It’s such an honor to be asked to tell my story and I am so pleased to be able to share it with you all.
I really can’t overstate the positive impact that DARE has had on me and my life. I went from being someone who traveled the world alone with my baby daughter to someone who had to take medication just to be able to take her to school which was five minutes away. DARE is probably the main reason that I am now back living a relatively normal life after almost three years of agoraphobia and debilitating generalized anxiety disorder, both of which totally ruled my life.
I’ve always been an anxious person but I’ve never really had panic attacks (aside from one occasion when I had a throat infection when I was about 16 years old and was alone and felt as if I couldn’t breathe properly). My real panic triggers have always centered about my health and feeling sick and unsafe and as if I was suddenly going to die. In late 2019, just before the pandemic hit, my mother was taken into hospital seriously ill, and it soon became apparent that it was unlikely that she would survive long-term. Our lives were ruled by hospital visits, medical appointments, consultant appointments, caring for my mother, and all the time I was also raising my daughter alone and working full-time running my own business.
There was just absolutely no let-up for me and, looking back, I think about the quote which says, ‘if you don’t choose when to take a break, your body will choose for you and it might not be a convenient time’, and that was absolutely what happened to me. My mother died in the September of 2020 and, about a month after her death, I had a panic attack driving my car on the motorway, a car which had been signed over to me by my father when my mother was sick, and I had no idea what was happening to me. I was always the driver, even on foreign holidays, one of those annoying people who passed their driving test for the first time and just absolutely loved it.
Suddenly, I was shaking, feeling as if I was going to be sick and like I couldn’t feel my legs properly, and felt as if I wasn’t safe to drive the car, so I eventually pulled over, having slammed the brakes on in busy Friday evening traffic. It was only about an hour after it happened when I’d eventually calmed down and managed to drive home with my former partner on a different route, which I considered to be safe, that I realized that what happened was a panic attack. The situation really just escalated from there and I went from someone who had never had a panic attack to having them basically every day.
My daughter was also hospitalized via ambulance with Covid in 2021 and I really feel as if that actually caused some level of damage to my body and brain, particularly considering everything I had been through with my mother. My daughter recovered after a few days on oxygen but my trouble began when she was discharged and we had to go back to ‘normal. I didn’t know what that was anymore, I had to have friends or family come over and stay as I didn’t feel safe to be alone with my daughter and our cat. The intrusive thoughts were so awful, I thought I was going to be sectioned.
Over time, I ended up being diagnosed with an overactive thyroid which was increasing my anxiety levels, but I also had a diagnosis of thyroiditis, blepharitis, labyrinthitis, which caused severe dizziness which damaged my inner ear canal. My body was screaming for help and I had no choice but to listen. I went from someone who lived a full, busy and very frenetic life to somebody who was absolutely not coping when I had to leave the house and felt always as if I would be fine as soon as I could get home.
Soon, however, I got to the point where I wasn’t OK at home either, with nocturnal panic attacks which were so bad that I thought I had sleep apnoea, panic attacks during the day which were so awful that I was going to A&E, calling the Samaritans for support and advice, I was having increased therapy, I was taking various medications to try to help but none of these things were working.
I was absolutely desperate to be put out of my misery and I genuinely didn’t want to live my life anymore because it didn’t resemble the life that I’d known before, and it had become so small that it didn’t even feel like it was worth living. I was never suicidal but I felt really sad for myself and my daughter that we were destined to live this tiny, stressful life. I just wanted the old me back and I didn’t know how to get it.
I started researching and looking for alternative approaches to panic disorders and somewhere on a Facebook group somebody had recommended the DARE Solution book and said that it had really helped them with panic attacks. I had been having CBT to help with my driving anxiety, but that had actually increased my panic attacks and made the situation worse, and I’ve been seeing the same psychotherapist for the past decade but I see her rarely these days, more of just a check-in after years of hard work together, so it wasn’t frequent or specialized enough to be able to give me the help that I needed.
I bought the DARE book and started to read it and I also bought the audiobook and it all started to click into place quite quickly. I downloaded the app, I joined the Facebook group; I was a proper poster girl for the DARE solution. I even did a private coaching session with Michelle which really helped. I remember walking around town and listening to Barry reading the chapters of the audiobook over and over and over again because it was so reassuring that what was happening to me was totally normal and I wasn’t unusual and I wasn’t going mad. Whenever I felt the panic rising, it went. I honestly think I must have heard Barry talking about a ‘paper tiger’ 200 times and I could not get enough of listening to it because every time I listened to those chapters it reminded me, ‘OK, this is normal, you are normal, what you are going through will come to an end and you can get your life back, you’re not losing your mind and you’re not going to die’.
I could not believe that so many other people felt the same way that I did, and that so many people felt it that they had written a book about it and even made an app about it; the comfort I got from knowing that I wasn’t crazy was like nothing else that I can describe. It did more for me than any of my therapy, than any of my CBT, than any of the medications that I had tried to help me. I just couldn’t believe it. It was so reassuring.
