There will be a book signing for Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear on April 2, 2016. This event will take place at the Broadstreet Deli & Market in Dunn, NC from 11AM – 2PM. We will have copies of the book with us for sale, and Neil will be available for signing your copy if you’d like for him to. Please come join us!
**Click here for more info on events**
This is Part 2 of 7 in a series of blog posts about the book Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear (CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE)
I shared with you in the first part of this series that, over a decade ago, intense anxiety and accompanying panic attacks took over my life. I lived in a constant state of fear, sometimes paralyzed by it. There was no escape, as the anxiety weighed me down both day and night.
That was not the true beginning of my story of fear. I thought it was at the time, as I could not remember ever really experiencing anything like it before. However, I was eventually made aware that the feelings I was suffering with were the result of something that had been snowballing for years. Although the root problem had been with me for a very long time, it had remained hidden for the most part, not causing enough trouble to get my attention until I had my first panic attack.
My journey exposed me to some information that surprised me. I had actually been living in fear for as long as I could remember. There were some key events along the way that fed my fears, but I had found ways to cover them up. The problem with covering up fears is the harder you try to suppress them, the bigger bang they make when the damage they do inside of us is finally unleashed.
Many of the events in my life that ignited my fears fueled something else that was very damaging to me: shame. Behind all of my fears, I discovered I believed deep down that there was something inherently wrong with me. I did not like myself very much. That’s actually an understatement. Not only did I dodge my fears, I also hid my face behind a mask. The mixture of shame and fear that I carried with me through life was an internal storm that I did not even know was brewing.
If I was ever going to be set free from the symptoms of panic and anxiety, something would have to be done about the shame. Also, I would have to learn how to deal with my fears in a healthy way, rather than the tricks I had been using to work around them. However, before any of that could take place, I would have to make the very difficult choice to face whatever was behind the horrible symptoms that were controlling my life. I will discuss that part of my story in the next blog post in this series.
In the book, Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear, I share the full story regarding the panic attacks and anxiety that engulfed my life. My hope is that it will find its way into the hands of those of you who can benefit from reading about what God did in my life. Please get your copy here: Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear
Don’t forget to email me if you purchase two or more copies of the book, so I can send you the Bonus Chapter of Panic to Peace, not included in the book. These will be going out shortly! And subscribe to my email list below:
About twelve years ago, I realized something was wrong with me. My sleep began being disrupted almost every night by something for which I had no explanation. During these episodes, I awoke to find myself dizzy, sweating, and terrified. I would jump out of the bed and pace around the house trying to relax, but I couldn’t calm down. My heart would beat so hard I thought it would explode. There were bizarre feelings in my head that got worse and worse until I felt like I would lose my mind, pass out, or even have a stroke. Eventually, it would pass. Sometimes it would take an hour, other times even longer, before I could sink back into bed, exhausted and staring at the clock which told me I had less than a few hours to get some rest before I had to be at work.
These experiences continued for a while before they began happening during the day as well. The unexplained attacks took over my life. I could barely go to work, and even when I did, I was not able to perform to the level that I used to. Some days, I could not even go to the mailbox, out of fear that the trip would provoke another attack.
For several years now, I have had a desire to share my journey through fear that began with the panic attacks briefly described above. With the help of several other people, the last year has been spent preparing a book to tell my whole story, from beginning to end. It is now available for purchase here:
Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear (CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE)
In the book I share how it started with panic attacks and extreme daily anxiety. I then go on to tell about the personal experiences that led to freedom from being in bondage to them. My desire is that somehow sharing my own story will be helpful to someone in the midst of their own struggles.
One of the surprising things I learned about my panic attacks and anxiety that helped was that they were merely a symptom of a bigger problem within me. It’s so easy to get caught up in thinking the symptom is the problem of which to rid ourselves. I got caught up in that misconception and doing so prolonged my suffering. Until we get to the root of our problem, it just keeps resurfacing in different ways.
Over the course of the next several weeks, I will continue to share glimpses of my personal struggle with panic attacks and anxiety here on my blog. I will share a few key moments of the battle I found myself in. If you would like to engage the detailed version of my story, along with the insights into how I finally found the peace I wanted so badly, please pick up a copy of “Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear”
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Don’t forget to email me if you purchase two or more copies of the book, so I can send you the Bonus Chapter of Panic to Peace, not included in the book. These will be going out shortly! And subscribe to my email list below:
We have been made aware of a few small typos on the back cover of the book. We apologize for this oversight. However, due to these issues being minor in nature, we did not want them to delay the release of the book any further by pulling it from the sales page. Rest assured, these issues are minor and do not detract from the story inside.
