iHeart palpitations

In June, 2019, iHeartRadio star Cindy Stumpo heard one of my presentations and invited me to join her on-air.

It turns out that Cindy, like me, has run a highly successful business for years and suffers from extreme anxiety. She was very interested to learn about my methods for dealing with anxiety without drugs.

Cindy’s anxiety is often so bad that she has to pull over to the side of the road while driving, and sometimes has to be driven. It was painful–and familiar–to hear about her struggles.

One of the sayings I shared with Cindy and her listeners was, “the longer, the longer.” The longer you’ve suffered from anxiety, the longer it will take to learn a new way of dealing with it. Habits are very hard to change, and anxiety response happens so fast, and so deep inside us, that it can be very challenging to catch bad patterns of thinking so you can change them.

Radio is a funny medium. It’s just you and the host in the studio, maybe a producer or three, but a small crowd. And yet you know that on the other end of that microphone wire, there are thousands–maybe even millions–of people listening to every word. ‘What if I mess up?’ ‘What if my throat closes and I can’t talk?’ ‘What are they thinking about me?’ These kinds of thoughts come fast and furious.

iHeartRadio has a huge listenership, which only made matters worse. Cindy’s manager, Tricia Bradley, was incredibly gracious, and very reassuring. Or rather, she tried to be. I was already too far gone for that kind of help.

I went into the room feeling angry at myself for being so worked up. It took a couple minutes to catch myself. When I did, I pulled out my phone and worked through the sayings I use to re-center myself and work through the anxiety. I ‘acted as if’ I had it together. In about five minutes, I pivoted from anxiety to excitement. I had an opportunity to share something profound with lots of people, and maybe even bring hope to someone who needed it.

We had a great conversation, and when it was over, Cindy and Tricia asked me to come back! I was thrilled, first that I’d managed to work through my anxiety, and secondly that the show had gone well!