Summary: No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks by Matt Gutman

Key Takeaways

• Join Matt Gutman on his courageous quest to conquer a lifetime of panic attacks in “No Time to Panic.”
• Embark on a journey of self-discovery and healing by delving into the powerful narrative of “No Time to Panic.”

No Time to Panic (2023) is a personal exploration of the causes and treatments of panic attacks. It’s grounded in the latest science and informed by interviews with leading specialists in the field.

Introduction: An unfiltered take on panic

For over 20 years, ABC News correspondent Matt Gutman secretly battled crippling panic attacks while reporting from some of the world’s most perilous places. Though known publicly for his fearless coverage on shows like Good Morning America, Gutman’s composure crumbled during mundane live shots, triggering debilitating anxiety.

His condition exploded into public view in January 2020 when an on-air panic attack led Gutman to botch details while covering Kobe Bryant’s tragic helicopter crash. The incident resulted in a suspension, intense shame, and regret over falsely depicting the crash scene.

This watershed moment forced Gutman to finally confront his anxiety head-on after hiding it for decades. He embarked on a personal journey to understand the science behind panic and find effective treatment. Gutman consulted the world’s top experts, trying everything from therapy and medication to experimental psychedelics.

Though a singular cure for panic disorders remains elusive, this summary of Gutman’s story offers wisdom and hope to fellow anxiety sufferers while illuminating a path forward.

Panic 101

When Matt Gutman was just 12 years old, his father – then 42 – died suddenly in a plane crash. This early trauma had a profound impact on Matt, and spurred him on to a career in journalism.

As a journalist, Matt had a reputation for being fearless. Some friends even speculated his risk-taking bordered on a flirtation with an early exit, mirroring his father’s death. Matt reported from some of the world’s most dangerous conflict zones: Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza. But while he seemed cool under pressure, in private, he was battling debilitating panic attacks.

In December 2019, he had his own forty-second birthday and began to grapple with the strange reality of outliving his dad. Weeks later, from another crash site, Matt suffered a panic attack, which caused him to misreport the details of the tragic accident that killed basketball player Kobe Bryant and eight others – including Bryant’s daughter, Gianna.

In the wake of this error, Matt was suspended. With time on his hands, he decided he needed to get to grips with the panic disorder that had, for so long, limited his life. He began with trying to understand the basics. Here’s what he found.

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a panic attack involves an abrupt and intense surge of fear that reaches its peak within minutes. While fear helps us react to immediate threats, anxiety involves perceived future dangers and often triggers panic attacks. About 5 percent of Americans experience panic disorder, defined as repeated unexpected panic episodes and chronic anxiety about having attacks. As for Americans who’ve reported suffering at least one attack, the numbers are less clear – but estimates go all the way up to 85 million people.

So, what exactly happens during a panic attack? The amygdala, an almond-shaped structure in the brain, acts as an innate danger detector. It senses threats before the thinking frontal cortex has time to react rationally. In panic, the amygdala hijacks the brain’s emotional system. It triggers the hypothalamus to activate the body’s fight, flight, or freeze response by flooding it with adrenaline and stress hormones. This acute stress reaction primes the body to respond to perceived danger.

Physical panic symptoms match those needed for fleeing, battling, or freezing in the face of real bodily threats. But in a panic attack, the amygdala misfires in response to everyday stresses or anxieties – unnecessarily putting the emergency system on high alert. Panic attacks fool sufferers into thinking they are dying since the physical sensations simulate mortal peril. This is why attacks feel so viscerally real despite no actual mortal threat.

Anxiety has ancient roots

As a journalist, Matt was trained to ask questions – and to keep asking them until he got answers that were more substantive than the typical soundbites. After his suspension, he knew he only had one choice: understand his panic attacks or find a new profession. So, he went to the experts and started asking questions.

Countless physicians and scientists tried reassuring him that panic is just a brain trick, not an innate flaw. While comforting, this explanation rang hollow. Aren’t we an evolved species? Why does this so-called brain trick afflict us? Why do we panic at all?

Matt’s research eventually led him to neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky, who gave him the lowdown on anxiety’s evolutionary origins.

Key stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol emerged about 500 million years ago in early vertebrates. Though dinosaurs developed complex brains, they lacked higher cognition for chronic worrying. A dinosaur’s reptilian brain could initiate fight or flight responses to acute threats like a nearby predator. But it could not generate persistent, future-oriented anxiety.

