When Your Body Dials 911, Listen To The Alarm
Jason Miller had always driven himself very hard—the first in his family to go to college, an excellent student, a senior executive at a global company—until he ended up in the ER at the age of 40, convinced he was having a heart attack.
Jason grew up in Sandusky, Ohio, surrounded by men who were living with potent yet hidden anxiety. He still remembers coming home from school one day to find that his dad had been laid off from his job at General Motors. At first eight-year-old Jason was excited about having his dad at home more often. “But that wasn’t what really happened,” he said, “because he was working too hard to find a way to make money.” Jason’s dad eventually started his own business, but the family continued to struggle. “It got to a point,” he said, “where we were literally not sure when there would be food on the table next.”
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Jason vowed to go to college and find a career that ensured feeding his family would never be a concern. But as he advanced in the corporate world, old self-doubts resurfaced. He responded by working even harder—and getting more stressed out. He even changed roles in hopes that the stress of working in a “24/7, always on” global environment would dissipate, but it didn’t. He was losing sleep and constantly stressed, but still Jason tried to ignore his discomfort and power through. “I just thought, ‘I'm tense. So what?’” Jason said. “It's just the way it is, because I grew up in an environment where people are stressed all the time.”
One day, he said, he found himself suddenly short of breath, dizzy, and with tingling in his left arm. Knowing these were all symptoms of a heart attack, Jason and his wife and five-year-old son rushed to the hospital. After a full work-up, a neurosurgeon came to visit him. The tingling in his arm was due to a stress-induced back condition and a pinched nerve, and there were no signs he’d suffered a heart attack. Then the neurosurgeon told Jason that if he didn’t get his stress under control, he was going to die young.
That was the first time that Jason realized that one could literally die from uncontrolled stress and anxiety. He’d wound up in the ER, fearing for his life as his wife and son looked on, because in effect his body had dialed 911. The night Jason Miller realized his stress and anxiety had reached life-threatening levels, he made a list of all the things that were worrying him. “SO MANY worries.” The list quickly filled the page, vividly demonstrating why he’d landed in a hospital bed.
Dr. Russell Kennedy calls this “alarm in the body” - an inner alarm system in our body that’s telling us we MUST tune in.
That’s why, when an interaction or a situation triggers an anxious response at work, try to examine why. Get help. Tune in. Kennedy writes, “If you have anxiety, you really need to address this alarm. [Working with patients] I'll find this alarm in their body. And then we'll put our hand over it and try to connect with that alarm. Because a lot of what anxiety is is this state of alarm that got stored in our body…We pushed it down into the unconscious, and then it showed up in our bodies. And when we start worrying, it takes our attention away from the pain, the trauma that we've stored in our bodies. So we get into these exaggerated worries. Anxiety makes us afraid of our body because that's where the trauma is stored. So of course we're going to stay in our heads.”
Jason acted on the information his anxiety yielded by taking a three-month leave of absence, during which he got into therapy, began working with an executive coach, learned mindfulness meditation, and began yoga and physical therapy. He spent more time in nature, and prioritized time with his family. “I literally said to myself, ‘If I have the power to do this to myself, I have the power to do anything I want,’" he told me.
At the end of his leave, Jason went back to work, though it felt “scary as hell” to return to a high-pressure, high-stress environment. “I wasn't stress-free,” he said. “Stress never goes away, but now I had all these tools and capabilities to manage it more effectively, and I stayed with it.” He also brought back a stronger, more authentic self, a toolset built upon yoga and mindfulness, and a new venture into executive coaching and leadership development. Beneath all that stress and worry and the acting out of old patterns was a true self waiting to emerge, one that led Jason to a sustainable lifestyle and a more fulfilling career. “My limiting story I was telling myself was keeping me from giving my gifts,” Jason said. “And that was a big part of the racket I had going on…. My true nature was being suppressed into this identity I felt like I had to manage and keep up.”
Anxiety is one of our most valuable messengers. It alerts us to danger, and danger comes in many forms. Sometimes, anxiety signals us that we’re headed down the wrong path, or about to make an unwise decision. Sometimes, anxiety is the byproduct of not living your truth. Are you living out someone else’s dreams and expectations? Are you hustling in order to prove to yourself or your family that you’re worthy? Sooner or later, anxiety will let you know that. And when anxiety is chronically ignored, the signal will become louder, more insistent, as it did for Jason. Is your body trying to tell you something? Have a wonderful holiday and I will see you in the New Year.
Morra
My gift to you! As a gift to you please download for free one of my favorite chapters from The Anxious Achiever, my award-winning book. I’ve chosen Chapter 4: The Past is Always Present, because I believe the process of understanding how your childhood informs your present is the most important and foundational work you can do as a leader.