To know me is to know yourself. Let me tell you my story

In 1972, the 4 year old me was sitting at school eating my fish paste on Ryvita cracker lunch…

I was a quiet kid; shy and sensitive. I didn't sleep well… if I could sleep at all. I would often lie awake feeling scared... sometimes terrified... of nothing. 

Sitting at the little table in the dining room, I turn and knocked my little orange thermos flask of tomato soup off the table, hearing the “SSCCCHHH” of broken glass in soup as I pick it up from the floor.

Opening my flask I see glass and soup... then I had my first panic attack and activated the development of 22 years of health anxiety, OCD, panic disorder, eating disorders, agoraphobia, emetophobia and more.

 Life went from BAD to Worse

The 26-year-old me is filling his car with gas at a station in Mannheim Germany.

Leaving work at the US army base to head home, filled with anxiety and agoraphobia, my heart is racing as I lean against my car gasping for breath.

Moments later I’m aware that my back feels cold and I hear a distant voice ‘hey mister, are you OK’.

I open my eyes and see bright blue sky and the outline of a woman as I realize I’m on the floor next to my car.

The ambulance takes me to Heidelberg Krankenhause where doctors assure me that I had hyperventilated during a panic attack.

Returning home I had one intention; to pack up my life and head back to England and what I thought would settle my nerves.

I had spent five years working 7 days a week through anxiety, OCD, panic and worsening physical symptoms; medication had failed. Therapy had failed. In fact, everything I had tried just made it all worse… and it was intolerable.

I have lost faith in anything ever working and I just want to go to sleep and never wake up, but I’m too scared to live and certainly too scared to die. I realise that I’m in a terrifying, painful limbo.

I could never have imagined looking and feeling well ever again

Three years after returning to the UK from Germany, I’ve finished university, got my Bachelors Degree, an I am working… sometimes. I’m existing… but I’m not living.

Things are no better. I’m tanked up on antidepressants, sedatives, even anti-psychotics. I don’t move much at all. I am 70Lbs over my ideal weight. I can hardly breathe most days and nights are a constant process of the lonely pursuit of sleep… that often never comes.

I look a mess. My hair is long. I have lost my sense of self.

I have no self-respect and no energy to do a single thing about it.

My relationship is in tatters. I feel nothing but fear - I can’t even feel positive - I can’t feel love.

There’s no intimacy. I can no longer feel aroused or perform sexually.

I feel detached and desperate, alone and defeated.

I am exhausted. Mentally and physically ‘finished’ and no one I enlist to help me provides anything more than the invoices that have led me to, literal, bankruptcy.

Everything I owned and worked for is gone as a result of paying for false hope from counsellors, psychologists and psychiatrists.

I know I am ME but my depersonalization makes me feel detached.

It’s 1996, I’m stood looking at myself in the mirror.

The detachment is intense and terrifying.

Panic, anxiety, phobia, obsessive, intrusive thoughts, health anxiety and eating disorder has me in a vice-like grip.

I know who I am, but don’t recognise myself.

Beth has left for work so I go downstairs.

Reaching for my cup of tea as I get myself comfortable for another day in front of the TV, managing my thoughts, watching my symptoms, truly believing that I might pass away at any moment.

I answer my ringing phone.

“Charles, it’s mum… listen, I’ve arranged for you to go to a volunteer centre tomorrow. You might as well be there as at home vegetating in front of the TV”… she’s made a good point!

My anxiety kicks in immediately and I’m straight into self-defense mode.

“Mum, I can’t go” I hear myself say.

Mum’s arguing with me. Trying to reason with my fear so I agree to go… just to placate her but I know in my heart that tomorrow morning, I’ll have my excuse and it just won’t happen.

The phone is ringing.

It’s 8am.

“Charles, get out of bed, I’ll be there in five. Be ready and for god’s sake have a shave.”

20 minutes later I’m in mum’s car and she’s reassuring me that she will wait outside and read her book if it makes me feel better. 

My heart feels like it’s bursting out of my chest.

I’m trying to do my CBT exercises but they’re irrelevant, nonsensical and making it worse.

I try to say my mantras, but my throat’s closing up, my chest is tight,, my face is bright red and I’m in the throws of extreme anxiety.

Splashing my face with cold water, I start to calm down as my mum comes in to calm me. The ladies in the volunteer centre are concerned.

Six hours later and I am home.

I’m cooking dinner.

I forgot to take my medication at 6pm. Beth is on her way home from work.

Suddenly I’m aware of a void.

I am suddenly aware that my intrusive thoughts have stopped, that I haven’t had a panic attack since that morning and that I’m in the kitchen having showered, cut my own hair, bathed the dog, tidied the house and changed my life.

I’m aware that my anxiety is at a very low level.

A day later and I am done.

My anxiety, phobias, OCD, eating disorder, health anxiety have gone.

For the first time in 22 years I wake with a sense of emptiness… anxiety is gone and the hole it has left is OPPORTUNITY… for me and for the, over 30 million people, I will go on to help. 

Suddenly and forever I am me again.

I’m the 26 year old version of the me I was meant to be before I activated my anxiety conditions all those years ago. 

More importantly, I know how I achieved it and know that I want to do the same for others.

I want to coach people like me who have been abandoned and let down by false science, by money-making treatments, by medication, by ignorance and profiteering.

I want to prevent every anxious child from suffering and I want to equip them and every other sufferer, regardless of age, to not only, recover, but to live their authentic life.

I activated my true self and in recovering from disorder, I returned to order – I repurposed all of my internal physical and mental resources and I suddenly realised my true calling and my true potential.

I felt reborn and revitalized. 

I’m losing weight with no effort.

I’m getting fit with no effort.

I have stopped all of my medications with no ill effect.

I am living instead of existing.

I suddenly know who I am and how to use it.

Now I’m 52 and happier than I could have ever believed I could be

I have 1000’s of statements from clients confirming that my guidance and coaching has changed and even saved, their lives.

How could anyone feel unfulfilled or unsatisfied with their life when it’s so filled with love and gratitude for their efforts?

My story is YOUR story… I am just the 52 year old, bald, anxiety disorder free version of you… and I can show you how to become the TRUE YOU too.