An app to ease panic
Kim Palmer thrived on challenges of all kinds — until she had her first panic attack. Annie Ridout tells her story.
Four years ago, I had everything going for me. A great job, friends, a husband and a baby on the way. I loved my role at a fast-growing tech startup, but I wanted to keep climbing the career ladder and the marketing director position was about to become available.
As someone who feeds off progress — the next job, a promotion, moving to a bigger house — this was just another goal to add to the list.
Then things began to go wrong. I was due to give an important presentation, but I felt weird. My hands were shaking, I was sweating and I had verbal diarrhea. People shifted uncomfortably in their seats.
A colleague asked me to step outside with him, as he could see I was having a panic attack. I’d never had one before, but his wife suffered with them, so he was familiar with the signs and calmed me down.
I’d love to say that was my first and last panic attack, but they became a regular part of my life. I’d have them on the subway and at my desk.
They affected my performance in meetings — I was petrified of it happening again — and my confidence dropped as I lost faith in myself and my abilities. How could I run a successful marketing department when I was sitting on my hands in meetings to hide how much they were shaking?
I can’t be the only career woman to have experienced anxiety, but I haven’t heard any speaking publicly about it.
Perhaps they’re so ashamed of looking like a failure, or like they just can’t cope, that they keep it a secret. Perhaps they avoid triggers (like the subway and work meetings, for me) and get on with their lives without seeking professional help.
So I, too, kept my head down and carried on. In moments of panic, I’d think to myself: it will all be OK when I’m on maternity leave. I’ll return to my old, happy, confident self and in a year, I’ll be back at work feeling great.
Only, it got worse. While on maternity leave, I found myself suffering daily panic attacks. I’d be having a coffee with a friend and those horribly familiar sensations would appear: pins and needles in my hands, shortness of breath, dizziness, my heart pounding so hard, I thought it must be audible.
To avoid feeling so uncomfortable, I stopped seeing friends. Then it started happening with family, too. There was something about having all eyes on me that I couldn’t bear.
My husband knew about the incident at work, but he had no idea I was slowly losing myself. When I told him, he couldn’t believe I’d been coping with it on my own.
I tried psychotherapy, but it just brought up issues from the past that I’d already dealt with. Then, I had lunch with a friend, who must have recognized how I was feeling. She told me about hypnotherapy and how amazing it had been for her confidence.
The following week, I got an appointment with Georgia Foster, an internationally renowned clinical hypnotherapist. In our first session, we focused on the lasting trauma caused by that first panic attack.
We worked on removing these feelings so that I could move on. After a few sessions, I began to feel the old me returning. Work meetings, even presentations, became bearable. I’d listen to recordings of the sessions on my way in to work, and feel confident enough to perform.
Then I had a brainwave. Imagine if I could help other women who were doubting themselves to regain their confidence? A lot of research led me to build an app called Clementine (clementineapp.co.uk).
Clementine offers short, soothing hypnotherapy sessions under three categories: Sleep, Confidence and De-stress. The visualizations, voiced by Georgia, my hypnotherapist, teach you how to envisage — and so achieve — success. You might want to be able to speak in front of a room of people, sleep through the night or just feel less stressed as a fulltime mother.
Neuroscientists have said hypnosis is the quickest and easiest way to make changes to your thought processes, as it’s when the mind is most durable and adaptable to change.
The app launched last November and I’ve had amazing feedback from hundreds of women across the world. Anxiety is an epidemic — we’re all trying to do so much and it’s leaving us feeling frazzled. If Clementine can help other women feel calmer and more confident, I’ll be delighted.