"It takes one to understand one"

My Name is Swan Richesin.  My practice, Anxiety Management, specializes in the treatment of all the Anxiety Disorders and Depression.

I suffered from Anxiety from the time I was a child until well into adulthood.  If you asked most of my friends if they knew about my Anxiety, they would say no.  I was too humiliated to talk to anyone about it because I did not know how to describe what was happening to me.  Sometimes I could talk to people without any problems, and other times I would find myself talking and not have a clue about what I was saying.  I would get lost right in the middle of a sentence.  I would forget people's names.  Some people thought I was a snob, because when I was leaving a place, I often did not say goodbye to anyone.  They did not know I was leaving because I had to get out of there and that was the only thing on my mind.

My first recollection of Anxiety was when I was five years old.  I had to go into a classroom without my older sisters, and I was so shy I crawled under a table.  The following class my teacher coaxed me out by bribing me with a candy bar.  I remember dreading being called on in class because sometimes my mind went blank.  I would say the answer over and over in my head until someone was selected.  When it was me, I would pray that I would remember the question and my answer.  Sometimes I would not, so I would make a joke.

As I grew older, there were more and more situations which made me feel uncomfortable.  I would force myself to participate, but the time I spent worrying ahead of time about "what if this" and "what if that" would last for days.  I started calling these times the "Dreaded Awfuls."  At times they were so bad that I would feel physically sick.  My heart would race so fast that I thought it was going to jump out of my chest.  It never did, but that is not the point.  I thought it might.

Giving speeches or book reports were worth at least three days of the "Dreaded Awfuls."  I would rehearse, write things out on cards to read, color code paragraphs (in case I lost my place).  In short, I would obsess about my mind going blank until I had myself in a full blown panic attack.

To find an explanation for this mysterious thing that was wrong with me, I read every book I could get my hands on.  I taught myself to breathe, I took Tai Chi classes to get my body centered.  I read and memorized book after book on building self confidence, and finally, after years of suffering in silence, I learned how to take control of my life.  I gave the mystery a name, which is Social Phobia, and I decided to help others.

My last panic attack was in 1987.  If I had known all those years ago what I know now, my life would have been different.  I would have lived my life expecting the best, instead of dreading the worst.

Member of Anxiety Disorder Association of America