The Life of Dr. Claire Weekes

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the Anxiety Bites podcast and I am your host,
Jen Kirkman. Welcome to another episode of Anxiety Bites. I
am your host Jen Kirkman. Today my guest is journalist
and author Judith Horpe. But even though Judith herself has
a fascinating life and career, Judith and I are going

(00:32):
to be talking about Dr Claire Weeks because Judith wrote
the definitive biography of Doctor Claire Weeks. It's called The
Woman who Cracked the Anxiety Code. The Extraordinary Life of
Doctor Claire Weeks. It came out in nineteen So where
do I even begin? So let's begin with my guest

(00:53):
to Judith Harsh's a journalist and author. She worked for
the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and at the Australian Financial Review,
where she covered politics, business and broader social issues before
being appointed features editor and finally Deputy editor of the newspaper,
a position she held for twenty years. She is again
the author of the aforementioned book about Dr Claire Weeks,

(01:16):
and Judith now lives in Sydney, Australia. Dr Claire Weeks
is from Australia as well, and the story of how
I came to read this book and my connection with
Australia and how that just wonderful continent and is just
all tied up in my tale of fear flying and

(01:39):
anxiety recovery. But I tell that story to Judith on
the podcast, so you'll hear that. But what I'm here
to say is that Dr Claire Weeks, if you get
no other book about panic attacks or anxiety, then get

(02:00):
Dr Claire Weeks's books, because she is the o G.
She is the original person to ever help people who
were having panic attacks because she had them herself. And
this is what's extraordinary about her story. And you'll hear
Judith and I talk about it. But just to bring
you up to speed, Dr Claire Weeks was born in
nineteen o three. She was a general practitioner in Australia,

(02:25):
but she went to college and was very genius in
the studies of biology and evolution. She was granted so
many fellowships where she studied all over the world, and
she studied with really renowned people, and she basically was
studying lizards and and I know you're going to think
I'm about to say Lozard brain, but it's nothing to

(02:46):
do with that, she was studying why, um, some creatures
lay their eggs in water, why some lay their eggs
on land, And so what she was studying is how
have these creatures evolved. And one of the things that

(03:07):
she discovered and proved is that environment has a lot
to do with the evolution of something, and so later
she would use that theory about you know your own
personal environment, you're living environment at home, your work environment,
you're social environments where you you know where you actually

(03:32):
live in the world informs if you have panic and
anxiety and informs how well you're able to deal with
it or not. Yes, genetics play a component, but she
didn't believe that was the entire story, and she's completely right.
So basically she just sort of followed her heart and
went from being this biologist and then finding the work

(03:57):
not that interesting, and then she thought she would be
a singer and help people with their breath work because
she thought singing was science. And then she became a
travel writer, which the timing of it was terrible because
she was encouraging people to take trips to Europe and
then Hitler invade in Poland and you know how that went.
And so she decided to go back to school again

(04:20):
and study being a general practitioner, and when she had
her own practice, she began noticing that people weren't actually ill,
that they were suffering from nervous system disorders which was
causing them to have anxiety or panic. And that's what
I love about her. She wasn't saying, oh, it's all
on your head, but she was saying, your nervous system
is out of whack. And you know, there wasn't the

(04:43):
word agorophobia back then. Eventually that word was coined and
she used it in the title of one of her books.
But she was basically helping people who were agoraphobic, people
who had had a panic attack maybe in a store
or in a certain you in a car, and then
they avoided. Right, that's most people's in instinct to not
panic or feel anxiety is ill. Just avoid the place

(05:05):
I was when I felt it last, even though you
know that it's not the car that gave you anxiety,
but that you had anxiety in the car. So maybe
if you don't go near your cars anymore, that will
help and you eventually your life gets smaller and smaller.
And what Dr Claar Weeks did that was brilliant that
people have improved upon it, and she gets very little
to no credit for it. Is we all know about
fight or flight. Yes, animals do this too, and it's

(05:27):
from our ancestry and we used to be running around
foraging for our food blah blah blah. So while it's
perfectly normal when faced with something that could eat us
or something that could kill us, you know, whether it's
a soldier with a gun or a plane that's crashing,
or you know our ancestors um I had to deal with,

(05:49):
you know, wild animals. It's it's perfectly normal and it's
what we're supposed to do to fight or freeze, are
going to flight in danger. But what Dr Claire Weeks
was trying to teach people is that, but that's not
usually what causes us to panic because panic is different
than fear. Panic almost evolves what she called the second fear. So,

(06:14):
first fear is this thing that stimulates you to go
into fight, flight or freeze. The second fear are your
thoughts about how your body now feels, your thoughts about
the anxious sensations that you're feeling. And now you've worked
yourself up and you think you're having a heart attack,
and the first thing that was scaring you that's not
even a thought anymore. But it all happens so quickly

(06:36):
that it's hard to understand when it's happening that you
have basically almost made a choice to have the second fear. Now, Obviously,
in a case of a panic attack, you don't have
to have a soldier pointing a gun at or you
don't have to be in a plane that's crashing. You
can just be sitting at your desk at work. You
can be laying in bed at night. You can have
a panic attack that puts you into fight or flight,

(06:57):
and again, that is just your nerve system doing its thing.
Who knows why it's doing it right, It could be
a million reasons, going back to childhood trauma. It could
be you were upset at work today and you stuffed
your feelings down, or just could be who knows, your
nervous system is just going off. Because the point is
in the moment, and we've talked about this a lot

(07:17):
on the podcast, In the moment you need to handle it,
and in that moment, you don't need to go back
to your childhood. In that moment, you need to employ
the parasympathetic nervous system. You need to be doing something,
not to fight it, and not to even try to relax,
which is the same as fighting it, but to accept it,
let it pass through you and move on. And that

(07:37):
was the big thing with Dr Claire Weekes was except
that the panic attack is happening to you, that doesn't
mean accept it. You love it. Oh my god, we're
going to have them every day. It's great. There's nothing
I can do about it. That's so much she's saying.
She's saying, it's here, Let it pass through you. It
will go away quicker, and it will go away in
a more real way because you're not sort of hanging

(08:00):
into it and like re um adrenalizing yourself. You know,
it's like the cycle is fear adrenaline, fear adrenaline, fear adrenaline.
And when we fight the panic attack and act like
we need to stop this from happening, because it's bad
to have one right. When you act like the panic
symptoms are going to kill you and you fight them
because you're fighting for your life, you're going to make

(08:20):
it worse. You're just making more adrenaline and you're responding
to fear as though the fear is correct. But if
you let it pass through you, you're showing yourself, Oh,
this literally cannot kill me. I mean, I don't like
how it feels, but you will not prolong it, and
then after a while, you will learn not to fear it.
So if you have a panic attack and you're fearing it,
and you're fearing it, and you're fighting it because it

(08:42):
just feels so abnormal, it feels like you're dying, and
you don't want to dies, you fight it. You fight it,
you fight it. When that battle is finally over, and
it can sometimes feel like an hour, and it can
even be an hour in the sense that you're not
going to panic straight through for an hour, but it'll
come in waves. You will not want that to happen again,
and you will fear it happening again, so that if

(09:04):
it happens again, you will respond the exact same way.
And then because you fear one happening again, you might
avoid going to certain places. So that what's her point is,
if you let it pass through you, you will learn
not to fear them, and that's where the recovery is.
Like people are going to just willing nellly have a
panic attack sometimes because we're just made up of nerves

(09:26):
and we're nervous system, and so sometimes the nervous system
just like goes offline for a second, does something weird.
But if you don't fear it, then you are free.
Because it's the fear that keeps us panicking and it's
the fear that keeps us from living our lives right again,
fear would lead to avoidance. But if you say, well,
I'm not afraid of having another panic attack. I mean

(09:47):
I don't feel like having another one, but I don't
fear it, well, then you're free. So then if one happens,
you're like, oh this thing, you know when you let
it pass through you. So again it's like you might
still feel fear or when you're having that panic attack,
but you're not going to fight against it. Like our
body is always trying to keep us alive. Our body
is not always right, you know. It's like we're a

(10:09):
dog when they're barking at your friend that's coming over
and you're like, no, no, no, this person is safe,
Like this is not an intruder, but they're gonna respond
to everyone coming through the door like it's an intruder
because on the time that it is one, that's how
they're going to keep you safe. Our nervous system does
the same thing. It starts freaking out, and then we
respond like a dog. We get afraid of what our

(10:31):
nerves are doing, and so we fight it because we're
like thinking we're in danger, We're going to die, so
we fight it. We're like fighting for our life the
way you would be if you were drowning or something
or someone was trying to bury you, you know, and
we should know better because we're not dogs, right, and
so we know there's no need to fear this. These
sensations literally cannot kill us. So what I liked about

(10:53):
her is she kept it really simple. You know. Um,
she treated a lot of people that had tried psychoanalysis
and all of these things that didn't work. And I'm
obviously not saying that therapy doesn't work, but in the
moment of panic and anxiety, it's really about using the
mind to combat the nervous system so that we can
then use our physical body to help calm us down.

