.
It took me years to recognize that what I had long dismissed as simple nerves were actually symptoms of panic disorder, he writes. It was only in recent years that I began to seriously address the problem with a new psychiatrist, although I remained oblivious to the full extent of the shadow that panic cast over me. We’ve tried everything from antidepressants to ADHD medications to benzos like Xanax to anti-seizure medications. I practiced mindfulness and meditation regularly. I ate well and exercised.
However, Gutman found that the more he tried traditional medical approaches that yielded less than fully satisfactory results, the more curious he became about alternative methods.
So he resorted to less conventional treatment protocols, some of which included ketamine-assisted therapy, holotropic breathwork, reiki, and supervised ingestion of psychedelics and toad venom.
He explains his reasoning for seeking alternative treatments by writing that, since modern science and conventional therapy seemed incapable of healing, I turned to the more unconventional treatments. I became a human laboratory experiment.
In writing about his search for healing, Gutman emphasizes that his journey was neither planned in advance nor conducted scientifically. My path was not direct and it certainly was not repeatable.
But what he really hopes his fellow panic attack sufferers take away from his book is that panic isn’t easy to overcome or even manage. This can sometimes seem like a medieval punishment. But it doesn’t have to be a life sentence.
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