That being said, I have a little idea regarding this. For those of you willing to share a copy of Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear
To receive this extra chapter, all you have to do is 1) click here to email me to let me know you purchased two or more copies, and 2) subscribe to my email list at the bottom of this post, if you haven’t already. Then, when the bonus chapter is ready (in the next couple of weeks), I will start sending it out to all of you who participate. There will be no end to this little gift, no deadlines or anything like that. For as long as some of you are sharing the book, I will send out this extra chapter after it’s available. Purchase your copies here: Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear
Thank you all for your support, even in light of an imperfect cover. Perhaps it is as it should be. This incident ties in well with the subheader in Chapter 2 of the book, entitled “End to Perfection”.
-Neil
CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear on Amazon.com.
Or visit The Cellar Coffee Shop, located at 108 N Wilson Ave, Dunn, NC, to pick up a copy.
For those of you waiting for the release, it is finally here. I am very excited to be able to share my experience with you in this book. We hope to see this story of God’s love and grace fall into the hands of those who will find it helpful in the midst of their own struggles. As you receive and read your own copy, please consider sharing it with someone you know that could connect with it as well.
Here’s a little more info about the book from the cover:
From the back cover:
DON’T PANIC!
Easy to Say! Only those who struggle with fear and anxiety know the anguish. Many experience a sense of paralysis so intense it stops them in their tracks. Others, racked by guilt, believe such attacks to be the result of God’s anger. Getting to the root of the problem is crucial because unmasking anxiety is the first step to change.
In Panic to Peace, Neil McLamb draws upon his own battle with fear and anxiety–from the first episode during an 8th grade public speaking event to the ensuing panic attacks which began taking over his life. Once Neil began to view himself through the eyes of his heavenly Father, he was on the road to recovery. It is his desire to lead others to the peace that once escaped him.
“Neil McLamb writes in brutally honest terms about the long slide into paralyzing fear and how he found healing in the affectionate embrace of the Father. Panic to Peace is great encouragement to those battling the lies behind fear.” – Wayne Jacobsen, author of He Loves Me: Learning to Live in the Father’s Affection
“Panic to Peace has made me more aware, to connect the dots in my struggles, stop, assess my situation and begin to regroup.” – Jennifer Bell, Educator
“Anyone who has felt their life was out of control should read Panic to Peace–Neil’s very frank account of his journey away from a life restricted by fear.” – Tony Johnson
“Those who battle anxiety know the isolation it can cause. Neil McLamb understands this and with God’s help has been able to reach the other side of panic and fear. His story offers hope and comfort for so many.” – Lizzie T. Branch, PhD
“This book is everyone’s journey from fear and isolation to freedom and acceptance. I highly recommend it!” – Scott Radosevich
On Tuesday, February 23, the book Panic to Peace: Living Free from the Grip of Fear will be released and available for purchase on Amazon.com and other online sites. For those of you that might be interested, plans are also in the works for at least two release parties/book signings . Updates will be provided as more details become available for those events.
Soon I will begin a series of blog posts that will give more insight into the content of the book. But, in short, Panic to Peace is my personal story of living in fear and then finding freedom from fear being in control of my life. The layout of the book has been designed to share important segments of my journey, as well as helpful insights for those seeking peace in the midst of their own struggles. We want to get this incredible story of God’s Grace into the hands of those who will benefit from reading it. To do that, we need help from those of you who purchase a copy next week to also spread the word to others.
Thank you all for your love and support. The completion of Panic to Peace came later than I had initially planned, but it is finally here. This project has been a tremendous blessing to me, as our Heavenly Father has used the revisiting of my past to further establish in me just how amazingly loving and trustworthy He is. Perhaps Panic to Peace will be a blessing to you as well.
-Neil
Finally, I can let the secret out. After almost a year of work, the goal of completing a book to share a deeply personal part of my own story is nearing completion. There have been a few setbacks, but everything is just about ready for publishing. I do not have a definite date, but I will let you know as soon as I have confirmation on one.
For now, I can tell you a few things about this book. First, it’s been a long time coming. I have wanted to do this for several years. In February 2015, I was given an opportunity to make it happen, and I took it. The story I share in this book covers a span of several years in which I struggled immensely with anxiety and panic attacks. I share the details of several of my experiences with living in constant fear. I go on to explain how I found freedom from the control fear had over my life. While finding that freedom from the grip of fear is a central theme in the book, there’s much more God revealed during the journey. I wrote this book with the hopes that sharing my own journey to peace will help those who are searching for it in the midst of their own battle.
Throughout the process of completing this project, I’ve had a lot of help from some great people. Without them, this book would not have been possible. Thank you Michael, Lizzie, Jennifer, Melissa, Kevin, Ryan, Beth, Scott, Tony, and several others I know I’m leaving out.
When the book is officially released, it will be available online, which should make it convenient to purchase a copy for yourself (and maybe a few more to share with others you know that might find it helpful).