(11:16):
And again, she keeps it super simple. So she was
concerned with the severe long term effects that anxiety and
panic disorders had on the lives of your patients, and
she noted that patients did not necessarily suffer from anxiety
problems because they had flawed personalities of traumatic childhoods. The
problems were caused by the patient having a habit of

(11:37):
fear avoidance made worse or caused by a very responsive,
sensitized nervous system. She was critical of both Freddy and
approaches and attempts of behaviorists to desensitize their patients using
relaxation and breathing techniques, but because again she she felt like,
that's fine, I mean, relax and breathe in your own
spare time. But when you're panicking to tell your body

(11:58):
to relax is again you are trying to deny these
sensations that you're feeling. And the sensations won't kill you.
If you let them through, they'll become less threatening. So
she liked to call all of this nervous illness. And
it wasn't because she was afraid to use the word anxiety.
You know, it actually brought me fully around again to
thinking of why do we even call it anxiety and

(12:19):
anxiety disorders and this and that. I mean, you know,
there's so many different diagnoses of anxiety, but and of
course there are situations that are different from the others,
but overall, in general, we're talking about panic attacks. Just
stay with that one for now. It really is so physical,
you know, it's not in Judith and I talked about
this like, I'm not even a fan of the words

(12:39):
mental health because it doesn't even mean because there's not
necessarily emotions that we're talking about. These are physical reactions
and then behavior isn't I mean, it's all it's all
to do with the mind and everything. But I'm really
which people understood that panic attacks are such a physical thing.
And I don't really have the words, but I'm just

(13:04):
trying to say that if we take care of our
body and our nervous system, that first that will affect
our brains, right, And that's why another one of my
heroes from long ago, who wrote um an invented progressive
muscle relaxation is and I'm forgetting his name even though
he's a hero of mine, but that's how my brain

(13:25):
works or doesn't work sometimes, And let me just look
it up because I can't. I can't do him this way.
Progressive muscle relaxation. Oh dr Edmund Jacobson, that's right. You know.
He was like, do that to relax instead of have
a drink or something like that, and he found that

(13:45):
it lowered so many things in the human body, like stress,
intension and high blood pressure or whatever. So anyway, big
fan of Dr Claire Week's. What was so cool about
her is when she started treating patients, she'd go to
their homes. She was very eccentric should people move in
with her? There was this um undertone in the book
of like was she a lesbian because she had this
best friend that she lived with, and she every relationship

(14:08):
which she was in with a man she would end
and but it just doesn't like nobody really knows. I
mean I think she was. But um, so you'll hear
me not get into that with Judith because they're just
too much to talk about, but you will hear us
mentioned that she lived with her best friend and I
don't want you to think that I'm like an idiot,
you know, like um, but she was very ahead of

(14:29):
her time in the sense that, you know, she was
very anti like housework, and in the sense that she
felt like a lot of women were feeling trapped in
a gorphobic because you know, they were housewives and didn't
have a choice. I mean, not that like being a
housewife necessarily is a bad thing, of course, but she
meant if if these women didn't even have choices and

(14:50):
they were feeling a gorphobic, and then the men go
and they deal with their anxiety by getting drunk after work,
and now you have to deal with the drunk husband.
And so a lot of patients moved in with her,
is my point. I just think that is so funny.
And then eventually, you know, in her sixties and seven,
I mean, she wrote these books in her late fifties,
and in her sixties and seventies, she was touring the
world because she was becoming a bestselling author in many

(15:12):
different countries. She was traveling to America to go on
late night talk shows. I mean, she was quite active
and getting more and more famous until she was in
her seventies because this was the only thing helping anxious
people who had had no language for this, and they would,
you know, fly to Australia to meet her and just
cling to copies of their books and just say you

(15:32):
understand me. And so she's really quite magical and I've
talked my god long enough about her. Let's just get
into my episode today UM with my fabulous guest, Dr
Judith Horne, and as we talked about who I wish
could have been a guest on this show, Dr Claire Weeks,

(15:56):
why did you want to write a book such a
detailed and well research book about Dr Claire Weeks. Well,
there's probably a number of aspects to that question. But look, firstly,
she just had such a profound impact on me that
I never forgot the gift she gave me of understanding.

(16:17):
And um, I just couldn't believe. I came across when
I was very young, my twenties, and she was so helpful,
and I kept thinking, why does this woman not have
more recognition in Australia. And of course there was no
Internet back then, you couldn't sort of research someone easily.
I just was aware that, you know, there is sort
of obviously her books were on sale, but I couldn't

(16:38):
work out why she had no um, you know, there
was no Clerqus to her. There was Austrata didn't seem
to realize they had had this person who was so
incredibly helpful. Well, I didn't know how widely helpful she was.
But I was a journalist and I became a long
form editor, and I was very aware of how rare
the gift of writing, actually really good writing and clear writing,

(17:00):
writing that changes things, writing that changes the way people
think and live is rare. And I thought, this woman
has got it to me. And that was from a
professional point of view. So when I decided to step
back from journalism, um, I was into my sixties, and
I thought, I'd rather I've been working on a long
form journalist enough that I'd really be interested in doing

(17:22):
something longer myself. And I thought, what I you know
I can get. I have to be very passionate about
a subject I want to write it. I won't want
to sit down and write, so that wouldn't interest me
at all. So I came up. I certainly thought of her.
One night, I was sitting with a glass of white
wine in my hand and ruminating on what I could
write about it, and her name jumped into my head,

(17:42):
and I thought, that's it, that is it. She is it.
But she's surely been written about. I cannot be the
first person. I won't have been the first person. So
but a little bit of research turned up that amazingly,
no one else had written her biography. So that was
the first step where where I was really thrilled with
the idea. And then I thought, but I'm I believe

(18:03):
she's good because I've had a lifetime for assessing writing
to confirm my really personal experience of her gift. But
I better test that. So I found on a little
Wikipedia entry of reference to an American psychiatrist called Dr
Robert DuPont, who was very well known for his work
in them. He was called the Drugs are Helping you

(18:27):
know stem that tired of drug addiction in the seventies
as presidential advisor, so he had a really quite illustrious background,
and I noticed he was very affirmative about her her
work and spoke very highly of it. But he was
the only one. So I got his email. I emailed
him and honestly, overnight overnight came back this email and

(18:49):
in the header said, I am the guy you want.
I would give you all the help you need. This
woman has never been recognized. I'm here to do anything.
And he was just incredible. So the next day I
had you, are I think a confirmation? I think, yes,
this woman is really significant, and I think your instincts
absolutely right, and I will help you. And at that

(19:10):
point I just literally never looked back. For five years
I worked on that book, which, as you say, has
a lot of the search in it, but it was
a joy. Well, what I appreciate that you're talking about
her from a writer's perspective is the reason her books
were so successful, beyond the fact that she was the
first person to talk about what we now know as agoraphobia,
panic attacks, and anxiety, is that she herself experienced it.
But as you're saying, beyond that, as a writer, you

(19:33):
know she wrote it. Beyond just that she wrote it
in first person. A lot of it was taken from transcriptions,
according to your book, of actual conversations she had with people.
But yeah, it is the way she wrote that you
feel as though she's writing to you. Oh, that's that's
absolutely right. It's she's talking to And the books are
written in the first person. They open with if you

(19:56):
are sitting down reading this book, now, you will have
no trouble concentrate. And you may not have been able
to read in newspaper, but this book you will be
able to concentrate on. It's true, you'll be able to
read it from beginning to and deny remember doing that
myself because it's written in the first person, but it's
written with such an intimate knowledge of what the reader
is going through that that, of course for the reader,

(20:18):
no one had ever shown such intimate knowledge of what
they thought was such bizarre internal life. They are disturbing
internal life they had that they were just totally captivated.
And I think if you happen to pick up the
book while you're feeling anxious, it is a way of
arresting that it engages you directly. You don't feel like

(20:39):
you're reading some theories or that you're outside of it.
It's it's very calming. And so, did you ever have
anxiety in your life? Is that why she is someone
that meant so much to you? Yes? I did, I did.
I was in it was rather was in my early twenties. Um,
you know, it's probably maybe I was an anxious child,

(21:01):
but I don't remember it being a major issue as
a child. But in my in my late teens and
early twenties, it's the sort of leaving home period, you know,
where you're dealing with the world and a few a
few slightly disastrous combinations. I were not disastrous. They were
wonderful in some ways and bad and others. But I
became a journalist in the National Press Gallery, um, and

(21:23):
you know that was I was covering their Stralian Federal
Parliament every day. And I had studied politics, and I
thought this job was just absolutely fantastic and I thought
it was a privilege to get up every day and
cover um, these significant affairs of the world and so
so um. But it was a very demanding life. I mean,

(21:43):
being a daily journalist is pretty hepped and hut. And
I also there was a lot of partying in that thing.
You know, it was a very male atmosphere. There are
a lot of late nights, you know, it was. And
I got I got sick at some stage. It was
just I had a particular medical issue with that was

(22:04):
that was a very minor one, but it led to
her a bit of a hemorrhaging and as a consequence,
I got very run down. I went back to work
too early, um, and I got heart palpitations. And it's
a classic story. She got her panic attack started the
same way, and you know, I was already run down.
I was tired. I was having these late nights. I

(22:26):
was working too hard. I was over excited. That was
this extraordinary febrile atmosphere. They had sacked the government of
the day, the Governor general at sacking was a big scandal,
illustratus in the seventies. So all these things considered, I
ended up very, as she would say, living on my nerves,
and the actual palpitations terrified me. So I'd go to

(22:46):
cardiologists and they'd say, well, look, it's quite from the
normal range, so there was nothing wrong with me. And
then that crucial step occurred where you sort of become
frightened of yourself. You know, no one can reassure you.
And it's that crucial turning point where you start to
fear your symptoms. And once you do that, instead of
just saying, you know, I had a late night heart palpitations.

