Before the year 2014, no one could have told me that I would begin suffering with anxiety or that I would eventually begin having anxiety attacks—one of which became a panic attack that sent me to the emergency room. But here’s the thing: not only would I have never believed this would happen to me…in all honesty, I had no idea how debilitating anxiety episodes could actually be. I had, of course, read about them and heard about them from others, but it never dawned on me that anxiety could affect anyone’s mental and physical well-being in such a noticeable way. Because even when I first began having early symptoms, such as nervousness in my chest, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, and chronic insomnia, I still never thought I was dealing with anxiety. Instead, I just thought my symptoms were a direct result of the way-too-busy writing and event traveling schedule I kept myself on pretty regularly. And yes, while doing way too much all the time was definitely causing my symptoms, it wasn’t until I began feeling many of those symptoms all at once during the middle of the day that I knew something was wrong. In today’s episode, I share my personal experience with anxiety and discuss just how real it actually is.