Caroline Cavanagh is three days from jumping out of a plane at 15,000 feet. Her anxiety shifted from dread to excitement once she told people about it and got a friend to jump with her. She argues that anxiety thrives in silence, unlike other health problems, and sharing it cuts the burden in half.
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Hi, my name's Caroline Cavanagh, and this is video 4 in a series of video clips monitoring my progress in dealing with an anxiety that I had. And it is now 3 days until I really face that anxiety right in the face by jumping out of an aeroplane at 15,000 feet. And what I really wanted to say today is The last clip that I did, which was a couple of weeks ago, any— even a thought, um, seeing some people jumping out of a plane at the airfield that I'm doing it at made my whole tummy flip over and do a churn. But I'm now 3 days away, and actually I'm feeling really quite chilled about it. And so I've been asking myself, what's, what's the difference? I know I've done lots of steps in the alchemy process, and obviously they're making a big contribution to me feeling calm. But then something happened, uh, last Last Saturday I was having supper with a very good friend of mine who is also— used to be an ex-parra, so he has done loads of parachute jumps, and he is now going to jump with me. And having that person who I know, trust, care for actually doing it with me— he'll hopefully be on the same plane jumping just after me has made a massive, massive difference to my confidence levels. And so there's real learning, I think, to take from that. Anxiety can be a very lonely thing to suffer from, which I don't quite understand why. If someone's got diabetes, if someone's got, I don't know, most illnesses, they'll talk about it. It's something to say, you know, I can't tolerate gluten, and you'll tell someone in a restaurant about that. It's kind of acceptable. But people don't feel that they can talk about anxiety, so they don't share their problems. And now, one of the first things in the Anxiety Alchemy Process is having a goal and then actually committing it to— committing to it by making yourself accountable. And I did that weeks and weeks ago in the first clip, um, in my book where I, at the end, said, okay, I'm gonna prove this works by doing this parachute jump, and then procrastinated for a bit. But that's all history. Those are in the other clips if you want to catch up on the story. But here we are now, and having made myself very accountable and spoken to loads and loads of people about it, this last few days, this last week has been phenomenal. I've had people calling me up before going on holiday saying, really wishing you luck, Caroline, really, you know, proud of what you're doing, it's great, can't wait to see the end result. And that has just really, really lifted me. So I guess my message today, my message from this clip is share it. When you share your anxiety, when you share what you're going through, you get the most phenomenal support, um, and that sharing, really, that old adage, um, is it a problem shared is halved? I'm not quite sure what it is exactly, but it's something along those lines, is so flipping true. By sharing my anxiety, by sharing my journey through this, I have got so much support. It's been absolutely phenomenal, and I'm really grateful to all those people— you know who you are— for doing that for me. And so in terms of the Alchemy Process itself now, we really got as far as step 3 in the 5 of them. And step 3 is very much all about the ingredients of mixing the chemistry in your body. It's about things like physiology. It's about the language that you use. It's about the emotions that you're feeling. Now, for me, this step is not as relevant because they're the sort of things that I've been living and doing for the last 6 or 7 years since I got my qualifications in hypnotherapy. And that's one of the things, again, that's really important about understanding the Alchemy Process. It's not a sausage machine. It's not going through every step. It's using the steps that you need to and making it really personal to you. So my personal journey through the process is I can almost jump straight over step 3 And all the parts within that because I already know them. I don't need them. I don't need to change my language because my language is already supporting me. And so step 3 is, is a quick one for me, and it's really not worth going over in this video. So we're at a stage now where 3 days away, I'm actually quite excited about Saturday morning. I'm going to be turning up at the airfield at 10 o'clock. Fingers crossed. It's quite— you can probably see it's quite windy today. Pretty hopeful it won't be on Saturday because I really want to do it now. The biggest risk being I get there and they don't allow us to jump because of the weather, and I think that would throw me. So I'm going to do a bit of thinking and, and some work about covering that eventuality should it happen. But my main focus, I'm going to believe it's going to happen. I am imagining turning up, being excited, Getting in that aeroplane, being hurled out strapped to someone, so I've got no control over that, and most importantly enjoying that freefall bit. I think I'm going to get it videoed. I'm going to make that investment so that I've got a permanent record so I can really celebrate that success knowing that having faced my fear I'm going to feel amazing when I land on the ground. So I'm planning to do some videos on that Saturday morning, probably before and certainly afterwards, so do check out those, do, do look for those. I'm also raising some money for a local charity by doing this jump because I'd like other people to benefit from it as well. So if you fancy adding a little bit to the coffers on that, if you search for Caroline Cavanagh number 1 on the JustGiving site, you'll see my page there, who I'm raising the money for, and what it's all about. So time to check out now, but the message really from this is share. Don't keep your anxiety to yourself because when you share it becomes so much easier, and that is a real wonderful learning for me that I'm really grateful for over the last few days. So I will look forward to talking to you again on Saturday morning, hoping the tummy at that point won't be churning too much, but we shall see. But I'm pretty confident now that the anxiety that I will feel is the right kind of anxiety. It's the one that's going to get me ready To push myself out my comfort zone, knowing that when I do that, I'm going to be a stronger, better person for it, knowing that I faced my fear and won it. And on that note, bye-bye, and I will be speaking to you again really soon. Take care now. Bye.
