detta_walker

I met my husband on EQ 6 years ago. Once we managed to move together (different countries) we quit. But the siren call of p99 is still strong for me. Been playing on and off since November 1999.... I nearly dropped out of school because of it.

Same happened to me and I've been on keto for 11 months

I had exactly the same. I used to speak at conferences with 200+ people in the audience and did great.

But a random call out on a call during the pandemic triggered a slippery slope. It got so bad I got panic attacks. And especially video calls like you say. I think it's because you're coming in cold to the discussion. Can't establish rapport beforehand. It was getting real bad for me where I dreaded any speaking appointments days and days in advance and couldn't sleep the night before.

What really helped was cognitive behaviour therapy.

I managed to recondition my body response away from flight. My therapist was fantastic. Main things she had me do was 1) establish a happy place in my head where I could go to in situations of anxiety 2) visualise my fear as something tangible - naturally my fear was embodied as the balrog 3) counter pre-speech anxiety days before with positive thoughts 4) write down fears and counter them 5) on public speaking day I would ground myself in the minutes leading up to it by going into my happy day 6) lastly, id say out loud to myself : I'm afraid but I'm doing it anyway! And if I felt fear coming up I'd picture it as the balrog and I turned into gandalf at the bridge and imagined screaming : you shall not pass

After all this prep, I had a speaking engagement in front of 50 people on video. And I didn't even feel any anxiety come up. It was like magic. Random call outs I handle much more relaxed now. If your company offers private healthcare I'd give CBT a go