Contending with Panic (Matt Gutman)
b"\\u201cI think a lot of us embody this, what I call the paradox of the courageous coward, right? Like, we're capable of doing these things that are bonkers. Like they take a tremendous amount of courage or maybe experience, you could call it, but we'll call it courage, speaking in front of a panel, going live on television, you know, with me, swimming with sharks, going into the eyes of hurricanes, going to war many times, marooning myself in weird places. And yet we have this other side that is so fragile, so gossamer thin and on our level to tolerate anxiety that, you know, it can break and then snap at any moment.\\u201d\\nSo says Matt Gutman, ABC Chief National Correspondent and the author of No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks. Matt is a new friend, and I\\u2019ve loved getting to know him and his deeply feeling heart, as well as the way he so perfectly captures this idea of being a \\u201ccourageous coward.\\u201d He\\u2019s not afraid to step into a war zone, and yet he\\u2019s felt incapacitated by anxiety\\u2014taken out at the knees by panic\\u2014which makes him the perfect encapsulation of the binary of modern masculinity. Quite simply, the world is too much for any of us to confidently swashbuckle our way through. I commend Matt for saying it. He wrote this book because he suffered a panic attack on air during a heightened moment of news\\u2014one of those moments where all of our eyes were turned toward our TVs\\u2014and he ended up being put on a temporary leave. It was in that moment that he recognized he needed help and healing, as this panic attack\\u2014though public\\u2014was not a solitary event. It was happening to him all the time. In No Time to Panic he explains how hard he went to work at healing, at uncovering what was at the heart of his anxiety, which is at the center of our conversation today.\\n\\nMORE FROM MATT GUTMAN:\\nNo Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks\\nMatt Gutman\\u2019s Stories at ABC\\nFollow Matt on Instagram\\n \\nTo learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy\\n \\n Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices"