GA 578 | Navigating Panic Attacks and Burnout with Eric Recker

I remember very clearly having a conversation with my wife. Hey, look, if something happens to me in the next couple of years, it's going to be pretty tough for you. But if we can get through these next couple of years, then we'll have enough life insurance to cover everything, and then you'll be okay.

Today I am very excited to welcome Eric Recker to the show. Back to the show, as Eric's been on before, but it's been a little while since we connected. And, well, as you hear, Eric has got one powerful, fascinating story. So he's a.

See.

Well, he'll explain. He's a dentist by trade and also does a lot of coaching and sort of leadership mentorship. But today we spend, I don't know, the majority of the conversation really just talking about him and his personal story. And I'll just go out and say, Eric and I thanked him for this later on, but was extremely vulnerable, extremely open, and really just sort of poured out his heart on the podcast. And, man, I'm deeply appreciative for him doing that. But he talked a lot about his. What he would call his burnout journey. And so he had a lot of, you know, success in his life in many, many areas, but he was. He was burned out, and it was really impacting him. He was struggling with panic attacks and all other kinds of not ideal situations. And so we sort of just walk through that and he talks about his process of how he. He worked through that and even up to the present day and any of the. Any challenges that he might still be dealing with and what he's doing about that. So again, it's a powerful story, and I think that's one that we can all sort of just learn from. And because many times in our lives, many of us go through various seasons, Right. And sometimes things are going great, sometimes they're not so great. And it's important to hear from folks like Eric and how he's. How he's dealt with that. So show notes can be found over@gembapodcast.com this is episode 578. Again, gembapodcast.com and look for episode 578. Okay, enough for me. Let's get to the show. Eric, welcome back to the show. How's it going?

It's going really well, Ron. Thanks for having me back. I'm excited to be here.

Yeah, man. Where are you calling in from?

Pella, Iowa, southeast of Des Moines. So kind of the middle of the state.

The window capital of the world, right?

You got it, man. You nailed it.

Yeah. Pella windows.

Yes.

Fantastic. Well, I'm from Ohio. Original. I'm in Texas now, But I'm a Midwest boy by heart, man. That's my. That's where I grew up, man. So awesome.

I love it.

I don't know about the hawkeyes. You know, I'm more on the buckeyes, but, you know.

Oh, gosh. It's been frustrating. Yeah, it's been frustrating, but we have a new. We have a new basketball coach now, so it's all gonna be okay. Right?

Okay.

Yeah. There you go.

There we go. Well, hey, Eric, as you know, we like to begin all of our episodes with our guest sharing a quote. So what do you got?

Yeah, so I had to look it up just to make sure I have the wording just right. But, you know, it's an unlikely person for me to quote, but it's quoting Freud, and he said, one day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as most beautiful. And what I love about that quote is we all have things we go through, and if we just go through them and don't take anything from it, then we just had a struggle. But if we can look back on those times and realize, hey, I learned this, then that struggle can have a purpose, and we can see why going forward. So I like that one, because I've had some years of struggle, and now I can look back on it and say, oh, okay. That's why that happened.

Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. Awesome. All right, well, hey, Eric, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your. Your background and what you're up to these days and what you're most excited about.

Yeah, so I wear a lot of hats. I am a chairside dentist. I still see patients three days a week, and I have a burnout story. So several years ago, I almost sold my practice and walked away because of burnout. I wasn't paying attention to it. And like the frog that gets put into a kettle of water on the stove and the heat is turned up, I didn't realize how bad it was getting until it just about got bad enough that I wasn't going to be around anymore. And so I tried to sell my practice. I tried to walk away. And the person who was going to buy my practice was in a horrible car acc about two months before I was going to sell the practice. And so he survived, miraculously. But it was obvious that he was not ready to own a practice, so I had to step back and figure out what it was that I really wanted with life. And so now I want to help people. That's where my heart is. It's why I've enjoyed dentistry, getting to know my patients and help them and getting to know my team. But I want to take this story that I've been through and been able to emerge on the other side and help people meet them where they are on their burnout journey. So I still see patients three days a week, but then I also do some coaching and speaking on the other days. And my goal is just to help people learn to live, present, show up in the moment and live the best life that they can possibly live.

I mean, are you willing to kind of dig in a little bit about, about that burnout journey? Like. Like what? What was it like? How did it happen and how did you know and everything in between?

Yeah. 100. I'm an open book, Ron, so you can ask me anything. And I. So we can go way back to the recess playground in. I still live in the same town that I grew up in, but in the early 80s in Pella, Iowa, recess kickball was life. That's what we did at recess. I mean, it was a big deal. And all I wanted to do was get picked to play kickball because I knew if I got picked then I would be able to make the most amazing kick and people would believe in me. And I just had, you know, that image of kids carrying me around on their shoulders and the heavens were going to open up and it was all going to be okay. The problem was I was one of the youngest kids in my class. I was pretty soft around the edges. I wore the husky jeans and I was not picked. Not that I picked last. I was not picked. And I asked why I wasn't picked and I got repeatedly told that I wasn't good enough to play. And as an eight year old, when you hear that you're not good enough, there's a couple options. The option that I chose was to stand on the sidelines, choking back tears, and make a pact with myself that I was going to be so good at everything I ever did that no one would ever not pick me. That's the pact I made with myself. Then I stuffed that in my subconscious and didn't realize that that was the broken operating system that I was working on. But everything that I did in my life, nothing was good enough. High school wasn't good enough. I had to keep trying to prove to myself, to people. I got into college, dental school. When I was in dental school, being in the top 15 in my class wasn't good enough. I had to be in the top 10.

When you say not good enough, do you mean not good enough for you or by others or.

So I was still trying to prove those bullies wrong.

Yeah.

On the playground that. It moved on for me when we went back in inside after lunch, so. But I didn't realize that's what I was doing. I didn't realize that that's who I was trying to prove myself. So I felt like I had to prove myself to everyone. Hmm. So much imposter syndrome going on. Trying to be everything to everyone, combination of all those things. And then biting off as many things as I possibly could because I can't say no to anybody. I have to say all the yeses. I have to do all the things. I have to be everything to everyone. So I started running and I went through marathon and started triathlon, through Ironman and bike racing and riding my bike across the state of Iowa in a day. We did all of these crazy things. Still working on that broken operating system. There was a point in my burnout journey where I was buying the dental practice from my father. I was building a new office and equipping it. I was coaching both of my kids in soccer training for two Ironman triathlons. And I was on five boards. So again, the frog in boiling water, it wasn't like it went from nothing to that. It was just I'd add something and add something and add something. And I was staring down the barrel of almost $3 million worth of debt as well at that point, for the cost of the office, what we still owed on our home, all of that. I remember very clearly having a conversation with my wife. Hey, look, if something happens to me in the next couple of years, it's going to be pretty tough for you. But if we can get through these next couple of years, then we'll have enough life insurance to cover everything, and then you'll be okay. I just remember saying that. And it should have probably registered with me a little bit more. But I just kept going on. I kept grinding. I was facing chest pain, heart palpitations, tension headaches. Something would go wrong during the day and just instant splitting tension headache and panic attacks. And I was sleeping about four hours a night, sometimes five. And I wasn't showing up at home. I wasn't. I was doing my best to be switched on at work the entire day. And I just felt like this is what happened to business owners. Just thought, you know, Dennis is just what everybody goes through. But I never told anyone about my struggles. I just suffered in silence. And it kept getting worse and kept getting worse and eventually got to the point where I just needed to escape the panic attacks were having happening more often.

Can you tell me about that? Because I'm not like, what does that look like and feel like?

Yeah. So probably the worst one that I had. It was a Monday morning, and Monday mornings were ground zero for me. I just. I would get the Sunday scaries and then transition into Monday, and I was. I was a mess. So a little bit after 9 o' clock on a Monday morning, I was already 30 minutes behind because I'd squeezed somebody else in. I had five hygienists that I knew were going to need me to check their patients within the next hour. And I tried to click on something on the computer and I got that lovely message that said, the server's not responding. Yeah, great. Perfect time for this. Just ideal.

Yeah.

And so then within 30 seconds of that, I had three people in my treatment room saying, hey, the server's not working. I know, I know. Thank you. Yeah. So as soon as that, the tension headache had already started. I mean, my head was just pounding. I wanted to escape so bad. Our server was in the basement of our office, and in many small businesses, the owner is also the IT person. Usually what it took was just to power down the server and restart it. But that wasn't a super fast process because we have about 20 workstations in our office and it's a fairly robust server. So I went downstairs and I could just feel it. I could just feel the walls were closing in. I could feel like I had a thousand pounds on my shoulders and I was coming down. And one of my hygienists was awesome. She reminded me as I was walking down, hey, I'm gonna need a check pretty soon. Yeah, I know. So I went down there. Just kept feeling like the walls were closing in, closing in. I got into the server room, closed the door behind me, hit the restart, and I had no choice. I just went down on the floor.

Like fetal position down kind of thing, or.

Yeah, fetal position down, Yep. I just couldn't stand anymore. And I thought, oh, my gosh, I can't escape this. I wanted to just tell them, you know what, I'm done for the day, I'm going home. And I couldn't. I was the only dentist there. Five hygienists waiting for me. My patient was still waiting for me because I had to step out, step out of the way and just on the floor shaking, crying. And there was a song that popped into my head by a band called Switchfoot. And it's one of my, one of my favorite bands. And they have a song called dare you to move. And that song started playing in my head. One of the lyrics in it is, I dare you to pick yourself up off the floor. I had no choice. That's what I had to do. And one thing I would, I would tell people about panic attacks. If you haven't faced one, they drain you so quickly. So if you had 50% charge on your phone, a panic attack would take you down to about 5%. So I was already. I hadn't slept well the night before and it was Monday morning and it was all of the things, it was just a perfect storm. But I had to get up, I had to get back in the game and I didn't have. I didn't even have lunch until 1 o', clock, you know. Now if that would happen to me now, I would make sure that I got at least one of my morning patients canceled for the day just to give myself a little bit of time to breathe. But I didn't even see that as an option. I just had to power through it. And this was becoming a little bit more common. So I knew something needed to happen. And it was finally time to raise my hand and tell my wife, hey, there's a problem here. I had to tell my team that there was a problem. It was really hard, it was extremely emotional, but that was the only way that I knew to move forward. And so I think we have so many people who are fighting some kind of a burnout journey. Whether it's just constant overwhelm or it's gone way beyond that and nothing's going to change until we raise our hand and admit that we need help.

So are you comfortable sharing, like, what did you do, like, from there? Because it seems like you're better now, I guess, like, so what's this journey been like? Like, you called your wife or whatever it might be, but did you seek professional help? If you're willing to share. I'm not trying to pry or anything.

But no, it's not a priory at all. That night I came home and, and told my wife about it. And it was extremely hard on our marriage because she felt betrayed. She said, how long have you been dealing with this? A long time. And she was certainly there for me and very supportive of me. But she said this, this really hurts because you haven't been honest with me. And we signed on for this to be honest with each other about what's going on in our lives. This is never a battle you were meant to fight on your own. I'm here for you. I knew you had some problems, but I didn't know it was nearly this bad. So we worked on it together. I have a really good friend that I have lunch with on Tuesdays. We've been having lunch together for over 20 years. On Tuesdays. He comes to my office, and I raised my hand to him. I said, hey, Todd, here's what's going on. And we. And I was honest about it. And I also have a mentor in my life. We were fairly shortly into the mentor relationship at that point, but I poured out my soul to him. And so I had three people that were on board with helping me get through it. And that was so important because I was getting to the point where the question was, coming up, would the world be okay if I just wasn't here? That's a scary place to be. And anybody who's ever entertained that question, it's. It. The time is urgent. It's time to get some help.

So then what happened?

Yeah. So then, you know, for a period of time, it would get a little bit better, and then I would lapse again, and it would get a little better, and I'd kind of put a band aid on it, and there really weren't any solutions. And then we get to Covid. And Covid, you know, was a great reset for a lot of people. One thing that I did during COVID is I actually took some time to be quiet. And my office was closed for eight days to. Or, sorry, eight weeks to anything except for emergencies. So I'd see whatever emergencies I had to see in the morning, and then I would come home, and I would actually take some time to be quiet every day. My goal was 30 minutes of quiet every day, because I knew my head just constantly felt like it was going to explode. So I knew that I needed some quiet. I knew I needed to just step back and breathe a little bit. And I started to envision what a life might be like without dentistry. And it gave me a lot of hope. And so I just explored that. I started journaling more intentionally. I started writing a book. There were a bunch of things that I started doing. But then we came back, and dentistry was deemed one of the most dangerous professions related to Covid because we generate aerosols. And so we had to have basically hazmat suits on. And there were so confusing. There were a lot of a Lot of podcasts and webinars that I listened to that said, basically, we're going to have to redo the air filtration systems in our office and all of these things. And it was hard to know what to trust. And I just. Burnout came back with a vengeance the first week that I was back. And that's when I decided, you know what, I'm done with this. This is not worth it. I would rather live out the rest of my days not making a lot of money but finding contentment than what I'm having to do. There isn't an amount of money that's okay for what I'm going through. And that's when I talk to my associate about buying the practice from me. It's like, hey, here's where I'm at, this is honestly where I'm at, and I need to not own a dental practice anymore. And he said, yeah, I'm interested. Let's look at numbers and let's get that all figured out. And that's when we start. That's when we got to that point of where we were making the plans to try to get it sold. And short time before the broker was going to come and finalize everything, that's when he was in his car accident. And that's really after that happened. We did have three dentists in our practice. And instantly with that car accident, a three dock practice became a two dock practice. So here I am, fried, crispy. I mean, whatever the stage beyond burnout is, that's where I was. But I had to decide, okay, what do I want to do? Do I still want to sell? Is that the right thing to do? And the more I sat and thought about it, all I'm doing is running away from burnout. That's it. It's going to follow me into anything that I do. And that's when these thoughts of myself on the playground came back and I started realizing, oh man, I got to do something with this not good enough thing. I just have to do something with it. So I was able to find a partner to buy half of my practice. Okay, so he joined us. That was January of 21 when the car accident happened. December of 21, he joined the practice. And what was amazing about that is I was not alone at the top anymore. I had a 50, 50 partner. Everybody advised me, there's no way you can sell your practice to somebody that you've probably only spent, you know, maybe 20 hours with leading up to that. I said, look, if it doesn't work out I'm going to do the same thing. I was going to. We had a clause that if it doesn't work out, he's just going to buy the rest of it from me as well. But it's worked out really well. And one of the stipulations was that I would see patients three days a week.

Okay.

Right away I knew, I started to realize that selling and walking away would have been a colossal mistake. So part of the deal was that I would start seeing patients three days a week and then I would be able to help people on the other two days of the week outside of the practice. And that's look like coaching dentists, medical entrepreneurs, some other people who aren't, aren't in the medical field, and then speaking in front of groups about burnout, living life in the present, climbing mountains, all those things that I have been through and I don't want that journey to be wasted on me. I want to help as many people as I possibly can.

Wow, that's pretty powerful, man. I appreciate you being vulnerable and sharing like that. I'm curious, like when you, I don't say is it all better now or you know, like, you know what I'm like present day, like how are, how are things operating for you and are there still things you're, you're working on or if you're again willing to share that.

It's amazing. Ron unfixed. I haven't struggled with it a day since then. Not true, right? Not even close to true. And so I'm glad you brought that up because I think that is such an important point and I think some people have looked at me like, wow, you just got through it and that's it. No, recently I had the opportunity to be on four different stages within 10 days and that was awesome. That's what I've always dreamed about. But that's a pretty tight window to do four talks. And after I did the second one, I could really feel a lot of stuff building up in me, some of those old familiar feelings. So I had to pause and I had to say, okay, is there what, what's making this happen? What's behind this? And so I'm a big systems and habits guy. I think our life is basically a series of systems. And so I looked at everything and one of the things for me that was, that had just gotten off is I was used to walking to work. I have 2 mile walk to work. I live in a small town. It's amazing. But during that two miles on the way in, in the morning, at least 10 minutes of that time would be geared just to gratitude. So I just walk and I would be thankful for everything I could possibly think of. Thankful for a sidewalk that went out to my office. I was thankful for the moon. I was thankful that it was dark while I was walking or that it was light. Whatever it is, it was just gratitude, gratitude, gratitude. Well, I'm training for a big three day endurance event this summer, so I've been driving to work because I have more intentional workouts and I don't have the amount of time to walk to and from work every day. So I realized that I hadn't been practicing gratitude. So I stepped back and said, okay, how can I get gratitude back into this system? Okay, well, I'm driving. It only takes five minutes to drive, but I can make it take 10 minutes. And so I took a little bit longer. Way to work. And then on the way to work, it's the same gratitude. I'm just driving instead of walking. So I would say that now it's not as hard to get back out of it as it was because I have some better systems in place. I've gone to work in, did the hard things. I worked with a coach to figure out what does success look like for me, what do I want to accomplish with my life, what do I want my legacy to be, what do I want my impact to be? And much more importantly, how do I want to take care of myself in this season instead of just continuously punishing myself with more and more and more. So now I have those guardrails on, and my wife and I have a really great relationship and she can let me know. She's like, are you okay? You know, you're just a little short with some things or you're not. Did you process that through really well? How, how are you doing taking care of yourself? So she's willing to ask me some of those tough questions as well. So to get through it is amazing. But to get some systems in place to help, you know, when you're backsliding. I will probably backslide. I'm for almost 48 right now. I will probably backslide a couple times a year for however long. But now I feel confident that I won't slide back into the point where I'm having the panic attacks.

Right, right. Something that I know that I've. I've talked to you about it before, but I want to ask you here on the podcast, there's a phrase that, that you're sort of known for when the. Now what's that all about.

Yeah, big problem. Big part of how I failed in a lot of places. And I. I've forgiven myself for it, but I was not in the present moment. I just wasn't. I. I might be here with you right now, but my mind would be on what's next or what happened before. And so I missed out on the biggest gift that we get, and that's the present moment in front of us. One of the. One of the big victories that came out of my quiet time during COVID was this concept of when the now. I'm a naturally negative person. That's my bend. A lot of people who know me say, yeah, I don't really believe that, but it's true. In our world, you can find negativity so easily. You can stub your toe on negativity on carpet. I mean, it just is. It's everywhere. What when the now says is that the moment in front of us is the most important. That's where we need to be. So how can we show up in that present moment? It involves a couple things, like asking myself, why am I picking up my phone? Because phones are presence stealers. We let them do it. So just asking myself, why am I picking this up? Especially if I'm in a group of people, am I picking it up just to do my normal mindless phone routine where I look at, I don't know, espn, a couple social media sites, check my email, check the news, all that stuff? Why am I picking it up? And am I willing to step out of the present moment to be able to do that? And in that present moment, what do wins look like? Because I love to win. I'm guessing you would prefer to win rather than lose, right, Ron? For sure. I mean, that's. I guess most people who are on here would prefer wins to losses. So I'm always looking for wins in the present moment. So I'm less likely to come home at the end of the day now. And my wife says, how was your day? It used to be, I think she would say that, and then she would duck for cover because, oh, this happened, or this terrible thing happened. And I'd go negative right away with win. The now. I'm constantly looking for wins. I'm looking for wins with my patients, with interactions with my team members, wins on social media, wins in the meetings that I'm in, wins in the podcast that I do. You know, what do wins look like in this current moment for us? Great conversation. Both of us are here and dialed in. We're delivering value to the listeners, maybe we're giving somebody hope who didn't have a lot of hope when they tuned into this. That's the kind of stuff we're doing. And then after this, I get to go spend some time out in the sun with my wife. I have to work on some things, but we'll be sitting outside and it'll be great soaking up some vitamin D. And so when you start to switch your mind to looking for wins, it's amazing what it can do. Now I still get losses. We all get losses. But instead of letting those losses be an anchor, I ask one question of the losses. What can I learn from this? That's it. Something doesn't go the way I want it to. Happens every day.

Yeah.

What can I learn from it? And if we learn something, then a loss becomes a win. And then we go right back to trying to find more wins.

Oh, good stuff. So maybe to wrap things up, Eric, I wonder if you could share. I don't know if there's anything going on right now that, that you're that are excited about or it's got your. Your mind racing or. Or something like that.

Yeah. So I've been focusing a lot on chaos lately.

Okay.

And one of the things that I've been trying to do is help leaders reduce the chaos in their life. We all have things that spin around in our heads, and with all the distractions that we have, we've become less efficient in how we use time. It's amazing how distracted we can be. And all that adds up to chaos. All of that takes us out of the present moment. So the first thing that I'm doing when I'm working with people on this is identifying what is the chaos in your life. What are all the things when they're just spinning around in your mind? It could be, is it 10, is it a thousand? What is it? But actually quantifying what are those things and then figuring out what can we do about it once we get clear on that and the chaos starts to subside a little bit, then we can really go to work. And so I'm really excited about the possibility of being able to help people reduce chaos in their lives.

Nice, nice. And just helping people helps you, I assume. Right.

You know, there's this cool thing about encouragement. I've looked at the science behind it, and when we encourage someone else, I think of it as video game power ups. So if you're playing a video game and maybe you grab a piece of food and it gives you a power up. So If I give someone else a compliment or some encouragement, something like, hey, Ron, thank you so much for having me on your show. You have a great show. It's cool to be in front of your listeners and all of that kind of stuff. So if I give you that, if you get a benefit of 10 out of that, I get a benefit of seven?

Yeah.

So you benefit from receiving the encouragement, I benefit from giving it. And guess what might happen? You might say something to encourage me back. I get a level 10, you get a level 7. So we could have chosen to do nothing with that moment. Instead, we encouraged each other and we lifted both of us up.

Yeah.

So one of the. One of the easiest possible things we can do is encourage someone every day. So you can go up to somebody or send a text. I did this for a month. I just started at the beginning of my contacts. And anybody who wouldn't have been completely random to get a message from me, let's say you were at the top of my list. Hey, Ron, I remember when we did that podcast a year ago. That was so fun. I hope you're doing well. Anything that's on your mind lately, you know, I just send. I'd send one of those out every day, about 90% of them. I got something back. It's amazing how many people said, boy, you have no idea how much I needed that.

Wow, that's beautiful.

Yeah.

Ah, so good, man. Well, I do appreciate you, and I mean that sincerely. I really appreciate you coming on and opening up your heart and being vulnerable and sharing like that, because that's not easy. And I. I really do appreciate you, man, for that. So if folks want to connect with you, Eric, what is the. What's the best way?

Yeah, my email is eric wrecker.com. so that's. That's an easy way to get a hold of me. My website, Eric wrecker.com Again, easy. And then I'm on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. And I would just encourage people to. If you're somewhere on that spectrum, maybe you're just feeling constantly overwhelmed, maybe you're getting a little bit farther. Maybe you're experiencing some of those signs and symptoms that I was talking about earlier, and you're wondering if maybe it's time to quit ignoring those. All it takes is raising your hand. I know it's a huge amount of courage to be able to do that, but I assure you, there is hope on the other side, whether it's me, whether it's a mental health professional, whether it's a trusted friend. Please don't let it go any longer. Yeah.

Beautiful. Awesome. I appreciate you, Eric. We'll do it again down the road. I know it. So until then, be well.

I love it. Thanks, Ron.

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