Lucinda Bassett

Founder and CEO of the Midwest Center for Stress and Anxiety. Lucinda Bassett suffered from acute anxiety and disorder since adolescence. Shortly after meeting her husband in 1981, she became a full-blown agoraphobic. Following her own healing process, Lucinda developed the internationally acclaimed attacking anxiety program, designed to help individuals overcome their fears and regain control of their life. This combination of techniques and skills are used today by hundreds of licensed professionals and health care facilitators around the world. Lucinda has made her attacking anxiety techniques available in her book, “From Panic to Power”

RAS:
Lucinda, you have made your attacking anxiety techniques available in this book, “From Panic to Power”, aren’t you?

LB:
I did. I did and I didn’t think I could write books so see you never know what God’s going to lead you to do.

RAS:
What a journey you’ve had. From there to here, Panic to Power. Tell us about it. Where did it begin?

LB:
Well, I had an alcoholic father, and I’m sure some of you can relate to that, and what you might call a dysfunctional family. Although my theory is most families are dysfunctional. It’s just a matter of degrees. And we had a lot of great things happen in our family but there was a lot of fear and a lot of anger and a lot of guilt and a lot of secrets. And as a result of that, I think I grew up as a real anxious child. And an anxious teenager and I started having panic attacks.

RAS:
When did you start getting your panic attacks? When were the first ones?

LB:
You know my first ones I was probably seven years old. I remember, and a seven-year-old doesn’t know it’s a panic attack. I just remember being, laying in bed and my dad would come home and he’d open the refrigerator and he’d kind of rattle the pans around and look for something to eat, and he had been drinking, and I remember being, you know, afraid. And I remember by the time I was 12, I developed an eating disorder. What I thought... I felt like if I ate I’d get sick and that maybe there was something wrong with the food. And by the time I was 15, it manifested in something called irritable bowel syndrome, where my stomach was always upset. And then I started avoiding things. I would make excuses. I would make excuses to my friends, why I couldn’t go places or why I couldn’t be in the car. I’d make excuses to my mom for why I didn’t feel good. I started feeling bad about myself. I started feeling sad a lot and that’s when the depression started.

RAS:
Were you able to graduate from high school?

LB:
Yes, you know what, I went to high school and I lived surfacely what would seem to be a normal life. But on the inside, I was always afraid. I always felt like I wasn’t good enough for anybody including God. I felt like God had kind of given up on me. We went to church when I was younger and yet I felt like, well how could a God let my father be an alcoholic. You know how could a God let my family feel so much pain. How could God not be here for me and my family.

And so I guess I kind of in some way maybe even blamed God and then I got really anxious and I was afraid that I was going to lose my mind. I became totally consumed with the present moment. I couldn’t think about the future, I couldn’t think about anything except what’s wrong with me, why do I feel this way, why am I so afraid all the time, am I going to lose my mind? I was afraid that someday I would end up in an institution somewhere and that they would throw away the key and nobody would care about me anymore. And that’s how bad it got for me.

RAS:
So that was your bottom? When was that?

LB:
The bottom, I had gotten to the point of when you talk about agoraphobia, agoraphobia is anxiety gone out of control. It’s when you are so anxious you just can’t function anymore. And you start avoiding things, like flying and driving and for me, I got to the point where I couldn’t leave my house. I would go only short distances. My comfort zone. And one night was dating my husband, whose my husband at the time, now David, and it wasn’t much of a date because I wouldn’t go anywhere, I never wanted to do anything, I never wanted to eat, my stomach would get upset. I always made excuses, I couldn’t ride in the back of a car, I couldn’t go anywhere where I couldn’t come and go as fast as I wanted and one night I was curled up in a ball on my sofa, and I was crying, and I was in terrible pain. And I had a big meeting the next day, and I was supposed to ride around with my boss and all I knew was I couldn’t ride around with my boss, I couldn’t sit in that meeting. What if.. you know what if a made a fool of myself, what if I ran out and so I started to cry. And I remember thinking, I’m so upset, death would be easier. But I’m so afraid of dying I don’t want to die. But I’m so afraid of living like this for the rest of my life.

And in that moment, I prayed to God. And I said if You help me, show me one person whose lived with this, or who hasn’t lost their mind, I promise I will help You for the rest of my life. If you pray that hard, God will answer your prayer. You just have to look for it.

And the next morning I got up and I turned the TV on and there was a woman and I don’t normally do that, and there was a woman on a talk show talking about panic attacks and agoraphobia and I thought well I don’t think I have that, but I sat and I listened. And she started saying these people are over-reactors. They’re worriers. They’re negative thinkers. They’re perfectionistic. They’re very analytical. They think and think and think and drive themselves crazy with their thoughts and I thought oh my gysh.. she’s talking about me. And you know I went to my psychiatrist, cause I had started going to a psychiatrist who wanted to put me on medication, which I wouldn’t go there. I took one pill one time and it made me feel so weird I decided I didn’t want to take medicine.

I went to my psychiatrist, said I finally know what I have. I have this something called agoraphobia. And he said, oh well, whatever you want to call it. And I thought, I’m in the wrong place here, you know.