(23:07):
A bit weird for someone who's fit in my age,
but you know, stuff happens. Instead of doing that, you
start interrogating it all the time. You know, maybe they'll
come back, you know, why am I getting them? Maybe
I really do have a bad heart. They haven't picked up.
And once you go down that path, you're sort of
alarming yourself. You've become frightened of your own symptoms. And
that was her two of her huge, simple, simple but

(23:31):
hugely important ideas. That you you you first get sensitized.
Anxiety is a sensitization process, and that you can be
sensitized not just by heart palpitation. It can be a warrior, rumination,
a problem as well, ashame of disgrace, something this except.
But the process kickstarts sensitization, so you are receptive to

(23:57):
what she would call tricks of the nerves. And then
the next step if you become frightened of your symptoms.
So once you're sensitized and then you're frightened of your symptoms,
you are absolutely primed to suffer from I don't know,
I could be panicky tacks. It could be chronic anxiety.
She wouldn't divvy it up and give it a label,
but you are really primed for high anxiety. We'll be

(24:22):
right back. What I loved about her book and what
I'm gathering from your experience writing about her, is she
just put one ft in front of the other, took
the next step, took risks, life unfolded in front of her,
and with each weird little coincidence, it led her down.

(24:43):
The next thing that led her to become this person who,
as you say, cracked the anxiety code. And I'm in
the spirit of the weird little coincidence is my story
is that, you know, I had undiagnosed anxiety and panic
attacks as I was a kid first manifested and fear
of flying. But had all the physical symptoms, the hard palpitations,

(25:07):
the but but for me it was more of that
very distressing de realization, depersonalization in a in a panic attack,
but ultimately the fear of the fear of the fear
of the symptoms. And throughout my life I feel I
have wasted a lot of time in my thirties and
early forties with God bless her, but with the therapist
who kept wanting to go back in childhood, go back,

(25:28):
go back and back. And the only things that helped
me were, you know, looking at things on my own
outside these sessions. And I had to fly to Australia
and that was you know again, I had a fear
of flying my whole life. I stopped flying for a
long time and then I had to start again because
it was part of my job and I was flying

(25:49):
around America and for some odd reason. I remember saying, uh, okay,
I can fly around America as needed for my job.
I'll take a little bit of Chlanic. And that, by
the way, never helped squash the anxiety completely or panic.
It was enough to make me feel like I wasn't
going to explode, but it was just my nerves on

(26:09):
fire the whole time. And I said, but I'll never
be able to fly to Australia, for example, that was
my boundary, no Australia. And I got this work opportunity
to go to Australia, and if I didn't go, it
would have been absurd. It was free, it was first class,
it was with my coworkers, it was a job I
was on. I would have had to just not go

(26:29):
to work that week. And something told me, well, it's
really ironic that you could just keep obsessing over how
you're never going to Australia. Now even opportunity you have
to go. And the flight was pretty scary, but I
got through it. But anyway, I was looking for things
to listen to on the plane and I found her
thing passed through panic and honest to god, it didn't

(26:50):
dawn on. Yeah, it didn't dawn on me until I
read your book about her that she's Australian. I wasn't
thinking about her accent. Well, to me, it's an accent.
It's not like the book started with Hello, I'm Australian,
and you know, I cracked the I didn't know who
she was. I same thing that that most people thought was, Oh,
she's just some self help woman. I don't know, you know,

(27:10):
And but it really helped. And then of course I
put it away for a while and then began my
love fear with Australia. I started to go every year.
I would live there three months a year for a job.
I flew by myself there. I even comforted a nervous
flyer whom I didn't know, that sat next to me.
And it got to the point where, you know, I
overcame my fear of flying through a lot of different things,

(27:33):
one of them was her clear weeks. But it was
just so funny that specifically became Australia was like where
I went every year, and when the plane would land,
I wouldn't even want to get off the plane because
I felt like the seventeen hours had just flown by
and I had another movie to watch and so long
story even longer. When I was starting this podcast, I

(27:55):
wasn't thinking about her, and I ordered a book on Amazon.
I thought I was ordering a book about a bunch
of women that were doing coding as spies in World
War two, like to bring down the Nazis and something
with the word code. And I put it into Amazon
and I ordered your book. But I meant to order

(28:16):
this book about women world War two. No, And so
your book comes to me last year and I'm like
the woman who correct the anxiety code. Huh oh, well,
I didn't mean to order this, but I'll just keep it.
Maybe I'll read it someday. So I have it on
my bedside table. And then during this podcast, I'm interviewing

(28:37):
this guy who, out of the goodness of his heart,
just helps people with anxiety with this podcast, and he
talks a lot about um Clear Weeks and so he
mentioned her a few times in our interview and I said, wait,
I know that name. She's did the pass through panic
and the Float and Accept and he said yeah. I said,
you know, she was the first help I really got
with panic. And then that night I looked my bedside

(29:00):
table and I went, wait, this is about Claire. It
just it was so weird. I don't I mean, it's
not that weird story, but and then we found you
and you agreed to come on the show. But I
just felt like, especially at this time in my life
with doing the podcast and realizing how many different types
of anxiety and quotes I'm talking to people about and

(29:22):
how many people still to this day, I don't know
what to do about it and they come to me
and I'm always like, I'm just a comting with a podcast,
you know. But in a way it is. It helped
remind me that it's more simple than even I was
making it even recently, which is that you know, the
whole therapy thing and go into your past that she said,

(29:42):
it's interesting, it's not really necessary right now for what's
going on, and it all starts with fixing your nervous
system and the thoughts come. So that's just my long
story about there's just something kind of magical about you know. Look,
I just have to say every biech of this book
is in Touched with Magic from the from the moment

(30:02):
I got that first, I'm the guy you want from
Dr Robert DuPont. You know, the passionate people have you
come across these weird coincidences. I'll just tend your briefly
one and then we can get onto the actual issues.
I suppose. But but when I wrote the book, it
was sent off to be endorsed by a very well
known the straight and broadcaster called Lee Sales is very good.

(30:23):
And Lee had agreed to read my book, and she
had agreed to read someone else's book. She was only
doing two books for the year, and she picked mine
and this other book by a well known Australian musician
called Claire Bowditch, who wrote had written her memoir. Anyway,
she reads my book in manuscript form, she puts it down,
she sends the endorsement off, and next minute I get
a text from her saying I'm sitting here freaking out.

(30:45):
And of course she then contacted me and she said,
I put your book down. This is the one who's
got a full time job every night interviewing politicians, and
she just does this. You know, she's she's she's a
great contributor and helps other people, and she just was
looking at these two books and she can lie great
to do it and make time in her very busy love.
She put my book down. The next book she picked
up from a woman who was a different generation from me,

(31:07):
twenty years younger, had dedicated her memory too, none other
than doctor Clear Weeks. Now you have bear in mind
Lisas had never heard of Clear Weeks before she picked
up my book. She puts it down, and she picks
up the second manuscript, which is dedicated to the memory
a Clear Weeks. Clear Weeks died in nineteen ninety. Her
first book was written in nineteen sixty two, and a

(31:29):
forty year old musician was writing about her life being
saved by Clear Weeks when she was in her twenties. Um,
you know these little coincidences. I've forgotten most of them
because my brain is getting older. But it was almost
She's not religious, Clear Weeks, but I felt like every
night again, I thought, you're up there, you're up there.
You're pulling these strings to the coincidences that we're really touching,

(31:51):
really touch and if anyone's pulling strings, it's her. But basically,
and I've got all this from your book. But at
age eighteen twenty eight, she made academ of History on
the way to get her doctorate, first class honors degree
in science, first woman to do that um at the
University of Sydney, and she was aiming for a Rockefeller

(32:12):
fellowship that she would further her studies in England. And
she gets the sore throat. Then she has an operation
it's botched and she's told she has tuberculosis and sent
to live in a sanatorium for six months by herself.
And she comes from a big family. She's in her
early trentiesia that's right, yeah, And you know, then the

(32:33):
doctors come to her, oh, sorry, misdiagnosis, good to go,
and she writes about and you've write about that. When
she left, that's when the heart palpitation started and she
was convinced it was a serious heart condition and she
was terrified that the doctors had made a mistake and
maybe something was wrong with her heart. She was overwhelmed.
She went to live with a friend who was married
to a doctor and her you know, she said, this

(32:55):
was the turning point in her life. Her heart was
racing and she didn't know yet then that fear was
managing her heart beat and she was in this vicious cycle.
So life goes on and she's studying her specialty, which
is evolution, and she works with this and and there's
such a great theme of feminism and women's rights in
this book. That is unfortunate in a way because she

(33:16):
was in a time when you know, she was up
against it in terms of society not taking her seriously
and expecting her to be a housewife. But she worked
with um Launcelot Harrison am I saying that right. He
was a professor of zoology, and he saw women as
equals in life and in work, and his wife was

(33:37):
a feminist, and he invited her to go on this
rugged expedition into unexplored terrain where they would study wizards,
and that helped, you know, with what became like her
lasting reputation and zoology. But I just found that interesting.
Her first kind of lucky break in a way is
having to live alone in that santatorium, which you know

