I’m especially excited to do this interview with Jack, who’s in one of my favorite cities, Boston, because that’s where all my favorite sports teams are. And I’m especially excited because Jack is a superb role model for college-age students who have social and performance anxiety. Not to overly generalize, but it’s hard to find people of that age who have this special kind of motivation and initiative to resolve the problem. That’s why Jack is such a role model, which you will hear if you listen closely. So Jack, thank you very much for doing this. Thank you, Jonathan. Thank you. How’s your golf game? Golf game is getting better. It’s always a work in progress, but it’s certainly improving slowly but surely.
What are you shooting these things? Mid-70s around, low to mid-70s, trying to get a little bit lower. Well, there’s lots of people who are listening to this who would like to have that as their score. I’m sure. In any case, let’s start by describing what was going on for you when we originally met. Describe the problem that was existing. Sure. It was just an overall anxiety that I had towards specific social situations. Those social situations were, we talked a lot about the cocktail party scenario or just gatherings of people where there was a lot of people who you’d never met before and there was an expectation to interact with these people right away.
Whether it was cocktail parties or, I don’t know, any type of social engagement like that, like a wedding and you’re sitting at a table and there’s 10 other people there that you don’t know. I got a lot of anxiety and there was a lot of sweating and general nervousness going into it, leading up to it for several hours before the event. I would find myself obsessing about it and really thinking about what was going to happen, how I was going to have the conversation. I wasn’t letting myself be free with just accepting what was going to happen. I had to know what was going to happen beforehand. Okay. Hold on. Let’s start with the cocktail party. Because that was the point of intervention.
Michael Jack has been extremely motivated in therapy. The initial contact was via his parents and that was the initial story that I heard. You were home, it was Christmas time, something like that and there was this cocktail party and you didn’t go. They were concerned. What was going on for you that you made the decision, I just can’t go to that cocktail party with my parents? That specific situation, it was extreme because there were even friends of ours and it wasn’t even like it was an unknown, you know, strainers I would be interacting with. But I just found myself, I don’t know, really revert. I was probably 20 years old at the time and I was reverting to like a 12 year old’s mindset that I don’t want to go. I’m not going. I couldn’t think it through clearly and rationalize it.
I just couldn’t think properly about the situation. It was just basically a dinner party with family friends and I couldn’t get around the fact that I’d have to interact socially with them and I just wasn’t comfortable doing that. I just put up a firm no and I ended up not going and my parents were, they weren’t even angry. They were just disappointed and upset that they had come to that point that I couldn’t even go out to dinner with family friends. And I want the listeners to know that Jack is a very intelligent young man. He’s a good looking young man. He’s a terrific athlete. Maybe even more importantly comes from a wonderful family. He has very high values. His ethics are wonderful. Okay, so you had this problem and again it was the cocktail party syndrome but it was more than that.
There was anxiety. There was performance anxiety. As you learned in therapy, the underlying dynamic for the anxiety, for the social and performance anxiety, the deeper component of it was obsessiveness. Can you describe that? Yeah, the obsessiveness was just a constant state of worrying and thinking about the social engagements that were to come. Or just constantly obsessing about it in my mind. Like I said before, not really being able to rationalize it and to think rationally about it. Your mind is just going a million miles an hour and then when you’re actually in the situation and you’re obsessing about it, I feel like that obsessiveness and the thinking really quickly about it and your mind is moving a million miles an hour and then the sweating comes and then it just, it all kind of hits you.
It all comes right at you and it’s a very nerve-wracking experience to go through when that obsessiveness leads into the sweating and then it’s kind of a, we talked about before what I call the freak out and you just go to the bathroom and you splash water in your face and it’s tough. It was tough experiences that we went through. When you were locked into the obsessing, what were you primarily worrying about? You know, it was really just the minutiae of conversation and what I was going to have to do. You know, just stuff I feel like most people who are healthy in this exact space of their lives never even think about what am I going to say.
You know, what are the exact words I’m going to say? I wasn’t, I was afraid to freestyle in a conversation. I wanted, I wanted to practice. I wanted like, you know, something written out. I wanted to be hurt when I was going to say I couldn’t, I was nervous about how I was going to tell my story, how I was going to ask them questions, just the general minutiae of conversation. How is this anxiety affecting your life? It affected my life in a number of ways. For one, I was, you know, limiting myself from going to things that I should go to, like the example with my family and cutting myself off from just experiences that are meant to be happy. You know, everyone enjoys going to parties. They’re usually a good atmosphere.
And I wasn’t even letting myself go to that because I was too nervous about, you know, the social conventions and dealing with my anxiety that I was about having a good time. So it definitely impacted that part of my life, obviously. But then in a larger sense, I think it really led to a lack of self-confidence in my personal life. And, you know, I think, and that manifested itself in an untold number of ways. Just a general lack of confidence in myself. It was, no, just a lack of self-confidence. Well, a question that I ask everybody that I interview, do you feel that this anxiety problem was affecting your mood? Yeah, I think it was.
I don’t know if there was a cloud over my head, but it was, I wasn’t allowing myself to be happy and free. And just, whatever you worry, and you can almost tell anxiety on the face of somebody. You know, they just look kind of really, really tight and really stressed out and they’re not free and easy and relaxed. And I think that was kind of like a permanent attitude that I carried around with me. And every once in a while I would be able to be happy and be free, but my general consistent mood was kind of an anxiety-ridden attitude. Do you remember what your thinking was or your attitude when your parents made the first step of the therapy? Well, I think it was a relief. I think a lot of people are reticent to admit that they have a problem or an issue or something that could be fixed.