I had got to a point where I was absolutely ruled by my health anxiety, by my dizziness which I mentioned earlier (which I’ve now had a medical diagnosis for, having been told for three years that it was anxiety related). In fact, I realized by using the DARE solution that the way I needed to approach it was completely different to what I had been doing before. I knew that I felt dizzy a lot. I knew that I had a sensation that I was going to pass out. But I also knew that I had never actually passed out, and I knew that my dizziness had never got any worse.
And I remember discussing it with Michelle and reading through the chapters in the book and thinking, ‘OK, so I’m dizzy. I’m dizzy a lot. It never gets worse. I’ve never passed out. I’ve never died. I’m not having a stroke. It’s not a brain tumor’. All of these things that were popping up into my head over and over and over again, I started to learn how to defuse them and to allow the feeling to persist in me until it passed. Telling myself ‘OK, this is uncomfortable. OK. It’s not very nice. Am I dying? No. Is it dangerous? No. Is it unpleasant? Yes. But can I cope with it? Yes’.
In late 2022, I had to cancel a much-awaited trip to Italy with my daughter because I didn’t feel as if I would be able to get on the plane with her; I was convinced I was going to have a panic attack, I was going to get arrested on the plane, all of the usual intrusive thoughts which I’d read about in the book and which I knew were normal, they were all right there, and it was the first time in my life I’d never canceled a trip. I reread the book. I listened to the chapters again. I went back on the app, I read the success stories and I really engaged with it and something kind of clicked in place for me. It has given me so much relief since I found it in 2021, but something in the past year just clicked and I said to myself ‘right, I can do this’.
I had read about so many other people on the DARE group flying and driving after long periods of struggle and I knew and hoped that that could be me again. I knew that it would likely be uncomfortable. I knew that I could shake off my anxiety if I needed to. I knew that I could manage, even if I were uncomfortable because I’d been doing it every day in my normal life. I knew there was no reason that I couldn’t apply what I’d learned in my normal life to traveling, which was the one thing that I really missed.
In 2023, having felt as if I had really turned a corner in terms of my recovery, I went to Italy with my daughter at Easter, I then took her to Greece in June. I went back to Italy on my own in August, and in October I went to Paris with a friend to see Madonna. Now, this is a woman who could not even do the school run without taking a beta blocker or a benzodiazepine. I was not functioning as a normal human being prior to this.
I committed to use what I had learned from DARE and really engage with the hard work that I had to do to know that, even if I didn’t feel safe, I was safe. I’ve always been my only safe person really. I don’t have a partner and I am raising my daughter alone. I’ve always had to rely on myself which meant that, having felt like I was not safe in my own body in my own home was just absolutely the worst case scenario for me. I am so grateful that I have turned a corner, I feel really sad when I think about what would have happened if I hadn’t discovered DARE, because it made such an enormous difference to my life.
Now, the reason that I was asked to share my story was because I shared on the Facebook group that, for the first time in over three years, I had driven outside of my safe zone. Having had this panic attack on the motorway about three years earlier, I had gone back to driving again very slowly, but I only ever drove in town centers where it was maximum 30 miles an hour and where I felt safe. I had this notion that, if I were on the motorway and if I needed to pull over, then I wouldn’t be able to. What if I got dizzy; I wouldn’t be safe. Obviously I do have dizziness symptoms and I don’t drive when I’m feeling dizzy, but I do drive the rest of the time, even if not often. I was really limited in terms of what I could do.
However, I had been feeling so much better in late spring of 2023, I’d recovered from my agoraphobia and I felt as if my anxiety levels were low enough to give it a go. I took my daughter to Italy and I hired a car, having not bothered on other recent visits because I felt I would never be able to manage driving there. Bear in mind I’ve been driving in Italy for years, it’s on the other side of the road and they’re quite bonkers drivers, but it’s something that I’ve been used to for a long time. There’s a castle near where we stay when we do go to Southern Italy, which is where I used to live and where some of my closest friends are, and I’d driven my daughter there to this castle every summer for the previous five years. I then had that panic attack in the UK and suddenly I couldn’t take her there anymore. She had been so desperate to go back to this gorgeous spot in Puglia, the heel of the boot of Italy, and it’s called Castle Del Monte. It’s absolutely beautiful and my daughter and I missed it.
On this holiday at Easter, I hired a car and I told myself, ‘right, I’m going to try’. I didn’t tell anyone I was going to do it apart from my friends I was staying with. I didn’t do a big build up to it. I just told myself, ‘right, if you feel up to it, then go’. It’s not on a motorway, but it is an A road, so there’s nowhere to pull over if you need to and far higher speeds than in city centers. I felt like giving it a try and I got in the car and I did it. I didn’t enjoy it at first but I did it and I was so proud of myself I couldn’t believe it. I knew that if my anxiety symptoms cropped up, I knew what I had to do to be able to diffuse them and just allow them to come and then dissipate. Interestingly, though I was nervous, they never really came. It was a really massive step for me and I was incredibly proud of myself for having done it.