(34:00):
she she ruminated on her she had too much time alone.
She had already had heart palpitations by that stage. But
it just shows you and you will know Jen that
you know, it starts with one thing, but anxiety can
take many different forms that can invade the body and
the mind and be very invasive and have all of
these different sort of symptoms and people they can mind

(34:22):
and body, and people feel that they're out of control,
they're going a bit mad. So it starts with one thing,
but then then it sort of morphs into something big
and scary. That's people just get basically invade. Basically is look,
it's quite simple. They're invaded by fear. They're terrified, but
they don't understand what they're terrified about, so then they
conclude they're mad. So it sort of goes around in

(34:42):
a nasty circle. So then I mean, she gets this
lucky break, and I'm not lucky. She's brilliant, but still
luck involved in that. You know, one of the very
few men that saw women as equals wanted to take
her under his wing, and she studied with him and
continued her study. I'm just putting it very simply on
lizards and and other reptiles, and the audience may think

(35:07):
I'm going to lizard brain, and I'm not, but just
for her the studies of and its way over my head.
But I sort of basically understood that certain reptiles that
laid eggs and others that didn't, and it was all
kind of was invitation. It's it's it's the whole How
did we get how do we get to human birth?
When did When did laying eggs? It was about cracking

(35:27):
the mystery of birth. Really, how did we go from
egg laying to life bearing? And she was looking at
this intermediary lizards do both, so they were a perfect
specimen to study. So I mean interestingly, a lot of
the early psychologists started as biologists, So she started with
the organism of the body. Well it's interesting too because
what she I think ultimately came to was it was

(35:51):
environment that determined how certain things evolved, not just something
in the genetics, which then later became her biggest thesis
for anxiety, which I think is why she doctor her doctor. Yes,
that's right, it was her doctor started off with the
way in which the cold weather, the environment shaped retaining

(36:12):
the eggs and the growth of the placenter and so on.
So yes, it was fascinating. It really was incredible, and
you could see I found that fascinating with the book
to trace back how her ideas, her ideas actually evolved,
and she started with as a biologist, as zoologist with
with evolution, that's where she started. Anxiety bites will be

(36:35):
right back after a quick little message from one of
our sponsors, here she is studying evolution, and it's beautifully
as though it's being scripted, setting her up for what
she will later the revolutionary in which is the mind

(36:57):
body connection with anxiety. I just I just get fascinated
reading the book because I go, oh my god, what
if she hadn't gone on the trip, what if she
hadn't done as we would never have had her. Well, well,
then then you have the other wonderful bit of serendipity,
which is where when she's on that study tour with
Lancelot up in the Barrington Tops, in the remote mountains

(37:19):
and outside Sydney in the twenties, this is the nineteen twenties.
Bear in mind, she meets on that trip a friend
of Landslot Harrison who has brought along, who's a geologist
at the time, called Marcel or Rousseau, who's a war
who's a war hero from First World War, and it
was meeting him, I mean, apart from the fact that
she she would have seen the fight or flight instinct

(37:40):
in lizards because she chased them and they demonstrate fight
or they don't demonstrate fight so much as they certainly
demonstrate flight. And so she's working with lizards and then
she meets him, and it's when she arrives in London
to take up the rock Fellow Scholarship that she's completely wrecked.
She's left the sanatorium, she's gone back to finish a doctorate.
She finished a doctorate, even through she's worked through this

(38:02):
dreadful anxiety. But she arrives in London and she's on
the point of collapse, she thinks. And who turns up
to meet her there but the friend she went on
the study trip in Australia with the war hero Marcel
Or so happens to be in London. He turns up.
She says, she calls him John in the book, Oh John,
I feel I feel just absolutely dreadful and I can't

(38:24):
go on. And he said, what's wrong, And she explained,
she's got this terrible heart population she's invaded by this
nameless dread and she feels completely besides anyway, whatever she
says to me and says, oh, well, that's nothing, that's
just like we soldiers had that in the war. And
she said, what do you mean. He said, it's fear.
He said, you're you're, you're, you're just letting you just
have to float past the fear. And she said that
was a got at moment. You may not have been

(38:46):
frightening myself. Yes, your symptoms are from frightening yourself. You
just have to float past them. Now. How amazing to
have the experience of that lab of fear World War
One come to her, delivered by another scientist who also
did a science degree, who could see the connection between

(39:06):
the mind and the body and understand it in a
way that I might add if I hope I'm not
getting hit of myself here subsequently gets lost in psychology,
like we forget the body. We stick with the mind,
and we just lose the body. And there's a separation.
I mean, it's it's scholars who said that, not just me. Yeah,
and that's my favorite part of the book is when Marcel,

(39:28):
who she calls John, says to her, and I quoted
you here. Um, he told her that her distress and
racing heart were nothing. Quote, those are only symptoms of nerves.
We all had those in the trenches. And yeah, he
said her heart was programmed by fear. And then that's
when she realized the whole time she'd been doing it herself.
But John explained to her or Marcel that in war

(39:51):
an actual dangerous situations soldiers, hearts raced, but then the
hearts continued to race after the threat had passed, and
then that was priming them for panic, and their fear
really only felt overwhelming in their body, and so the
mind then concluded that something was terribly wrong, which continued
to feed the fear and which we'll get into in

(40:12):
a minute. So she says in the book that you
wrote that, Um, she went to bed that night and
she laid there calmly and said, Okay, I'll just go
to sleep palpitating if necessary. And she says, once she
stopped engaging with her symptoms, her heart be went to
normal and the whole thing cleared up. And the way
she put it was her fear was bluffing her, and

(40:32):
so she stopped fighting and went to acceptance and she
at that point, within a month, felt that she had
been cured. And what I love about it is the
word acceptance has actually really bothered a lot of people
that you know, they've they've listened to this podcast and
we've talked about this before, and I can't say it enough.

(40:55):
It doesn't mean accept it and love it and be like,
oh i've panic attacks, I'm going to keep having them.
It's it's like accepted in the moment, like let it
overwhelm you. And as she says, even try to make
it scarier if you can. That's quite a clever idea
of hers. I thought, I remember reading that, thinking that's British.
She'd say, see if you can make it worse, See
if you can make it worse, you know, and because

(41:17):
you know your mind is not going to do what
you think, so it's really just the most clever way
of getting it to go away. She says, I don't
have a doctor weeks method. I'm using nature's way. And
really this is the simplicity of it. We have a
sympathetic nervous system and a parasympathetic nervous system, and her
books just explain the nervous system. And this is what

(41:38):
I think is just missing so much in psychiatry and psychology.
Before we get to individual differences, how people brought up,
what might have been their own biological inheritance, how they're
treated as children, what they're experence, we all need to
understand our nervous system. This should be fundamental, you know.
And the fact is people are getting tricked to she

(42:00):
said by the idea that you know your your sympathetic
nervous system is actually, if she said, quite unsympathetic, it's
you can't control that. I mean, if if a tiger
comes at your brick falls out of the sky, you
know you will move and dark and run and you
won't think about that. You've got no control over that.
And normally the normal body, after the dangers passed, the

(42:22):
parasympathetic nervous system moves in to slow the heartbeat, settle
the gut, stop the I don't know post barring all
the different things. It's actually working on the body. You know,
it's the body settling itself down. And the panicked anxious
person has forgotten that mind body and is using the
mind is now feeding the body, and that is uniquely human.

(42:45):
And that's where we're now going to get quite complicated.
And where I think she was right at the cutting
edge of science is her idea of first fear and
second fear. The first fear is that ducking we do
from the brick or running from the tiger. We don't.
We can't control that. We do it autumn radically. The
trouble starts when the other we've got the fear in
the brain, is not is not just one thing you've got.

(43:07):
You could call that a dumb alarm if you like.
That's what she would call first fear is like the
dumb alarm goes off. You don't think about it, You
just run, You just dunk. But then there's a moment
where you're where the human brain, which can think and
reflect on things, goes Oh my goodness, I just got
invaded by this shot of adrenaline. Now, let's say you
get it randomly. You're really over tired, you're in a

(43:28):
supermarket queue, and you've had an operational we've had a
terrible worry that's been consuming you. Suddenly you get a
jolt of adrenaline that you would normally get when there
was a tiger, except you in a supermarket cure. Now
what happens there is the other bit of your brain,
the second figures what was that. I didn't control that,
it just came, it arrived. I must be going mad.

(43:51):
Oh no, I might get that feeling again. And at
that point you add second fear to first fear, and
that's what perpetuates it now, and that's why it's so
clever and so in a way scientific and medical her
simple formulas. They sound simple, but they're based on scholarship,
which is, acceptance is designed to make your parasympathetic nervous system,

(44:11):
which normally comes you down, which gets totally sidelined by
the panic cycle. But you coause you're staying in a
continued state of fear. You're frightened of yourself. Now, yeah,
you acceptance, which she calls not enduring or putting up with.
But to walk towards that tiger, like, let yourself walk
towards that tiger in your head, just let it burn through.

(44:33):
You totally accept the horrific fear that's burning through. Once
you do that, that's the path through to the end
of pack, because that's when it gives your body a
chance to stop pumping adrenaline, to keep the adrenaline cycle going,
because you're re adrenalizing yourself all the time unless you
learn a bit of acceptance or a lot of acceptance,

(44:54):
I guess in some people's case. Well, as she says,
it's simple but not easy, and her uh timeline of
what to do is face except float, let time pass
and flow is I suppose that the word she uses
for let yourself have the panic attack, but they're like,
don't try to stop it. Well, first of that's right exactly.

