Judson Brewer’s Journey: From Panic Attacks in Med School to Mindful Mastery and Buddhist Psychology

I remember being very stressed out before I started medical school, and I won't go through all of that, but I was so stressed that I didn't even have good communication with my body. And my body was trying to communicate with me in various ways, including irritable bowel syndrome, saying, hey, you're pretty anxious. And it took me a long time to realize, realized I had no idea how my own mind worked. And fortunately, through meditation and learning some Buddhist psychology, through my MD, PhD, started learning how my mind worked. And that actually sent me down a path into psychiatry. Never thought I'd be a psychiatrist. And then also being reminded that anxiety is very important in my life. Started getting panic attacks during residency. Talk about uncertainty paired with sleep deprivation paired with stress. It's a good recipe for panic. And you know, long story short, remember consciously really being blown away by how my patients were talking the same language as the Buddhist psychologists and said, wow, I really need to dedicate my career to studying this stuff. So, you know, personal, I'm. I'm now have at least 10,000 hours of, of expertise in being stressed out. So, so that, that was a helpful background. But also have a fair amount of experience, you know, like now starting to explore how all of these things fit together, including, which I had never learned in medical school or residency, that anxiety can actually be formed like, and perpetuated like a habit.