The one remaining step was driving on the motorway and that still eluded me, causing me so much frustration. I had come to feel as if I was safe generally speaking, I knew I could do other drives I previously wouldn’t have managed, but the idea of the motorway still made me feel absolutely sick. It was my final hurdle; the last bastion of my breakdown and anxiety disorder that still niggled away at me. In December 2023, my daughter was offered a place to go horse riding and it happened to be off the same motorway exit where I had the panic attack three years earlier.
My immediate thought was, ‘oh God, I’m not going to be able to drive her there. I won’t be able to let her do it. She’s going to miss this opportunity. It’s another example of our small life’. A catastrophe! For the first couple of weeks, my father was able to drive us there and that was helpful but even driving past that stretch of the motorway made me feel extremely nervous. On the third week, I decided to try to drive us back because we had done the drive a few times, I was familiar with the route, it was on the other side of the motorway to where I’d had the panic attack and I knew it was only one short bit of road before the exit to get back into the city center where I live. I did that short drive and, again, I didn’t enjoy it, but I did it.
There was one moment where I had to change lanes because it splits in two and that’s where minor anxiety popped up with the old ‘you can’t pull over here, you’re not safe’ mantra that my poor stressed brain had been spouting at me. I felt like I’d taken a step in the right direction, but it still wasn’t getting us all the way there. So, the following week I asked my father to come with me, in case I felt like I couldn’t do it and he would take over driving. This was just for practical reasons, really; I actually felt safer doing it on my own, rather than being observed by somebody or feeling like I had to rely on somebody. In any case, he came with me in the car and we drove out of the city and we got to the roundabout that leads onto the motorway. I drove around that roundabout once and I said to my father, ‘I can’t do it’. I drove around that roundabout twice and I said to my father again, ‘I can’t do it’.
The third time around, my father gave me a gentle nudge, just saying ‘go on, do it’, and off I went on to the motorway, even driving back past the stretch of the road where I had had the panic attack all those years before. It isn’t an easy drive as you have to do a U-turn under the motorway in order to get to the stables where my daughters riding classes are but I did it and I pulled in at the stables and then I pulled back out in busy traffic. I got back round to the roundabout to go back into the city and I said to my father, ‘Ok, I’m going to do it again’. I felt ok doing it the first time but I was really nervous; however, by the time I had finished the drive, I was feeling more confident. I know myself well and I knew I had to do it alone with my daughter the following day so off I went and I did the whole drive again and the second time was even better. I didn’t love it but I also didn’t hate it and that’s alright!
The next morning I got up, I got my daughter in the car and I drove her on my own on the motorway to go to her horse riding sessions! She was so happy and so proud of me and I was so happy and so proud of myself, I just really couldn’t envisage driving in that way again and I probably only drove at about 55 mph but that’s just fine; it will come. Driving was never really a priority for me because I live in a city center and we can survive without it. Flying and other travel was something that I tackled first because I felt that they were essential to live a normal life, whereas I could go without driving quite happily and it didn’t really make any difference to us. It meant there were events and invitations that I had to turn down, to see friends in country houses and airfields and parties in the summer that I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go to because I knew that I wouldn’t be able to drive there. I had convinced myself that that was how life was now. So, the fact that three years down the line I’ve got to the point where I can get in the car and I can drive on the motorway is absolutely unbelievable.
I genuinely don’t know whether I ever would have got back this level of normal life if it hadn’t been for DARE. I have relied on it so closely and I’ve used the techniques and I’ve followed the webinars, the whole shebang. It’s just written in a way that really works for my brain, it really appeals to me, it’s so reassuring, non-judgemental, and not patronizing at all. I went from being someone who was gripped by this fight or flight cycle all the time, so much so that I ended up developing all of these physical illnesses because my body just could not cope with that level of stress, the relentless attempts to stay on top of everything, to look after everybody, not to rest because I didn’t have the time. My body just couldn’t cope anymore. And now? I feel OK, and that’s just fine. I don’t have to feel wonderful all the time. I don’t have to want to conquer the world. I just wanted to feel normal again and I wanted to feel like my old self. I think I did too much before this happened and then I got to the point of not being able to do basically anything at all; now, I’m in a really nice spot in between the two.
I don’t have to take my baby alone to Hawaii from London to prove that I can do anything as a single mother, although it was a lot of fun, it was really hard work! I also don’t have to sit on my sofa worrying about whether or not I need to call an ambulance or that, if I die, no one will find me and I won’t be there to collect my daughter from school. I’m just so, so relieved and so grateful to have my life back. I really don’t think that that would have happened in this way if it hadn’t been for Barry and the rest of you at DARE. I tell people about the book and the app all the time because I know what an enormous difference it’s made to my life.
Thanks so much for everything you do. I know how much work you put into it, how much you care and how much you’ve all drawn from personal experience and I think that’s why it’s so effective. I think that what you’ve created is something really, really special and I’m just one of so many people who have got their life back because of it.
❤️ Natasha K.