“I have to go, I’m sorry,” is what I said abruptly to the gentleman I was speaking with on the phone yesterday. I had to hang up. You see, I was having my first anxiety attack.
It happened quickly and came from out of nowhere. Yesterday at about 3:30 I began to feel a thumping in my chest, combined with a shortness of breath. As the beating got worse, I stood up and tried to stretch, it didn’t help. I tried drinking some water, it didn’t help.
Queue the drama. For a brief second I thought I was having a heart attack and was going to die.
So what does an Internet marketing geek do next when they panic?
Of course, the answer is… Google it.
So I asked my studio-mate Dave to look up “tips to stopping an anxiety attack“, while I sat in a chair and tried to recover. I was getting worse. Thump, thumpity, thump! My heart was practically in my lap.
Dave scrambled to his Mac and looked desperately for an answer for me.
But guess what? The tips to stopping an attack aren’t easy to find. It turns out that all the other internet marketing geeks out there have built countless high-ranking landing pages about anxiety attacks and panic attacks and every other most searched for phrases, and they dominate the first page listings.
What does that mean?
That means that when do a search on Google, you get a ton of sales sites, instead of informational sites. In other words, you get sites that were built by search and affiliate marketers to get high keyword rankings, not sites that were built by experts in anxiety. Big difference.
Ahh, the sweet irony of my profession.
As I was sitting there wondering how to stop my heart from pounding out of my chest, I had to laugh as Dave went through the first page, link by link trying to find some actual “tips to stopping an attack”.
Instead all he could find were lists of symptoms of anxiety attacks, and anywhere a solution to stop an attack was mentioned, there was an accompanying affiliate link to a product or service that I could buy that would help.
As it turns out, at least the information they did provide convinced me I wasn’t going to die and I was only having an anxiety attack. On the other hand, it would have been nice to get some tips (instead of products I could buy) that could help me stop the attack right away.
24-hours later and I’m much better and taking it easy. I believe a combination of lack of sleep, stress and too much coffee is what triggered the attack, so now I’m rested up and caffeine free, and stress-free, for the moment at least.
As for you fellow Internet marketers out there… I’m not sure to applaud you, or flip you the finger. Maybe both.