(45:17):
She mean trying to get your whole body into a
state where you're giving yourself distance on the experience and
you're not refeeding it that and that's what I think
a lot more work could be done, and it is
being done. Joseph lad In in New Yorkers dancer Marter's
work on the two circuits of fear in the brain.
You know, people need to understand that there is a

(45:37):
dumb alarm um that is the fight, you know, the
shot of adrenaline you get when you when you have
genuine fear but something genuinely dangerous situations. But sometimes there's
you get that randomly and that's where the problem starts.
But we need a bit more understanding on that, you know,
it needs and she explains it really simply by first

(45:58):
and second fear and hardbreak. That's cycle. But it's really
at the cutting edge. And I think the issue of
practice is important too. I think if you look at
her as saying, you know, again putting aside or you
can go and have psychotherapy, and I'm not saying that's
not extremely useful for people have individual issues. But there's
a simple tool kit that everybody needs that they can practice.

(46:21):
And the brain gets trained in certain ways, and she's
trying to untrain the brain in a way and say,
there's a different way. The way you're pattern in your
response is a bad pattern. Let's read pattern it, which
is a scientific way can be prifped of bringing the
body back into peace by and you've got to practice it,

(46:45):
and you get setbacks, but that's not the end of
the world. That's another chance to practice it. So it's
a life tool kid, if you like. So people can
and and then it's simple, and then it doesn't go
into dark places that says there's something specially troubled about
you or me. There may be about some people have
very difficult and different circumstances, but for most of us

(47:05):
who have anxiety, it's it's pretty simple in some ways.
It really is. And it it doesn't matter why it happened.
It just matters that it is and how we're going
to react to it. And you know, I have a
few things on my mind. I I've talked to, of course,
many neuroscientists. I did talk to Lisa Feldman Barrett on
the show, and I love how she pulls apart the

(47:26):
myth of that we have this lizard brain and there's
almost this morality involved with when we quote lose control,
and that's not true. And this is you know, mythology
from Plato and it's really simple and clear Weeks had
touched on this that our brain is constantly predicting based
on our memories so that it can keep us alive.
So you know, um, in the good sense, I'm walking

(47:49):
across the street, I almost get hit by a car.
My brain knows, oh, wait a minute, this has happened before.
This is a bad example, but um, I'm gonna have
you jump back from the car. Okay, great, But now
we can train our brain the wrong way. Right, So
if I'm on a plane and I'm starting to get
arousal of anxiety sensations, my brain can go, oh, I
know what we did last time this happened. We panicked,

(48:10):
So I'm going to do that again. And that's that's
what we do to keep you safe. And now, unlike
a lizard, I get to think and and stop, or
at least be aware. It's hard to think in a
panic attack. But I think that that's what clear Weeks
is saying with the first and second fear. Like I've
had so many therapist say to me personally in sessions, Oh, well,

(48:31):
this fight or flight is from when we were cave people,
and it's an old evolutionary thing. But they never talk about.
But the difference between us, even cave people, us and
lizards or reptiles. Yeah, it's the second fear. They don't
have that. So if a lizard panics because something's coming

(48:52):
and he runs away, he's not, then I don't think
constantly going what if that happens again? It's just if
it happens again, he run again. Is that right? Well,
the thing is that this is the survival instinct. It
shouldn't even be I mean, Joseph Ladom makes a very
good point in a way, it shouldn't be called fear.
It's a it's it's like a dumb alarm. It just goes.

(49:13):
It's not an emotion. It's not an emotion. It's not
at all what it is. But what it is is
it's a huge full body experience. You know, after you
know a tiger has come at your you've just jumped
away from a car, you think of what your body
is doing. Your heart is pounding, you. Your head feels
like it's going to explain what we can all have

(49:36):
different But it's extremely physical. If you have a panic attack,
it's extremely physical. So the first fight or flight dumb
alarm that goes off is a full body experience. It's
designed to get you ready to jump out of danger
or run. So you're every organ is engaged in that
process of preparing your body to fight or to flee.

(49:57):
So it is in the body. And this is what
lot of I think people when they talk about you
know things about you know, what happened in your past,
all that contributed, yes, to the stressed person you may be,
But it doesn't solve the problem of what you do now,
which is that you are consumed with these awful feelings

(50:17):
in your body. And it's visceral. It feels a panic attack.
Isn't some thought some idea that oh my god, it's
it's a visceral Your whole body you want to run away,
You want to get out of that plane. When you're
frightened on you just want to be out of there.
Your whole body is trying to So she understood that
and understood how important the bodies, um and the minds.

(50:41):
Then and her thing was she was known as as
understanding the mind body connection. How then the mind could
refeed that initial dumb alarm and it could restart it
by fearing it. So what you're doing is your your
fear in your own body. Because the feelings you get
on that plane, they're all inside you, and you are frightened.

(51:04):
You're going to get them again every time you get
on that plane. So it's what she was clever realizing
is it's less I'm probably not making myself as clear
as I could, but it's less about the thing outside
the spider. You think you're frightened about the plane. You thing,
it's more of what's happening inside you that you're frightened of.
And she's trying to address your attention to the insides.

(51:25):
And what she's saying is that inside of you that
you're frightened of it. You think it's the plane or
the spider it, but actually you're frightening yourself because you
are bringing your symptoms to yourself. So you have a
role in this, and I've got to And then she says, look,
this is how the body works, This is how the
mind contributes to it. This is called your nervous system

(51:45):
and you are now frightened of it, and you are
not ill, in her opinion, until you become frightened. It's like,
I don't know what horror movie this is, but there's
a horror movie that's like the whole is coming from
inside the house. And I always think that when I
think about there's like the hall is coming from inside
the house. That's good. That's good. That's good. We'll continue

(52:08):
the interview on the flip side of a quick message
from our sponsors. You know, I had a therapist tell
me once and they were dead wrong. Her big thing was,
we're going to solve your panic attacks if you can
remember what you were thinking the moment before you started

(52:28):
to panic. And so in her mind, if I could
keep a diary of everything I was thinking the minute
before I panicked, then we could find out what I
was thinking. And I was like, I literally am usually
thinking nothing. It's physical. No, I know, but there's got
to be. And what she should have been asking is
what do you think while you're panicking or right after?
What are the words you're telling yourself during the second fear?

(52:50):
And so people I know that listen to this podcast
and right and they'll say no, no, no, but my
panic attacks are so bad they come out of nowhere.
And then they keep this or they keep going, or
they blah blah blah. And it's like because it happens
so seamlessly. Um. The second fear, which is the what ifs,
it just sort of seems like it's part of the
first fear. Well, that's what she says, it does. And

(53:12):
also the first fear, of she points out, can come
out of nowhere because your sensitized bear in mind, you've
been worried, fretting, or you've had an operation as she had,
and I lost blood at something you know, you warned down.
And it is electric in its fierceness. And this again
is why people who read her book when oh my god,
the first person who understands me, you know, like you saying,

(53:34):
psychologist doesn't quite get me. She says, the panic can
be electric in its fierceness and savagery. It can feel
so terribly real, and yet there is nothing to be
frttened off, So that is in itself terrifying. So then
you are terrified because you've thought about why you feel
this way, and you feel so ghastly, So it becomes
the circle, and all you're doing is it's fear adrenaline.

(53:56):
Fear adrenaline. Now, it's not easy to break that sune call,
but it sometimes it's quite since some people find it.
Once they understand, they're cured immediately. But you know the
reason she has so many people saying, Oh my god,
I get people writing to me still and they all say,
she saved my life. She saved my life because she
was the first person to say, you know, stand back

(54:17):
and not start delving into what could be special about
you and your problems. She's saying what's common about you
and your humanity, what's common to the body in the mind,
about nerves and nervous illness. Well In in the part
of the book that you wrote about her first and
second fear, um, this is again I'm reading your book
to you. But Weeks didn't regard first fear as a

(54:38):
mental state being beyond conscious control. She wrote about the
fear adrenaline cycle. She described it as a flash. The
first fear easy enough to identify as the survival response,
and the second fear that was more of a challenge
to describe. What is it? Um? It's usually a what
if followed by catastrophic thought, and the second fear is like,
I can't take it. I gotta get out of here.

(54:58):
I might make a fool of myself. But she said
that second fear invoked another brain process and human beings,
and that is of conscious emotion, which is a more
recent evolutionary development. And so, like you said, the sensitized person,
they get that fear, it's electric and then comes the
thoughts what if, what if this happens? What if that?