Around 20-25 million years ago, apes evolved the ability to experience fear sooner through stress hormones like glucocorticoids. This enabled them to recognize threats in advance and take preemptive action. By mobilizing a stress response before an acute danger transpired, apes could flee safely instead of waiting to be chased. They avoided risks like falls or trampling that often accompany frantic, last-minute escapes.

This capacity for “planning through anxiety” provided apes an evolutionary edge. Expending some energy on worrying allowed them to conserve far more energy overall and boost survival odds compared to reacting in the moment. Apes could now get anxious about a distant lion and leave the area preemptively, rather than having to run for their lives later on.

Apes also developed the first abstract fears – they no longer needed an immediate threat like a chase to trigger anxiety. This biological insurance policy of generalized anxiety paid off evolutionarily. Our early human ancestors took fear and worry to new heights with an enhanced ability to think beyond the present. While worrying feels individually taxing, its emergence offered our species a net advantage. Then, around 20,000 years ago, humans mastered abstract thinking, which really took our experience of anxiety to a new level.

Now, conceptual threats like social judgment can trigger our acute stress response just like predators did for early primates. While primates’ anxiety helped them survive real danger, humans extend that response to hypothetical threats. Our unparalleled ability to worry enables anxiety to sometimes outgrow its usefulness, causing excessive stress. Though anxiety can still serve an adaptive purpose, our advanced cognition allows it to hijack our lives when abstract threats are given as much weight as tangible ones.

Panic attacks are still stigmatized

By December of 2020, Matt had gone back to work, but he felt the familiar twinges of a panic attack stirring nearly every time he had to go on-air. He was flying back from filing a report on the COVID-19 vaccine rollout when he was overwhelmed by the urge to share the details of his panic disorder with the woman sitting next to him.

As he spoke to her, Matt recalled wondering if she’d judge him. To his surprise, she shared that her own daughter suffered a similar disorder. Matt felt relieved to realize he wasn’t alone. Back home, he began searching for support groups. But while there are all kinds of formal support systems in place for other mental disorders and addictions, like AA and NA, he found no formal support networks for panic disorders.

Why?

Matt asked psychologist Mitch Prinstein, who confirmed his suspicion – panic support was glaringly scarce. Prinstein suggested the lack of groups stems from the invisible nature of conditions like panic and anxiety. Additionally, early psychoanalytic theory promoted shame by linking symptoms to unconscious desires or childhood trauma. This seeded secrecy and stigma into mental health care’s origins.

Though acceptance of anxiety disorders has risen, Prinstein noted that panic remains particularly obscured and misunderstood. Its attacks are often misconstrued as heart attacks or dismissed as mere nerves. With even many sufferers oblivious to their own condition, few have rallied for panic support spaces.

The result is a vicious cycle where panic’s lack of visibility perpetuates the silence and shame surrounding it. In turn, this inhibits the collective advocacy needed to promote awareness and resources. While other mental health conditions have benefitted from destigmatization efforts, panic is still relegated to the shadows due to its elusive, often undiagnosed nature.

Eventually, though, Matt did find an online support group. He was struck by the profound way panic had impaired the lives of other members. While his career-based panic stemmed from social rejection fears, others shared fears tied to physical peril, like driving or flying. These people’s primal fears of injury and death made intuitive evolutionary sense – but the constant threat of attacks often dictated their every decision and activity.

For the first time, Matt found some perspective: despite his recurring panic attacks, he still had a relatively functional life. What’s more, by sharing his fears with others, he felt the stigma he experienced around his own panic starting to dissipate.

There’s no surefire remedy for anxiety

After months of research and interviewing some of the world’s foremost experts on panic and anxiety, Matt Gutman had a pretty good handle on how panic affected his brain and body. That didn’t mean he wanted to live with his panic attacks forever. He soon learned there was a smorgasbord of “cures” for his condition – though none of them were wholly reliable.

Matt first looked into cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT. Specialist Dr. Michael Telch recommended a two-pronged “sledgehammer” treatment for panic disorder. The first prong entails training patients to recognize panic as a mental distortion, not reality. Triggers like flying or crowds are harmless despite feeling dangerous. This knowledge defuses panic’s power over sufferers. The second prong involves gradual exposure to fears like driving or public speaking to systematically desensitize patients. CBT directly confronts anxiety sources through practical techniques rather than analyzing the past psychodynamically.

Dr. Telch conveyed panic as a conditioned response that can be unlearned rather than an innate flaw. But while Matt admired CBTs pragmatism, he felt that it didn’t address his panic at its core.