And I think that’s especially true for kids’ minds because, you know, it’s tough to kind of admit that you’re not good in social situations or that you get uncomfortable because you see all your friends seemingly able to do it so easily every weekend night and they’re always going to parties and having a good time and you feel kind of like an outcast. And to admit that is a really big step. And you know, a lot of people are not able to do that right away. So when my parents took the initiative on it, my mom in particular, I think she heard something about you on WFAN or 660. And you know, she made the phone call, she told me about it. And I don’t really remember there ever being any hesitation on my part. I was like, all right, let’s go.
I’d love to learn more about this. And I’d like to see if we can change this because I’m sick of dealing with it. That’s a very, very healthy attitude. Okay. Now, very subjectively and very honestly, what percentage? Of your problem when you consider the performance anxiety, the underlying obsessiveness, how it impacts your lifestyle, meaning the things you used to avoid, the worrying, all that kind of stuff. What percentage of the overall problem do you feel you have resolved to this point? I would say between 90 and 95 percent of that. Okay. Now that’s an amazing stat. Now what I want you to do is I’d like you to talk for just a couple of minutes. A couple more minutes about how you achieved that number. Sure.
Well, obviously it all started with the conversations that I had with you and going through certain scenarios and talking them out and learning more about what they meant from like a psychological perspective and rather than just, you know, here’s what happened and then we were able to talk it out. I think one of the biggest couple things that we touched on was nurturing the natural child, which is your ability to enjoy things spontaneously and just be curious about things and not always have to have a plan like I did in the past. What started to happen was I started to take some of the techniques that I talked about with you and you know you were a great sounding board for the situations I talked about and then I would go into the real world.
You know, I’d get off the phone with you and then there would be an event and a social event that I would previously have said no, I’m not going to. And while at first there were still a large amount of anxiety in going to that event, I saw it as this is a test, this is like a training situation to see if you can implement some of the techniques and to see if you can, if you have improved. And the way I looked at it was even if I fail miserably, it’s still going to be, you know, a great topic of conversation for my next time I get on the phone with Jonathan because it’s going to be a lot to tell him what my physical reaction was, what my mental state was and then we’ll be able to move on going forward. So what I started to do is put myself in a lot more of those types of situations and it really helped because you know the more repetitions and more practice you get, the better you’re going to get it.
Okay, the more repetition and the more practice you get, yes, you’re going to get better. Some people don’t just by repetition. In practice is very important if you coordinate it with what you’re doing with your thinking and handling your emotions and the physiology of performance, okay? So just for another minute here, the difference now when you’re going into a social event or a cocktail party, the way you approach it now, your attitude, your psychology now is compared to before is how? The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that I don’t, I’m not preoccupied with it leading up to the event and I’m not thinking of it a day before, I’m not thinking of it two days before and I’m not obsessing about it four hours before and counting down until I have to go. It’s a lot more, okay, yeah, that’s on my calendar and I’m going to get to that when I get there.
And when I get there, it’s definitely, I’m less concerned with myself and I feel like that was a big issue. I went in there and I was thinking about this has to be a performance. I have to really put on a good image of myself and do a very, very good job. You don’t have to, it wasn’t about performance. There shouldn’t be a performance aspect to it. It should just be you going in there, having conversation and just being yourself. And the other thing that really helped me off was I always looked at other people who were in the social situation and said, man, they’re awesome at that. They must, they’re amazing at it. But you don’t realize that it’s an awkward situation for everybody. When you go and meet, I don’t care if you’re the best social person in the most social person in the entire world, any first time meeting somebody and you have to have a 20 minute conversation with them, there’s always going to be a certain level of awkwardness and it just comes down to accepting the situation for what it is, being yourself and not worrying about putting on a performance.
So you had to play around with the concept of perfection, right? Oh, definitely. Just 30 seconds on that, please. Perfection was, I just thought every word I had to say was perfect. Every story, every reaction, every, it sounds silly even saying it right now, but it was just, I didn’t want to flip up in any way. And I don’t even know how to define what a flip up would be in a conversation. But after I’d go to a cocktail party, say I’d come back and if I felt like I messed up some part or didn’t really know what to say in a certain situation, I would beat myself up over it for not being perfect, not having the perfect response or whatever. And that’s something I definitely got past. Last question.
This is wonderful. We could go on and on, but I want to wrap this up with one last question. The people of your age, 18, 19, 20, 21, who have been experiencing this anxiety, what words of wisdom do you have for them? Because 99% of the people who experience this never go for help and the high, the vast majority of those who do really don’t get the right help. But what advice would you have for those individuals? To not feel like you’re going out of the alone and that you’re the only person in the entire world who has a little bit of an issue with this and that it’s actually a lot more common than you think. And if you actually take the time to notice how your friends and the people you hang out with all the time interact with people or everyone has a certain leveling of anxiety about certain things.
And when I started to notice, when I started to become more aware of what my problem was, I could see aspects of it in other people and the avoidance that they would have. And I think that it really helps to know that you’re not going out of the alone. There’s more people out there that feel the same way that you do and that there’s no shame and there’s no embarrassment in going to get help about it because it’s a really tough thing to conquer on your own. I don’t know if you can ever totally conquer it on your own. But if you have help and guidance to go along with it and it’s like I just said, 90 to 95% cured. And I think that’s a testament to the value of having that type of relationship with someone who can help you with it. Jack, I want to thank you very much for sharing. I hope your golf score goes down to 67.