(55:19):
What if I'm dying? And then they become more concerned
with the physical feelings of panic than they were with
the original danger. Oh, this plane feels like it's crashing,
or my heart's racing, it's like and then the two
fears feel as one, as we were just saying. And
so her acceptance and floating as you write, was meant
to short circuit that cycle. So it's almost like in

(55:41):
those moments thinking of it as I've got a short circuit,
this electricity that's inside of me. It's it's you can't
even rationalize it intellectually, it's it's just sometimes even knowing it, Oh,
the second fear has come in, could sometimes for me
be enough to start to calm down. Well, you've got
to get distance on that. You've got to give yourself
a bit of distance on that first fear and not

(56:03):
engage with it. And I think that's where acceptance means
you stopped. Or she what she wrote in the margin
somewhereas don't fight. In other words, it's paradoxical, but you
must not fight fear. If you continue to try and
pull yourself together, try and relax, fight the fear. That

(56:24):
she would say that is just completely wrong. It goes
against what the body needs. The body needs to release
to yield. That's the only way forward, and that's where
things like Buddhism and yoga and things like that come
in in a you know, she was not at all
as far as I could find. I didn't see any

(56:45):
huge Eastern influence on her because she was a scientist.
She was talking about the body, in the mind and
the nervous system. But that but that's where Buddhism and
yogur and things are based on engaging the nervous system
in the right way that keeps it the emotional regulation
more ordered and not disordered. And so many people have
been treated so strangely and irrelevantly for anxiety over the

(57:09):
years where they could have had it, had it quite
simply explained to them, and even if they continued to
need discussion and help and advice, they could go on
to have that, but they would at least have the
foundations for understanding that there's no real mystery here about
why they feel so totally bizarre, you know. But she
also talked about it's it's hinted out a little bit

(57:32):
in your book. I mean, I'm not hinted at, but
it's it's talked about a little bit that our brain
habits are entrenched in memory, and that gets back to
that the brain is predicting what to do to keep
us safe, and so fear is a habit. We'll look
so much look first and second fear, as I say
Jesse would do. Is written brilliantly about this, very contemporaneously,

(57:55):
about the two circuit trees in the brain and how
if we got proper and better names for them, um,
we would have a better way of understanding anxiety, which goes.
But I wrote to him, I said, this is like
first and second fear of that clear we's talked about.
She tried to explain how you should understand your brain
and fear in the brain. Habit is so important, and

(58:15):
she is trying to teach you a new set of habits.
And I think it's no surprise, Jen, that I came
across the information time and time again that from people
have spoken to and people have seen other people who
have benefited from her books. Everyone's got copies of her
books that are all sort of dog eared, and they've
been read. And and that's because, and I guess it

(58:36):
goes back to why people have psychotherapy, but because if
it's helpful, people need to learn new habits. And they
have to go back to her books, and they have
to listen again, and they have to practice again and
again the way, and and and she says you will recover,
you will get better if you exactly follow this. Now
that can sound like a mad cult, but all she's

(58:57):
doing is saying, you know, is all she is doing
is saying, Look, this is the way your body works.
If you give your body a chance to follow these
simple rules, you will break the cycle of fear and adrenaline,
and you will allow your body to heal itself and
your mind to heal itself. And I think that that
was and all of these things were so ahead of

(59:18):
their time, and they're still Frankly, the idea of acceptance
therapy and the idea of the whole nervous system is
coming back into vogue in a bit because we need
to be able to manage our nervous systems, and first
to manage them, we need to be able to understand them.
And you know, yes, there are contributors. As you said,
it could be you had a very difficult childhood, or

(59:38):
you had particular circumstances, or you have a biological tendency
towards sensitivity or whatever um And I don't I'm no
expert on any of that, but it's really it's really
a case of practicing new habits and understanding that mind
body connection in a useful way that can It may
not mean you're free for you, it's not going to

(01:00:00):
be a magic talisman. And then she never get stress
or a tension in your life, but it gives you
a tool, kid to deal with it. Yeah, and you know,
like she said, I'm reading your book to you again.
Her idea of a cure was that panicking again was
an almost inevitable part of recovery. So you have to
learn how to cope with the panic itself. You have

(01:00:21):
to panic without panicking and not be afraid of it.
So you know, in other words, if you're recovered, you
can say I'm cured, and someone would say, well, what
if you panic again? You go, I don't, I don't
care if I panick again. Well that's that's the cure,
not that I'm never going to panick again. Right, that's
a very I think that's a very very important point because, um,
you know that is again it comes back to acceptance.

(01:00:45):
It comes back to the idea that you know, look,
who's going to welcome having another panic attack. Everyone's going
to go, oh yeah, I still want to run away
from it. But what she's saying is, look, if you
do get it again, you know it's you've been there.
You know there's a way through it, and you know
the way to the other side of it. And so
I think that that is just so hugely confirming, and

(01:01:07):
there are lots of people for her. Her books have
basically taken away the worst of the panic by simply
understanding it. I think in any once you find out
it's not unique to you, it's like, oh, you know.
And she was one of the first people that talked
about that that inner voice that that can see do
you lock your ban your before and again this brilliant,

(01:01:29):
brilliantly combining in some ways sort of um simple wisdom
and and and advice with the science of it. I mean,
the inner voice is a great concept of hers that
you can and and and also hope and confidence. She
knows and we all know the U and we all
know when something makes you feel confident or you feel hopeful.

(01:01:51):
I think how you feel in your body when you
feel hope or confidence, You feel great, you know, And
it's about feeling in that wide sense of the word feeling,
feeling in the mind and body. You just feel great.
And she knew that so often people didn't offer hope,
and what she was offering her readers was, look, you
feel as though you're a bit mad and you and
you're overwhelmed and bewildered and totally distressed. But look, sit

(01:02:14):
down and I'll talk you through it. It's quite simple.
It's not necessarily easy, but it's straightforward. And um so
I that was such a relief to people and so
incredibly useful. And I just feel that that simplicity and
basic understanding of the mind and body gets so overly
complicated by by by people unnecessarily so who are trying

(01:02:38):
to help other people. And you know, I think she
just really was unique in a way in being able
to explain this. And people don't understand the herod. A
lot of people who do use her ideas today just
don't understand on you know, whose shoulders they rest. Yeah,
And I love that she said intelligent, aupful people can

(01:03:00):
be disturbed by their own thoughts. I just you know,
that's so important to remember, and you know, so just
to like rush through. I just some of those fun
things about her life. You know, at one point she says,
you know, I'm going to give up this, you know, studying,
and I'm gonna be um a singer, and she travels
to Europe with her friend Elizabeth Coleman, and and then

(01:03:20):
for her it was like, well, I'm going to teach
singing lessons as well, and there's the science of singing.
And you know, she didn't end up making it as
a singer, really going for it, went back to Australia.
But I love that notion that everything she did was
sort of just still creeping along towards the becoming a
writer about anxiety. You know, she knew then how much
breathing can change the nurse system, and thought, you know,

(01:03:42):
i'll help singers with the song is singing as a science,
and she's right about that. But you know, thinking of
how many more people she helped than singers is wild.
I know it is. And also she had another really
interesting idea that I wish could be developed by somebody.
She had the side of glimpsing. You know, she would
say to people, especially people who had depression, which I

(01:04:04):
note she called depletion. She saw a depression before anyone
else did. They would now call it rather more grandiosely
as a comal depression and anxiety morbidities. You know, she
just said, look, you know, if you have adrenaline pumping
along from you for long enough, you're going to get
depleted and you're going to end up with depression. And

(01:04:25):
that makes so much sense to call it depletion, you know.
But she had this idea of glimpsing, and that is,
no matter how bad you feel, and you know people
in certainly in particularly depression, can feel just unspeakable, try
to glimpse, even if it's only just a few seconds
a day, try to glimpse another way of good glimpse.

(01:04:48):
I've probably forgotten because it's so long ago since I
wrote about glimpse glimpsing. But the idea was just to
glimpse something better, glimpse a change. And I think that's
so powerful because you can in bad times glimpse the
idea of feeling different or better times, and that little
thing is changing. That gives your body a little shot

(01:05:10):
of something else other than just adrenaline and misery. And
is it has a retraining purpose in a way. Getting
back to this idea of retraining your responses, we'll be
right back a few things, just really quick. About her,

(01:05:33):
you know, she she had her own chemical imbalance theory,
and I I'm sure she'd been happy to know that
I agree with her. But that nervous illness comes first
and the chemical imbalance in our brain follows. So if
you fix again, it's the same thing, to fix the
nervous illness, and the chemical imbalance will right itself. It's
not like, oh, people with anxiety, they were born with
this chemical imbalance. I mean, you know, it's like, well,

(01:05:56):
if you're fretting and anxious and then you're depleted, which
can make you depressed, it will mess up the serotonin
in the dopamine in your brain. But if you fix
all that, then it comes back. It's not inherently like
you didn't have these chemicals when you were born, because again,
we can't test that so well. It is. It's so
simple in a way, isn't it too? You are a

(01:06:16):
mind and of body. You can't separate them. So she
met this Marcel, and you know, they ended up being engaged,
and then she had to make this decision, which was
she decided she loved medicine more than the idea of marriage,
and she broke off the engagement chose medicine. He ended
up marrying a really good friend of hers. And but

(01:06:36):
I find that, you know again, environment, not just her
home environment or what was directly next to her, but
the world as her environment informed so much of her
understanding of anxiety. And I love how much for her
gender played into it that. You know again, people were
talking about a gor phobia, and she didn't embrace that

(01:06:58):
word as you as you talk told us in the book, um,
because it's you know, agoraphobia to her was not a
fear of leaving the house or wide open species. It's
people who are afraid of what's inside themselves and we're
going to panic. When I can just interrupt there a
little bit, what just to say that it is interesting.
She did write a book called Agraphobia, and I've forgotten

(01:07:19):
had a long enough, but that was the publishers. Agrophobia
had become very trendy as a concept. And look, she
did she didn't know people suffered from something called agrophobia,
but she saw anxiety. She didn't she didn't chop it
up into different disorders like as as other general anxiety disorder.
And you know, she treated O c D. She treated

(01:07:40):
a lot of these things. She they were, they manifested
themselves differently, but she saw the commonality in them rather
than the differences in them. And she was very unified
in her theory. And I think that's where it is
coming back to a bit in thinking instead of chopping
everything up, seeing what's common about them as well as
what's different. I knew it's it in the book that

(01:08:01):
you know, back when she was doing this work, Um,
the D s M had not there was no anxiety,
panic attack, agoraphobia. Yet there weren't twenty seven different ways
you said of slicing anxiety there was no words for it.
And what's been an interesting journey for me hosting this podcast,
as I was very insistent for a while on you know,

(01:08:22):
let's name it so that we can do something about it.
But again I think I'm back in the clear weeks
thing where it's like, that's fine if you know, there's
no shame, so we can name. But it's the nervous system,
so it doesn't matter if you are agoraphobic or um
social anxious. It's all the same solution. Dal And called it.
There are good things about species and good things about lumpers.

