John Assaraf describes a claustrophobic panic attack during an MRI and how he used breathing and counting to calm himself. He breaks down the technique for managing fear and anxiety that block your goals, and invites you to learn these methods in his virtual training.
Hey, this is John Assraf, CEO of NeuroGym, and I want to share a story that happened to me just a few days ago. I went into the hospital here in San Diego, and I went in specifically to do an MRI on my shoulder, which I injured several months ago when I was skiing. Now, the reason I want to share this with you is because the MRI in itself is known as a magnetic resonance imaging machine, which for the most part is a really phenomenal tool to be able to look deep into your muscles and tissues, etc. But in order to do an MRI, you've got to get into this little tube, basically, that feels like you're in a coffin. And one of my fears, and I don't know where I got this fear, but one of my fears for my whole life has been to be buried alive at. And I think it may have come from western movies that I saw or mobster movies that I saw as a kid where they would put somebody in a coffin and bury them alive, and the individual would suffocate and be in an enormous amount of pain. And even though nothing like that has ever happened to me, I've always had that in my imagination, in my memory banks. And this particular time, just a few days ago, when I was ready to go into the mri, and for some reason, I started to breathe really shallowly, and then I started to breathe a little bit more heavily, and I noticed that my heartbeat started to beat faster, believe it or not, I started to have. I think it was the beginning of anxiety, but definitely on the verge of a panic attack. And the reason I'm sharing that with you is because when fear sets in, whether you're consciously aware of it, whether it's fear of failure, fear of success, fear of disappointing yourself or somebody else, whenever a fear signal is generated in the brain by the amygdala, that activates by going into the memory center of our brains. What usually happens is all of the body's vital signals start to augment as if an alarm bell is being sounded. And as I was being put in this MRI machine, I could feel that I was getting claustrophobic, as on the right side of me, there was about an inch. On the left side, about an inch. And between my face and the top of the MRI machine, there were about six inches. And I started to feel like I wanted to get out of that machine. But because of my meditative training, because of some of the brain training that I've done and that we teach around recognizing when fears are in your way and show up in the form of emotions or thoughts or feelings. What I did was first recognize that number one, it was crazy to think that I would be buried alive and feel that anxiety or beginning of a panic attack. So I moved to a higher functioning part of my left prefrontal cortex to observe the emotions and feelings and thoughts that my brain was having and my body was experiencing. And that is a skill that I've learned that you can learn as well. But that was phase number one. Phase number two is once I recognized what was going on within me because of my surroundings and because I was imagining the worst case scenario of being buried alive, even though it was ridiculous that I wasn't going to be buried alive, I closed my eyes and I started with the number 100. And I started to take some deep breaths, and I started to count backwards from 100 to 99 to 98 to 97 to 96, taking deep breaths in and then exhaling. And even though my mind wanted to wander off to remember that I was in this enclosed MRI machine and that I might be buried alive, and I started to feel the sensations, you know, coming and going, by the time I got down to the number 80, the emotions were calm, my brain had reset, my breathing was normal, and I had mastered the emotion of fear in that moment. Now, why am I sharing this with you? I'm sharing this with you because emotions are either pleasant or unpleasant, they're severely strong or mild. And when you learn to recognize what emotions are driving you away from your goals and what emotions are driving you towards your goals, you can start to learn how to manage and master your emotions so that regardless of what traumas may have happened to you in the past, regardless of what beliefs you have that may not be helpful helping you achieve your goals and dreams, regardless of the real or potential danger that may be in front of you when you take a step towards achieving the biggest, grandest, most amazing version of your life, you can recognize whether the emotion is going to move you towards your goal and dreams, or move you away from your goals and dreams. And breathing is one way of four or five amazing ways to reset the panic, the anxiety, the doubts, and the fear signals in the brain that causes most people to shy away or procrastinate or move away from achieving their goals and dreams. Most people have feelings and emotions, and that's what controls their behavior. Instead of going to your higher cortical functions of your mind, recognizing that feelings and emotions are nothing more than responses to either something that's happening outside of you or Something that's happening within you that may be reasonable and real, or maybe something from your imagination. Like for me, the imagination of being buried alive by seeing mobster movies when I was a kid, or by seeing TV that depicted this caused me to go into this mild panic state. You too can learn how to let go of the beliefs that aren't serving you right now, that are holding you back from achieving your goals and dreams. You can learn how to recognize any of the traumas you've had in the past that are keeping you stuck in your present. You can learn how to let go of whatever is not serving you, and learn how to utilize the highest functioning parts of your brain, specifically what we call the left prefrontal cortex, the genius side of you that can learn how to direct you towards achieving your goals and dreams. And if you like these little tidbits of information on mastering your emotions, letting go of your traumas, letting go of your past, and really forging forwards towards your goals and dreams, I invite you to attend one of our training sessions, our virtual training sessions, where myself and several world renowned experts will help you recognize what's holding you back, learn how to refrain them, learn how to release them, so that you can be the master of your own destiny and achieve your goals and dreams. I hope you've enjoyed this again. This is John Asshraft, New York Times best selling author, and I hope to see you on one of our virtual training sessions in the near future so we can help you change your brain, so you can change your results and your life.
Millions of individuals around the world are grappling with various mental & emotional health issues
