I
don’t know if you caught it, but this year at the season-ending PGA
tournament, the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic, something
miraculous actually did happen. Tour rookie Charlie Beljan, needing a
big weekend to finish in the top 125 and thus keep his card for next
year, not only accomplished his goal, but won the tournament. In doing
so, he jumped from 160th on the money list to 64th, more than doubled
his earnings for the year, snagged a two-year exemption on the Tour and
saved himself from returning to the dreaded q-school, the Calvary of all
Tour wannabes.
But, that’s not the miracle.
The
miracle happened on Friday. Not feeling well before the round with
chest pain and shortness of breath on the practice tee, he nevertheless
chose to play, largely because he was cleared by the Tour medical staff,
who found nothing “medically” wrong with him. But, at several points
in the round, he was seen hunched over with hands on knees, or resting
on the ground, or trying to take huge gulps of air. As he acknowledged
later, he actually thought he was going to die. He spent Friday night
in the hospital where, again, doctors found nothing medically wrong with
him and it was determined that he was having a panic attack. And we
still haven’t gotten to the miracle yet.
Let’s
take a look at just some of the symptoms of a panic attack, as outlined
by the DSM-IV (The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental
Disorders): accelerated heart rate, trembling, chest pain, feeling of
choking, shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea, de-realization (“this
isn’t happening”) and sense of impending death. So, clearly, the
miracle here is that he managed to shoot a 64 under the grip of symptoms
such as these. Indeed, after a birdie on the fourteenth hole which
brought him to 9-under for the day, he was officially on “59 watch.” He
may be the only player in PGA Tour history who at one and the same time
was on both death watch and 59-watch. Most of us couldn’t deliver the
club head to the ball under these circumstances, much less play the
round of our lives.
But
let’s look a little closer at what a panic attack is and how you might
handle one, should it occur. From the symptoms I listed above, it is
clear that, regardless of the external reality, the body is responding
as though it is facing an existential threat. Indeed, these symptoms
are all reactions of the sympathetic nervous system, one of whose main
jobs is the injection of adrenaline and cortisol as part of the body’s
“fight or flight” response. Now, I hear what you’re thinking: “Give me a
break, Matt. This guy was playing a round of golf, he wasn’t being
chased by a lion in the Serengetti.” Here, we remember that trauma and
stress are in the eyes of the beholder. That is, the degree of stress
attached to an event is up to the person experiencing it, not those
of us commenting on it later around the pinochle table. From Charlie’s
point of view, he was
fighting for his life: his tour card was on the line, he had just
become a father, with the attendant stress of providing for his family,
and he was staring down the barrel of the twin indignities of q-school
and begging for tournament exemptions.
To
address a panic attack, we have to realize that one of the main
triumphs of any form of stress is that it steals us away from the
present moment and forces us to focus on future outcomes, generally dire
(“I’m going to lose.” “I’m going to miss this shot.” “I’m going to
die.”). So, the first step
is to have some awareness when you start getting nervy and the
self-talk is becoming anxious. Remember that nerves are a sign that you
care and are engaged in something important, not a sign that you are
panicking. Every athlete gets nervous. Take it as a sign that you are
alive, not dead, and doing something for which you have trained hard and
are well prepared. You are lucky to be in this position. If you
transition from nervous to panic, center and ground yourself in the here
and now. Respond to the negative self-talk with mantras like “I’m
here” “I’m not dying (losing, missing)” “stay tuned,” “isn’t this
great?!” You may even need to lightly pat or pinch yourself. By
continuously bringing yourself back to the here and now, you can avert
the precipitous slide into dismal future projections. Secondly,
as to that most common symptom: hyperventilating. When we
hyperventilate, we are not oxygenating our blood, and the oxygen deficit
leads to light-headedness and an increased urgency on breathing, but
with diminished returns. This is why so many panic attack sufferers
say, “I can’t breathe!” Here, the fix is obvious: breathe! But,
breathe gently, not frantically. The breaths should be long, extended
inhalations that bypass the chest and go directly into the belly.
Exhalations should fully empty the lungs. (This takes practice. The
belly should go out, not in, when you are deep breathing properly.)
People often ask me how long they should continue belly breathing. The
answer is: always, but certainly for as long as the stressful situation
pertains. For Charlie on Friday, the answer would have been the
entirety of his round. The fact that he was seen on multiple occasions
literally gasping for air showed that he wasn’t breathing properly. The
third
solution is to find a way to be distracted from the stress. This can
be difficult during a competitive situation, but any sporting event, and
particularly a golf round, affords many opportunities to bring our
focus away from the stress of the moment and onto other things. It’s
useful, during a hiatus in actually performing the actions of the sport,
to bring the attention to one’s sensual experience of the surroundings:
the smell of the air or grass, some beautiful sight, often plentiful on a golf course (a dramatic cloud formation, the play of light, a pretty bird), or some ambient sounds.
When we put our focus on these things, we generally exit the
battlefield of the mind and attend to experiences that are occurring in
the here and now. We leave our world and enter the world. In moving
out of our head and into the senses, we more fully enter the moment.
In
this regard, Charlie’s panic attack may have been his saving grace. In
focusing on the fact that he thought he was dying, he thus turned
earning his Tour card into a matter of little significance. Still, I
don’t recommend that you try that strategy. Having a panic attack and
thinking you’re dying might help you avert some other stressors, but
it’s not generally the way to float & sting your way to victory. And
while it is metabolically and metaphysically true that we are dying
every minute, let’s save that ultimate reality for later and invest our
energies in being here now.
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