(01:08:43):
In other words, some people spit everything down and find
special things about individual areas and other people have coherent
lumping ideas where they like to see the big picture.
And there role for both. But let's face it, it's
it's very important to find the commonality in a lot
of these conditions that I think, you well, let's at

(01:09:04):
certainly not so much important as it's possibly more useful
to see what's common to them than treat you know
them all is being distinctly different problems. It's like talking
about people with all these disorders when at at heart
they're very anxious, and that anxiety is a very human thing,
and they've and they've learned bad patterns and they've come to,

(01:09:27):
as she would say, they've become tricked by their nerves.
And if you do that, if you once you become
tricked by your nerves, you will perpetuate this really disturbing
process in your mind and your body. And it's not
because you have some special inadequacy or badness or whatever
that is causing this. It's just a very human, very

(01:09:48):
human problem. And and and it's a it can be
understood and it can be treated. What I love about
what you said about what was a gooraphobia, but really
just this nervous system issue is she did think more
women suffered it from it, but she said it's a

(01:10:09):
cultural problem, not a gender problem. So to her, it
was like a woman's life at home lends itself to
this anxiety orgoraphobia, but a nervously ill man can have
the same symptoms, but he's got a different life. And
she was saying, you know, city bound executive didn't. Yeah,
And then but the wife might be home because societally

(01:10:31):
she's just stuck. This is where she's told she has
to be. And then you know, then the men go
out drinking to cure their nerves and they come home angry.
And now there's a way. So there is so much
environmental um that is, you know, different now. And uh
I thought that was fascinating that there was a gender

(01:10:52):
component to it. And she really hated housework and she did,
she did absolutely, and she was spoilder in her life
because she lived with members of her family and she
had her partner, Beth Coleman the Penis. They all thought
she was a genius and everyone did all that. Everyone
else did all the housework Claire Claire hated it, but
she see, she also saw all those practically. The book

(01:11:15):
was not only sort of medically and scientifically ahead of
its time, but it was also sort of hugely practical
in the suggestions it made for people. Because she had
this idea of occupation. And she'd say, look, if you
don't like housework, you do do anything. It finds something
else to do that you like. It could be in
those days that women didn't have many choices, but you
could do anything. And she used to say, just look,

(01:11:37):
you know, just paint the door red, but but get
off that bed and and and be occupied. She saw
a real value in inoccupation that lying inert on the
bed was just not the way to go. And that's
why she didn't see the idea of relaxation as hugely
useful as a concept in itself, because you had to
pass through you have to move forward with the panic.

(01:12:00):
If you see what I mean, it's like if you're
fighting it or trying to relax, trying to relax is
so unrelaxing um acceptance is not easy, but that's the
way to go rather than trying to relax, and her
telling a housewave, you know, do something, do anything else.
I really feel like that tight in with her theory
that a lot of people with that kind of anxiety

(01:12:21):
did have self esteem problems. And so if you do
something that you go, oh, I can't look at what
I did, it increases your self esteem even if you
get over your you know, you pass through your panic
once that you can actually have that and say, oh,
I overcame that. You know, it was she was like
teaching people to build to build up, build up. That's

(01:12:42):
what build up this by building up good habits of
living too. She was quite funny about parenting as well.
It didn't make me laugh. She would say, you know,
and when when Christmas is coming, and she said children
are raised to be too, you know, she said, the
way you raised is important, she said, instead of saying,
you know, Christmas is going to be here in a

(01:13:03):
few days in sand will be turning lots of presentship,
so just say it's rather amusing. You know, there's another
ten days before Christmas, so that gives you lots of
time to go and do other useful things. She was
rather pious about all of that, but you could see
what she was getting at, which was, you know, you
just don't sort of unnecessarily have to rev everybody up

(01:13:23):
because interestingly, and I don't know about you, Jim, but
I think the other side to um, fear and anxiety
is joy and responsiveness. I mean, you know, people's people.
She used to say, I feel sorry for the person
who has never had anxiety because they've never experienced the
highs as well. You know, in that sense, she's identifying
in a non pathological way, the slightly bipolar quality of

(01:13:48):
the anxious state, which is it's capable of great joys
and great responsiveness as well. Yeah, she was saying, you know,
anxious people feel music more deeply and yeah, she feels
bad for people that don't let and I think I
would agree with that. So basically, you know, she goes
out through all through these career changes, goes back to school,
becomes a doctor, I mean just you know, a doctor

(01:14:09):
seeing patients. And this is where right before she writes
her book. For years, she starts noticing in her patients
that they have nervous illnesses a k A. Anxiety, and
she's she's letting them come to her house, call her,
she goes to their how she spends hours with them.
I think a couple of patients moved in. I mean,
she must have been seen as such an eccentric and

(01:14:33):
but it was because she studied, as you wrote in
your book, she because she got to study these people
for hours and look at all their different symptoms and
find the common ground. Then she writes that first book,
Hope and Help for Your Nerves, which you know was
this best seller and then it became an international bestseller
years later. It seemed like she had this I mean

(01:14:53):
what she wrote the book in her sixties, so through
her eighties she keeps it's almost like that it comes
in waves. Right, She goes back to Australia for a
little while. Then oh, the Make Douglas Show and Jack
you know, Dick Cabot and Obviouslydden, all these like lite
nat shows in America. One her on and she goes
to American and she goes to the BBC. Robert DuPont
told me that when he visited the White Plants Hospital
in York where they had the first phobia clinic, he

(01:15:14):
said that the queue of people around the block with
their dog eared copies of her book lining up to
thank her for saving their lives. And everyone, you know,
should go on television programs. And I've seen quotes from
producers who said they crashed the switchboard afterwards. The BBC
had her on the mail. The post office couldn't handle
the mail afterwards. You know, people felt seen, you know,

(01:15:37):
to use her terrible cliche, seen and understood, you know,
by this woman in a way that they just had
never before. And it's remarkable because you know, there's a
lot is made of firsthand contact, but she was doing
this through a book. You know, this is a book
that was was giving bringing such huge relief and and

(01:15:57):
and and literally I mean I was contacted the other
day but recently by an American writer who's written a
number of books on Hollywood, and he's writing his own memoirs,
and he's devoting an entire chapter of his book to
clear wakes. She saved my life, I said, you and
everybody else says that. I want to read a quote
from her that you put in your book. So this

(01:16:18):
doctor DuPont, who started the you know, he's the founder
of the it's the a A. I'm going to forget
the American Associated franxiety and depression as the founder of that. Yeah.
She So he was talking to her about panic and
she mentioned, you know, that she did have occasional attacks

(01:16:39):
of panic at night. And he expressed his sympathy, and
she just went off and she said, quote, my boy,
you may be good with drug problems, but you have
no talent for the treatment of anxiety. What you call
a panic attack is nothing but a few chemicals temporarily
out of place in my brain. It means nothing to me.
So your sympathy shows you don't understand the problem or
the salute. Thus, I do not want or need your sympathy.

(01:17:03):
It does not bother me. It is unimportant. She was
so sassy, But I love that. That's why it's great
and you can get a very clear picture that you know,
and if you've ever had panic and you've worked woken
up in a shock and you're invaded by that unexpected
panic attack in the night, that if you could just
go on, that's that's that thing again. That's different from going,

(01:17:24):
oh my god, what's this? This is never gonna end.
I'm never going to get to sleep again. You know,
you can see what she's getting at with that statement, right,
And she's trying to say, you know, I don't treat
those thoughts as important. That's how I recovered, and so
I can't be so precious about it, like, yes, I suffer,
you know. Um. And lastly, I would just love this. Um.

(01:17:47):
She was, you know, your book starts out and this
really great, almost like a movie would open. You know.
It's it's the later in her life and she's speaking
at this con with all these psychiatrists and people are
just you know, not taking her seriously because she was
thought of her self, I thought of as a self
help writer. And it wasn't until her third book that

(01:18:09):
finally people started to show her some respect. But I mean,
none of these people I feel I could do what
she did. I mean the fact that Freud was can't
you know, like the big thing when she started out.
But slowly people realize that really nothing he said about
you want I stuck with your mom is going to

(01:18:29):
help anyone with their anxiety. You know, she crucial, She crucially,
which is a fascinating He he never treated the soldiers
and World War too unlack a lot of his colleagues.
He stuck with um. He stuck with his private clients.
Um in I think I don't help much of this.
I think was Vienna. But but I know he stuck
with his private And but the people who treated the soldiers,

(01:18:52):
they appreciated that fear was at the basis of the disturbance,
not the fact that they had an neidable complex or
some sexual And and and her teacher in the university
college and who taught her about the nervous system. Again,
her life all feeds towards her understanding. Graph Nellett Smith,
who did treat soldiers in World War One, he couldn't

(01:19:13):
stand Freud, and he said, he said, he said, he
thought it was thinly veiled pornography. He's described him as
a sexologist, and he just dismissed him. And he saw
fear as being at the heart and he wrote a
little pamphlet on that, which I'm sure she read. And
she saw fear as at the basis of so much
nervous illness. I mean not, she just didn't have much time.

