John Assaraf (speaker) recounts a visceral panic episode during a root canal triggered after a dental injection of epinephrine. He describes immediate coping tactics—spot-focusing and counted breathing (counting to about 20)—that reduced his panic within roughly 20–30 seconds. He explains the physiology (amygdala activation, epinephrine/cortisol release) and provides a four-step method for managing anxiety: recognize the feeling, reframe its meaning, release the negative emotion (decide to let it go), and retrain the brain to adopt a calmer meaning for future similar events.
Questions this video answers
A shot of epinephrine.
About five to seven seconds.
He counted to about 20.
Within about 20 seconds (and by ~30 seconds he was calm and laying back).
Chapters
Now, today's topic is around anxiety, fear and panic. And I want to share with you a personal experience that I just had that really helped me understand something that I've never felt before, that I understood psychologically and from a knowledge base of reading about it, but not from a visceral experience. And here's what happened. I was at the dentist getting a root canal, which wasn't any fun. But after the dentist gave me a couple of shots to numb my lower left jaw, he went away to allow the numbing effect to take place. When he came back, he gave me another shot, another needle, and all of a sudden, I just stood up in my chair, put my left hand to the left of me to hold the nurse back, my right hand to the right where the dentist was, and for about five, six, seven seconds, I felt like the whole world was crushing in on me. And so what I did at that moment is knowing that something was happening in my brain. The amygdala was sensing this fear, this panic. I picked a spot on the window, I saw a little dot on the window, and I focused all of my attention on that little spot on the window. And I started to do some breathing exercises. I just started to count 1, 2, 3, and I counted to about 20. And within 20 seconds, the panic and the fear subsided. I laid back down, and we proceeded through the procedure of a root canal. Now, why do I share this with you? Well, whenever we are out of our comfort zone, our brain will release, whether it's epinephrine or cortisol or stress hormones, otherwise known as the body's response to something internal that we're thinking about that may cause us real harm or imaginary in this particular case. When I asked the dentist afterwards, what did you do? What did you give me that made me feel that way? He said, well, I gave you a shot of epinephrine, which is a stress hormone. And why I had that reaction to epinephrine, I'm not sure about. But from years of training retraining my brain to recognize any time that my body is in a state of anxiety or I'm in a state of negative thinking and negative emotions, or in this particular case, sheer panic and fear not knowing what was going on, I went right away to what my training has been is to override the fear circuit in the brain, the amygdala releasing the epinephrine in your own body, the cortisol, the adrenaline that is there to help us in some cases, but in many cases, the doubts, the fears, the anxieties, that we have is being caused at an unconscious level. And a simple, easy to learn and do exercise is first recognize when something is not right within your body. That's called a feeling. Feeling is the word that we develop for conscious awareness of a vibration. Feeling means conscious awareness of vibration. So when your vibration is fearful or anxiety ridden, you can either think about what you're feeling and perpetuate more of that and feel what you think and think what you feel, which creates a self fulfilling fear loop or panic loop or anxiety loop. Or you get really smart and you recognize, oh, I don't like this feeling. I'm petrified, I'm doubtful, I have anxiety. So you recognize, number one, you reframe what's going on, okay, by going to a higher level of thinking. So when I was in the panic modality, I went to a higher level of thinking and saying, okay, something you just gave me caused this. It's obviously safe because I'm in the dentist chair. Let's go to my training, focus on something else. Take my mind away from what the feeling was right now. Use my breathing as a way to override the feeling circuits and focus and concentrate on what I wanted, which was calmness, reduced stress, reduce anxiety, and I want to get rid of the panic. And 30 seconds later, I was laying back in his chair. And then I released that emotion. How? I made a decision. I made a decision that I was going to release it. Then after the event, I asked him to explain to me what he gave me. He told me it was epinephrine and that was one of the reactions that epinephrine caused in the body. And then I retrained my brain around the experience so that I wouldn't have a fear or anxiety to go back to the dentist, or in this case, the endodontist, who's a root canal specialist. And the reason I'm sharing this video with you is because this morning I was back in the chair and I was totally calm down, totally at ease, totally not worried about what caused enormous panic and fear for me in an instant. So the lesson for you, recognize your feelings and your emotions. Reframe what the meaning is by going to a higher level of thinking. Release whatever the negative emotion is and then retrain your brain to give it a meaning that will serve you in the future. If you have any doubts, fears, anxieties, panic, go to breathing, go to focusing. Learn the simple art of not being your body, not being your emotions, rise above those. And when you do that, you start to master your mindset. And you will master your life.