That’s it for now, but I will be back soon with more info, including a release date. Please subscribe below, if you haven’t already, to make sure you catch my next update:
Over the course of our lives, we encounter difficult times. We have different paths, and some of us seem to struggle more than others. However, we all have something in common when it comes to those trying times. It’s helpful to have good friends to invite into our lives, to lean on as we experience hardship. I’m very thankful to have had some of those at just the right times.
It can be difficult to identify those special ones who can be a conduit for God’s love and comfort right when we need it. Thankfully, there’s several characteristics to look for when determining who we can turn to in a time of need.
Relationship is the priority.
For a person to offer us what we need in a crisis, their priority must be to engage an authentic relationship with us. If they do not care about getting to know us for who we really are, the interactions with them will be surface at best. No real healing can take place in that environment, because the real stuff doesn’t come up.
No fixing!
If pursuing and enjoying a relationship is the priority, fixing each other won’t be. This one sounds counter-intuitive when we are seeking help in a time of need. However, assuming someone else can actually fix us, or teach us how to fix ourselves, is dangerous. The harder we try to be fixed, the more depressed we get as we fail at it. When we lean on someone whose main goal is to fix us, they will be eager to tell us what to do. They will also get frustrated or lose interest when they see us fail to adhere to their directions. That kind of experience adds to the hopeless feelings we may already be struggling with.
We do not find what we need by striving and working harder to do it by human effort. However, when we are with someone who offers us a safe place to open up, we are finally able to lay down the self-effort that has failed us, take off masks that we may have been wearing a long while, and allow our Father, God, to engage those broken areas in our hearts.
Trust is essential.
We tend not to share our true selves with someone who is untrustworthy, and if we do, we eventually get hurt. It takes time to see whether or not someone is trustworthy. As we take the risk to open up, bit by bit, we will see how the other person handles it. A trustworthy person will treat our experiences and disclosures with the upmost respect. They will seek to understand and comfort us when we need it.
Nothing remains hidden.
The masks must come off in a healing relationship. And the masks that come off should not be from one side of the relationships only. If the one we are sharing ourselves with is the right person for us to turn to, he or she will also freely share his or her own life experiences, feelings, and failures. That last one might be the most important. A helpful, loving friend is not afraid to reveal his or her imperfections. They can openly admit they are wrong.
We’re viewed as a Saint who sometimes fails.
The most helpful of friends will be those that seek to know us for who we really are. Once they see behind all the junk that may be in our lives, they focus on our true identity. God does this. Once He changes us by adopting us as His children, He no longer views us as sinners. Through Jesus, He views us as saints (Ephesians 1). Good friends follow God’s lead and view us as someone who fails, but they do not identify us by those failures. Instead, they remind us of who we really are, and argue against anything that says anything different.
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When I was young, I was terrified of God. That may sound foreign to some reading this, but what I knew and understood about Him ignited a deep fear that plagued me for many years. My fear was not always obvious. It did not simply show itself as me constantly crouching in a corner of my room, scared God would toss a lightening bolt at me. My fear presented itself in other ways.
When we know God, but do not trust Him, fear is inevitable.
I learned a lot about God growing up. Some of it was good and truthful information, some bad and distorted. I have learned that it is typical for all of us to gather both good and bad information over the course of our lives about Him. One problem is, we tend to lean towards the distortions rather than the truth. From all the information I gathered, God did not seem like someone I could trust. I knew I was supposed to have faith in Him, but deep down, I was scared of Him so I would make sure to keep Him at a distance. If He got close, I figured He would see me for who I really was and punish me somehow.
Knowing God, without trusting Him, leaves us with two options.
There’s two ways I often responded to my fears and kept others at a distance. First, I could ignore them, or act as if they were not there. Knowing that God was everywhere did not stop me from acting like He wasn’t. I would do this when I was certain my behavior would displease Him. If I could block out the fact that He was present, I felt like I was easing some of the pain of guilt, shame, and fear that was tormenting me. If that would not work, I could always try to make Him happy. The tricky thing about trying to appease Him is that it looked like I was attempting to get close to Him. Heck, even I thought I was doing that. However, trying to please someone you believe deep down cannot be pleased does not lead to intimacy. Instead, it leads to an “arm’s length” approach in which I tried to keep God at a safe distance so that He was not quite as angry as He could be, while still wanting more from me. It was similar to the old saying, “Ain’t nobody happy if mama ain’t happy”, which carries the assumption that all mothers are very hard to please, but you must try your best to do so to avoid their wrath. For me, it was “If God ain’t happy, nobody ain’t happy”. And, in my mind, He was never happy with me for long!
What if God is not asking us to work harder to please Him?
The last decade of my life has been a wild one. Through many hardships, I have discovered that I had been mistaken, in a lot of ways, about this God I thought I knew. As it turns out, God is not as unhappy with me as I thought. He is not expecting me to do more for Him to please Him. Instead, He invites us all into a relationship with Him in which He strongly desires us to be close with Him. The last thing He wants is for His children to be scared of Him, so that we run or try to make Him happy with things that He doesn’t even want from us. Instead, what He really wants is what anyone seeking an authentic relationship wants: trust, along with the giving and receiving of love. He’s already taken care of all the garbage that could keep us from Him. Jesus came into this world and displayed His Father’s love in all that He did, right down to taking care of that sin problem we all have. Through Jesus, God is pleased with us!
When we do not rest in our Father’s grace and assume He loves us no matter what, we are left with two empty and heartbreaking approaches to life: trying to appease Him or avoiding Him. When we embrace the reality of His unconditional love, and let Him teach us how to live in it, we begin to find ourselves less scared, more free, and discovering who He really created us to be as we walk alongside Him.
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I had a good friend contact me this week with a question. She asked, “What did BP GAS stand for?”, referring to a conversation we had a while back. I laughed because I knew exactly what she was referring to. Years ago, I came up with an acronym to help me remember five things that are detrimental to relationships. “BPGAS” isn’t exactly the coolest acronym ever, and is a little weird, but it works for me.
“B” is for Blame.
When we focus only on the shortcomings of others and blame them for whatever is going on, we fail to look at ourselves. Matthew 7 states that Jesus stressed the importance of self-awareness, rather than focusing our full attention on how others are in the wrong. If we are only focused on what others might be doing wrong, then we never join God in dealing with our own issues. Subsequently, our relationships suffer due to the fact that we do not own our part in issues that arise, we refuse to apologize for anything, and we blindly believe any problem is always someone else’s. Our only action becomes finding a way to dodge responsibility.
“P” is for Pity.
This one works VERY well for the most part…that is, if you want others to feel sorry for you. During a pity party, we want others to think we have been dealt a bad hand in life. We want them to think we’ve done all we can, but we just can’t get ahead. “Poor pitiful _____ (insert first name here)”. When we throw a pity party, we seek something from others. A pity party is all about getting others to do something for us, like give us money, a job, or attention. One big problem is a pity party never produces an opportunity to be truly accepted and loved, which is an essential part of relationships. When we seek pity, the most we can get is pity. There is no respect involved. It may feel like acceptance, but it is far from it. And with pity parties, we make it all about ourselves and ignore the needs of others.
“G” is for Guilt.
This one is a lot like Blame, but it deserves it’s own category. Sometimes we want others to feel guilty for something, but we don’t necessarily blame them directly. I can blame my wife for not reminding me to take out the trash (which would be massively irresponsible on my part). However, I could get more creative and try to guilt her indirectly. For instance, I could say, “I sure do wish I could have been reminded that the trash truck was coming by today. Man, that means I will have to go to the dump, I guess.” Guilt is sneaky and not as aggressive as outright blame. The word “should” is used a lot. This is a popular choice in large groups, even churches sometimes. Although guilt may motivate people to do what we want them to do, it is in no way connected with the freedom and love that drives healthy relationships.
“A” is for Anger.
While some of us hide our anger, there are many of us that do not. And for those that do not like confrontation, anger can seem like an ideal way to motivate people. A raised voice and scowl might scare certain others into submission. Using anger in this way is downright abusive, although it can be done in such a way that it doesn’t seem that bad. Regardless of how “nice” we make it sound, anger does nothing to draw us closer to others. Fear and love are mutually exclusive.
“S” is for Shame.
“You are a bad wife!” “You are an idiot!” Those are just a couple of examples of shaming someone. Perhaps we want our spouse to behave differently, or have our child make better choices. Instead of approaching them with gentleness and love, we are often tempted to make their identity synonymous with whatever perceived shortcoming we are focused on. Shaming someone does not simply state, “I don’t like what you did”. It instead says, “You are messed up. You are not good enough. You are a bad person. I do not like who you are.” The act of shaming someone is an attempt to tear them down, and the relationship with that person is torn down with it. Healthy relationships can contain constructive criticism of behaviors, but they are built on a foundation of love and acceptance of who the persons are. They are not built on rejection.
The first step to avoiding BPGAS.
All five parts of BPGAS are manipulative behaviors. When we choose to manipulate people with these, or any other method, our relationships suffer for it. It’s hard not to fall into a cycle of using one or more of these, especially with those we are around the most. There’s much more to it than this, but the first step to avoiding manipulative behaviors is to acknowledge we engage in them. If we focus on the log in our own eyes rather than the speck in someone else’s, like Jesus lovingly encouraged us to do, God can begin to help us see when we are choosing to blame, seek pity, guilt others, scare others with anger, or shame someone.
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