(01:19:34):
And look, you know, yes, she wasn't dismissing that childhood
influences could play a role, but they were past now
we had to deal with the here enough. But I
think it was her identification fear rather than sex, that was,
you know, profoundly important. I was just thinking about do
you have any opinions on the term. You know, there's

(01:19:57):
others it's may right now as mental health and here
in this month, and people will say things like, let's
normalize taking care of our mental health. And I think
we're never going to get anywhere if we keep using
the word mental because I feel like it's already a
quote bad word. It's already thought of as an adjective,
not a noun. I mean, wouldn't it be um an

(01:20:18):
homage to clear weeks to call it our brain health
or nervous system health or something. I'm absolutely with you, Jena.
You know, I often ponder these ideas and about how
even I can understand them. I feel really discomfited by
a lot of I don't like all that stuff about
mental health and mental illness. I mean when I said,
don't mean it's don't get me wrong. Obviously I feel

(01:20:40):
people need help. But again, it's like a notion about
hygiene or good personal hygiene. It's it's good mental, last
person's mental. I'll reach for the same words. But as
you said, I think it was better to call it
understanding your nervous system is a better way of joining
us in our humanity. Not in a way just to
make people feel better for the sake of it, but

(01:21:02):
just that it's really important to see us all on
a normal spectrum. I mean, that's not to say there
aren't Maybe she wasn't dealing with psychosis of certain I mean,
I'm not suggesting there aren't those terrible people don't have
particular and terrible area that I don't know anything about.
But it's not it's not manic depression, it's not as
part and we're just talking about like obesic anxiety. Yeah,

(01:21:25):
I haven't got a name gen. We'll have to know
and we'll have to p one up. But I like,
for now green, how they're nervous system. I think it's
about that nervous system, because it is, it's in our
body and our mind. And and let's get some and
let's get that into the language of into schools explaining

(01:21:46):
things about the mind and the body in a very
simple way to kids, so that you know, that sort
of thing could be taught, as I always used to think,
you know, along with things like physical health. You know,
you could just explain the base us of anxiety to
children in a simple way that when they think they're
feeling very different from other kids, you could start off.
I just feel we need a very fresh approach to

(01:22:09):
a practical approach to how you deal with these issues,
rather than taking people into dark, individual complicated spaces that
you know, maybe that's necessary for particular in particular cases,
people have their own special difficulties, but we all have
a commonality, and let's deal with that bit in an open,
frank way rather than everyone um and then from that

(01:22:32):
point people can go down whatever path they choose, but
they've got a steadier foundation. I feel like that foundation
is not there, as you say, it's treated as mental
illness or a disorder or something like that. Whereas it
just should be part of what we all understand about life.
I agree. Thank you so much for coming onto my show.
I just want to thank you to Jen that I've

(01:22:54):
listened to your podcast. They're fantastic, they feel a real
I feel. I listened to a lot of people. I'm
in past part of writing the book, I've listened to
lots and lots of different um speakers, and I really
enjoy the way in which you bring in experts, but
you are able to so intelligently communicate the issues to
people in a really useful, practical way. That's rare and

(01:23:16):
really helpful. I think, so thank you so much for
having me. It was a pleasure and clear weeks. Wherever
she is, can you hear us talking about her? I
hope you enjoyed my chat with Judith as much as
I did. It was so wonderful And I miss Australia
so much. If I have any listeners there, I haven't

(01:23:39):
been to your beautiful, beautiful country in I think four years,
and for someone used to go every year, it's so
it makes me so sad um. But with my work
schedules and everything, I don't know when I'm getting back there.
But big hugs, big hugs for me anyway. So here
are the takeaways for this episode about the life of

(01:24:02):
doctor Claire Weeks. Dr Clear Weeks was the first person
to treat people and write self help books about what
we now know as agoraphobia, panic attacks, and anxiety. Doctor
Weeks experienced panic attacks, which is why she was so
successful at treating others with the same symptoms she had
been there herself. Her books were so popular because she

(01:24:24):
wrote as though she were talking to you directly from
a place of understanding. Her first book is titled Hope
and Help for Your Nerves. It's been translated in many
languages and the title changes depending on what country it's
being sold in. One version of this book was also
known as passed through Panic. Cleare Weeks was aiming for

(01:24:44):
a Rockefeller Fellowship to further her scientific studies of biology
and evolution in England when she had a botched surgery
for sore throat and was told that she had the
highly contagious tuberculosis and was sent to live in a
santatorium for six months by herself. When she got out,
she began experiencing panic attacks on a rapid heart rate

(01:25:06):
that she did not know was anxiety. She thought that
she had a deadly heart condition. It was doctor weeks
study as a biologist of reptiles and how they lay
eggs that led her to understanding the environment affected their evolution,
and that would later inform her hypothesis that an anxious
person's immediate environment, more than generics generics genetics, determined their

(01:25:29):
level of anxiety, or if they experienced symptoms of anxiety
at all. When Dr Claire Weeks was on a study
tour up in the Barrington Tops Mountains outside of Sydney,
Australia in the nineteen twenties, she met a geologist named
Dr Marcel A. Russo. He was a World War One veteran,
and years later she ran into this old friend of

(01:25:51):
hers again in London, and she was so anxious she
was on the verge of a collapse. She told Marcel
of her heart palpitations and her nameless dread. Marcel told
her that soldiers felt that way in war, and he
introduced her of the concept of floating past the moment. Claire,
after talking to Marcel, realized that she had just been

(01:26:13):
frightening herself with the thoughts she was thinking about her
heart palpitations, which caused further symptoms. Claire changed her outlook
on her heart palpitations and would go to bed and
say to herself, I'll allow my heart to palpitate if necessary,
and once she stopped engaging with her symptoms, it all
cleared up. She described it as all of this time,

(01:26:33):
her quote, fear had been bluffing her. Doctor Claire Weeks
also recommends trying to make a panic attack worse during
the midst of one. And my edit note here is
because usually that stops it from getting worse. Doctor Claire
Weeks used to say about her methods to float through
panic attacks, I don't have a doctor Weeks method. I'm

(01:26:54):
using nature's way. Her books simply explained the nervous system.
Doctor Weeks said that acceptance of a panic attack is
not enduring or putting up with one, but walking towards
the fear. Let it burn through you. That's the path
through to the end of panic. It gives the body
the chance to stop pumping adrenaline. Trying to stop a

(01:27:17):
panic attack just re adrenalizes yourself. Doctor Clare Week's timeline
of handling a panic attack is to face except float,
let time pass don't try to stop the panic attack.
This is simple to do, but not easy because many
people have a hard time telling their body to stop
fighting because it can feel like you're giving into dying.

(01:27:40):
Unlike lizards who can go into fight or flight when
they're in fear, humans can stop and reflect. Claire says
that we have the first fear, the exposure to the
feelings of fear, even if they're out of the blue,
and then the second fear, and that's thoughts that we
think that end up scaring us in response to the
panic attack, and now our anxiety becomes a out the
second fear, and that part is preventable. Panic isn't an emotion,

(01:28:05):
it's a full body, physical experience. Dr Claire Weeks felt
that panic attacks were simply people fearing their own bodies.
She said, you are not ill until you become frightened
of your own nervous system. The cycle of a panic
attack is simply fear adrenaline, fear adrenaline on a loop.

(01:28:25):
Trying to quote relax during a panic attack isn't the
way to get through one either. It's the same as fighting.
The body needs to release to yield. It's similar to
a Buddhist attitude. Even though Clear Weeks did not have
any Eastern spiritual influence to Clear Weeks, being cured of
panic attacks didn't mean that you never had a panic

(01:28:45):
attack again, but instead that you didn't fear having one again.
As always, if you want to read these takeaways, you
can go to my website Jen Kirkman dot com click
on Anxiety Bites. They should be eight there. Also, the
link is in the show notes. The link to everything
about Judith Horr is in the show notes. The link

(01:29:06):
to this book is in the show notes, as well
as to more information on Dr Claire Winks. And as always,
leave a five star review on Spotify or Apple podcast
that really helps more people find the podcast. And I
will have one last listener email episode I think before
the end of season one, so please send me an email.

(01:29:30):
Anxiety Bites weekly at gmail dot com. You can ask
any questions or give us any tips that you have
for handling your anxiety. And don't forget Anxiety Bites, but
you're in control. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

(01:29:53):
you listen to your favorite shows.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

The Breakfast Club

Dateline NBC

Decisions, Decisions

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Life of Dr. Claire Weekes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}The Breakfast Club

Dateline NBC

Decisions, Decisions

All Episodes

The Life of Dr. Claire Weekes

The Breakfast Club