Intrigued by a friend’s life-changing experiences, he then researched the emerging evidence pointing toward psychedelics’ ability to relieve anxiety and depression. With growing openness toward psychedelic therapy, psychiatrist Ellen Vora assured Matt it was now a reasonable treatment option – not a radical idea. She said psychedelics were bringing mental health care up to speed on current science after being constrained by outdated stigma for decades.

To Matt, psychedelics’ potential for profound transformation aligned with his goal to fundamentally recalibrate, not just temporarily mute, his panic response. He threw himself into psychedelic healing, enlisting a guide to dose him with mushrooms, attending an ayahuasca retreat, and experimenting with ketamine, among other treatments.

None of these provided a magic-bullet solution. But Matt found that using psychedelics enabled him to open “portals to pain” without the usual fear when he was totally sober, too. He surrendered to grief when it surfaced instead of suppressing it, and experienced a cathartic emotional release through intensive crying.

Though intensive crying seemed concerning to Matt at first, Dr. Vora advocated “rebranding” it as healthy digestion of unmetabolized emotions rather than a pathological act. Happiness shouldn’t be the supreme goal, she said. Instead, fully experiencing the human continuum – including grief – results in true balance.

To combat panic, keep it simple

After years of suffering panic attacks, and a dedicated quest to truly understand panic and anxiety, Matt emerged with six key takeaways.

First, understand that panic attacks are fleeting – the acute danger assessment phase only lasts 15 seconds to a minute. Remind yourself that you can survive the terror, and that your anxiety afterward is manageable. Panic is never as debilitating as it feels.

Second, don’t hesitate to seek help from mental health organizations or a therapist if needed. The cost of letting panic fester is too great.

Third, open up to someone you trust. The relief of sharing a burden often exceeds any cure. If that’s not an option, try free clergy counseling.

Fourth, use slow breathing to counter the blood chemistry that panic draws on to intensify. Practice long inhales and exhales. Try breathwork anytime you need in-the-moment relief.

Fifth, reframe crying as free therapy. This one especially goes out to all the men who’ve been conditioned not to show their emotions! Crying is a natural way to purge anxiety and grief. The more intense the cry, the greater the chemical relief.

Sixth, exercise to release endorphins. These chemicals bind to the same brain receptors as morphine, and deliver a healthy high. Any activity, even 10 minutes of walking, is a win. Don’t let perfectionism deter you.

And that’s it. Controlling your panic really just involves understanding its temporary nature, getting help, disclosing your struggle, calming your breathing, allowing yourself to cry, and moving your body. Remember, small steps can bring big change.

Conclusion

Even though panic disorders aren’t well understood, they are extremely common. What’s more, they can be managed through support groups, therapy, and alternative treatments. It’s time the stigma around panic and anxiety was lifted.

About the Author

Matt Gutman

Genres

Psychology, Health, Nutrition, Mindfulness, Happiness, Personal Development, Inspirational, Wellness

Review

“No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks” by Matt Gutman is a deeply personal and insightful memoir that chronicles the author’s struggle with panic attacks and his journey towards understanding and managing them. Matt Gutman, ABC News’s chief national correspondent, shares his experiences with panic attacks that began in secret and spanned over twenty years. These episodes were intense and debilitating, often leaving him with constricted vision, a damp body, and frayed nerves.

The book opens with a pivotal moment in January 2020, when Gutman experienced an on-air panic attack while reporting live, leading to a misstatement of facts and a subsequent month-long suspension. This public incident and the accompanying shame and regret prompted Gutman to seek help and explore the science and treatment of panic attacks.

Gutman’s narrative is a blend of personal anecdotes and scientific exploration. He consults with leading scholars on panic and anxiety, who help him realize that his mind isn’t broken but rather that society’s perception of panic needs recalibration. The memoir also details Gutman’s encounters with various treatments, from cognitive behavioral therapy to more unconventional methods like ayahuasca and psilocybin. Additionally, he reflects on the trauma from his childhood and his career as a conflict reporter, offering readers a comprehensive look at the factors contributing to his anxiety.

Matt Gutman’s “No Time to Panic” is a brave and revealing account that offers hope and practical advice to those suffering from panic attacks. The book is not only an inspirational journey of a panic sufferer confronting his inner turmoil but also serves as a roadmap towards achieving peace of mind. Gutman’s candid storytelling and exploration of both traditional and alternative therapies provide valuable insights for anyone looking to understand and overcome anxiety.