In just 6 minutes talk Dr. Harry Barry explains the simple technique of how to tame your irritable gunslinger (amygdala) and banish panic attacks forever. He also demystifies social anxiety in just a few sentences.
Dr. Harry Barry is a GP; a leading mental health commentator including regular slots on RTÉ Radio’s Today with Sean O’Rourke and author of best-selling #Flagging series covering Anxiety; Panic Attacks; Toxic Stress and Depression (available here amzn.to/2xV6h6P).
His interest in all things mental health began about forty years ago when he met a leopard at 3 in the morning in rural Tanzania.Three in the morning is not a good time to meet a leopard, if indeed such a time exists, but luckily for Dr Barry, he was well-armed. He had his amygdala, two small bunches of neurons either side of the brain who's job it is to spot leopards and other assorted hazards likely to lose a human a limb, or worse.
Once it has seen the danger, it reacts with lightning speed so, with it in charge of the situation that night in the Tanzanian bush, Dr Barry instantly froze. That was a critical reaction as movement would attract attention. Suddenly he was shaking, sweating, hyper-ventilating, his muscles went tense and his mouth dry.
The amygdala was preparing to run and it did that by sending messages that caused adrenaline to be poured into the bloodstream. Once he returned to the house after about 15 minutes, everything went back to normal - breathing, heart-rate - because the danger was gone.
For years, the leopard encounter served Dr Barry simply as a colourful anecdote from another period in his life. However, later, in his work as a GP in Drogheda, Co Louth, the experience took on new significance when he noticed the correlation between the physical response the symptoms of a panic attack.
Questions like this came to intrigue Dr Barry over the years as he found himself veering towards specialising in mental health. He was struck by the large number of patients he saw with mental health issues, and bothered by his own profession’s struggles to comprehensively and conclusively treat them.
Nine years ago he wrote his first book on the subject, Flagging The Problem: A New Approach To Mental Health, in which he touched the main mental health problems found in a GP’s waiting room. His latest book, the sixth in the series, is Flagging Anxiety and Panic - How To Reshape Your Anxious Mind And Brain.
His latest book, the sixth in the series, is Flagging Anxiety and Panic - How To Reshape Your Anxious Mind And Brain was published in the spring of 2016 and rapidly sold out.
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