I knew I was very internally conflicted about what I had chosen to do with my life, but I didn't think I had any sort of mental health issue.

But the panic attack happened one day at work and it was very innocuous at the start.

I came in and I had a coffee and my assistant came in and gave me a bunch of work and then

just was looking at me really weirdly and she's like are you okay and I'm like yeah I'm fine and then she looked at me you know a few more moments and then left and as soon as she left I felt my hand started to

trim up I felt my heart beat really really quickly and almost instantaneously

thought it was just the coffee. I'm like, well, strong coffee.

But then I felt a swelling of emotion coming up

and I felt like I was about to cry in the middle of my office.

And that really started it. I remember running out and I was

walking through the CBD of Melbourne hyperventilating and at one point I was in

this little alleyway just hunched down on my knees and on my feet just thinking I was about to die.

That started a whole chain of events, you know, I ended up developing an addiction to ADHD medication and

ended up developing chronic insomnia as well as a prior product of that and

then develop an addiction to the medication to help me sleep. That moved into an eating disorder,

that moved into a whole host of other ailments

that kind of accompanied me for about 18 months to 2 years. he is. Hello there, welcome to At the End of the Tunnel.

I am Light Watkins, your host, and if you are listening to At the End of the Tunnel for

the very first time, I want to thank you for giving it a listen. So this is a podcast about hope and inspiration and stories about people who found their calling, which I think is something that we all sort of fantasize about, you know, finding our life purpose or, to put it simply, our why.

And this week's guest has a backstory that I think a lot of us here in the Western world will be able to relate to because it's a story of being seduced by what I refer to as the acquisitive approach to happiness.

In other words, it's to thinking that as soon as I make a

certain amount of money or get promoted or have my first kid or find my soulmate

then I'm going to be truly happy.

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