I started praying so hard, I wanted God to give me direction. I felt totally confident He’d given me the answer, but now what do I do with it, you know? And so I went and I found books by a lady named Claire Weeks and I learned that I could change the way that I react to things so that I’m not so anxious. And I could learn to think in a way a lot about the same.. that’s why I love your ministry. It’s all about the thoughts you put in your brain. You know that food for thought it’s almost more important than what you eat because it can affect your whole life and your marriage and your parenting and everything. And instead of scaring myself with thoughts like what if I’m driving down the highway and I start to feel nervous, I learned to replace it with thoughts like so what if I’m driving down the highway and I feel nervous.
And I love this whole idea that God has a plan for your life. That to me, I didn’t know it. Who would have thought? You know I majored in nursing and theater. I would never have thought in a million years, that God wanted me to be the anxiety lady. But now, I go all around the world, the country, and I talk about anxiety and panic disorder and depression.

And my message is you can get better. You do not have to be on medication, probably now or the rest of your life for anxiety disorder. And a lot of it starts here. It starts in what you tell yourself, you need to learn to be an under-reactor instead of an over-reactor. You need to learn to see the cup is half full instead of half empty. You need to not care so much about what everybody thinks because they don’t remember anyway. We get so caught up in what if I make a fool of myself. Well, nobody’s.. they’re not thinking about you. Everybody’s too busy thinking about their own life.

And so when I learned to think like that, my life started to turn around.

RAS:
So that was a major turn around for you. When you reached your bottom, you turned to God, and God helped get your thinking straight, is that it?

LB:
You know, when I reached my bottom point, I prayed to God and as He has done so many times in my life, He answered. And then I had to use what He gave me and go help myself. And that’s the most important thing. God will say here’s the doctor, or here’s the minister, or here’s the anxiety lady or here’s the best friend and then you have to take that and work with that and healing is possible, whatever it is you’re struggling with.

RAS:
So, what are the techniques of “Proven techniques to calm your anxieties.”?

LB:
The first technique is to take complete responsibility for your anxiety. You know, it’s not your mother in law, it’s not your boss, it’s not your life’s circumstance, you were choosing to react in an anxious way. And so that’s the first step is choose to take responsibility and say to yourself, I’m going to be an under-reactor instead of an over-reactor. And then, the positive self-talk and you teach that, this is what this ministry is all about. So come to church every Sunday and turn that TV on because this is what you need to hear more of. I’m okay, God is with me. I don’t need to be afraid, I can get through this, its only anxiety. It’s not going to kill me. You know, and it can’t hurt you if it does kill you because then you’re with God. I had a minister say that to me, and I loved that.

And so also breathing. You need to learn how to calm your breathing. There’s something that I talk about in the book called diaphragmatic breathing. If you deliberately slow your breathing down and space your breathing out and try to breath like ten breaths per minute instead of twenty five, you can’t panic. Did you know that? You’ll calm yourself automatically.

So these are just little tricks you can do. Distract yourself when you’re anxious, be in the moment, talk to the person on the plane beside you. Get out of yourself because that’s the way to healing, too. Get out of yourself and into helping somebody else. So those are just some of the things you can do.

RAS: Well those are very, very positive. You have all of those in the book, correct?

LB: Yes, I do.

RAS: So if somebody wants to move out of their place of anxiety and fear, and into a place of power, personal power, they can find a lot of key ingredients in this book. And in addition to that, you have a website they can go to?

LB:
We have a website, it’s www.stresscenter.com. And there’s an 800 number, and it’s very easy it’s 1-800-ANXIETY. And the first thing I recommend you do is get on your knees because every time I’ve had a challenge in my life, and we’re all human and we all have them and they will continue until the day you die, I get on my knees and I get humble and God always answers my prayer. And even coming here today was a prayer for me regarding my little boy. And I said I needed to take him and go find God. And the next day, your office called and asked me to come and be a guest and I brought Sammy today, so, that was a real special thing for me.

RAS:
We did, that was wonderful. You’re a follower of Jesus Christ, you’re a member of a Presbyterian church in your community and I know Jesus means a lot to you. What role does Jesus play in your move towards peace and serenity?

LB:
Well you know Jesus is our Savior. And supposedly if you’re Christian, when you die, Jesus is going to take us to heaven but to me, He’s my Savior now. Because there are so many times when you feel like, you know, there’s not an answer, I don’t want to get emotional or that, you know, nobody’s listening or the world’s a scary place right now or maybe like I’ve had to deal with deaths in the family of people that I really love. And if you don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t know how you’d get through it. Because there’s so many times when I have fallen asleep in fear or anxiety over a child or a loved one, and it’s like the next morning there’s an answer. It’s like Jesus kind of held me through the night, and brought me back to a place that I knew I was going to be okay. So, to me, Jesus is the Savior, not only once we die but while we live. And that’s a gift that He’s given us. You know, and my little boy said it on the way here today, if you believe, well then He’s there.

RAS:
You have an 800 number, what is that used for?

LB:
If you call, there’s a free cassette and some information on anxiety that you can receive. And they’re also on the website. There’s a wonderful, it’s a chat room. Where you can go in and just talk to people about anxiety, which it’s so great to talk to people who have gone through this and just know, and I was doing a book signing and someone said it just makes me feel so good to know I’m not alone. You’re not alone. There’s a whole bunch of us out there like this. That’s a scary thought.

RAS:
Well if you feel like you need to talk to somebody, and you don’t have anyone to talk to, we have a 24-hour counseling service available for you, it’s 1-800-and the letters NEW-HOPE. New Hope. 1-800-NEW HOPE. You can dial that number 24-hours a day and you can find a listening ear to help you through some of your fears and your panic and your very difficult times.