From Worrier To Warrior: Overcoming Anxiety’s Challenges With 3X World Memory Champion John Graham
Tom Dardick and John Graham discuss John's journey of overcoming anxiety and developing extraordinary memory abilities, with a focus on the importance of acknowledging and processing suppressed emotions and the role of self-care in this process. They also delve into the influence of societal conditioning on individuals' mindsets and actions and the significance of deconditioning and managing negative emotions through techniques like the 'unhooking method' and 'catalyst integration'. Lastly, they explore the power of love and acceptance in life, the duality of existence, and the potential for one-on-one mentorship to address personal struggles with anxiety.
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From Worrier To Warrior: Overcoming Anxiety’s Challenges With 3X World Memory Champion John Graham
Personal Stories And Origins Of Emotional Struggles
It’s my great pleasure to welcome John Graham to the show. John is a three-time world memory champion. Frankly, when I booked him for the show, I thought we would get into a lot of that, how you can possibly build your memory up to be so amazing. As it turns out, we never even really talked much about that because the other thing that John is adept at is overcoming anxiety.
He had been suffering from debilitating panic attacks and found a path forward that not only frees him from the grips of panic attacks but also frees others, whether it be panic attacks or the resistance that comes from self-sabotaging from obsolete ideas or those parts of ourselves that tend to hold us back that aren’t integrated with the direction that we tend to be on. We get into a lot of that. It’s my great pleasure to welcome John Graham to the show.
First of all, thank you, John, pretty much for taking the time to be with me. I’m interested. I do not know what a memory champion is and how you go about doing that. I’m interested in your path. It’s not just that you’re a memory champion. Your story is also overcoming pretty debilitating anxiety. I have one overall question that will form our talk, and we’ll probably have little segments of the question.
To start off, the question is, how do we tap into our potential to unlock more of our capacities? It seems to me like that is a bunch of your story where you’ve been able to get past some debilitating anxiety. Whatever it is that you’ve done to be a three-time memory champion, that’s no small feat. You’re a person that we can learn a lot from as it relates to tapping more of our potential. That’s what I would like to get into with you if that’s cool. Why don’t we start off by sharing a little bit of your story and your walk, the origin, and what brought you to the point you are?
I’m a three-time USA memory champion, a grand master of memory. A lot of people think I must be a savant, have a photographic memory, or a genius. It’s all flattering, but no. I’m not naturally good at any of this. In fact, several years ago, I was 27 years old and I read a book on memory techniques. The book was Moonwalking with Einstein. The subtitle is what captured me. It’s The Art and Science of Remembering Everything. My soul was drawn to this book.
I learned that there are ordinary people like you and me who learn mental techniques using visualization, imagination, connection, stories, and places so that we can lock in massive amounts of information and remember it. We know where we’re looking in our mind to find it to recall it so we don’t forget the speech or whatever.
I started practicing these techniques. I started with a deck of cards It took me a week to learn this process, but I turned the cards into images, like people and things, and made stories. I learned how to memorize a deck of 52 cards in order. It took me about six minutes at the end of the week. I practiced for 1 week and I was at 6 minutes. At that point, I was hooked.
I competed all over the world. I was learning bombing at my first competition. I was meeting some of the best minds in the world, modeling their techniques. That’s what took me to the top. During that time of this thirst for knowledge, ascension, and accolades, I was suffering from anxiety. I was suffering from mental paralysis. I was suffering from panic attacks. At one point, I was having panic attacks every single day, multiple. It was completely debilitating. I had to learn how to overcome that.
I took not the mainstream route of, “Let’s do therapy. Let’s do Xanax. Let’s do meditation.” There’s nothing wrong with those things, but I chose the route of, “Let’s get to the real route.” I learned these are not mental issues as everyone thinks. The route is emotional. I went that route. That’s what I do. I completely overcame chronic anxiety and panic attacks. I no longer have any of that debilitating suffering inside of me, and I help people overcome those things.
Before we even started talking here or before I looked at your material as far as what you do for people, I would’ve thought that memory champions were born with eidetic memories. It’s like Sheldon Cooper of Big Bang Theory or from Good Will Hunting, that kind of person who has a brain that works differently than other people.
Your story is far more inspiring than that because it points to the possibility for anybody to expand their abilities. Whether you put out the effort that you did to be a champion or you get a little bit better or maybe twice as good as you are, these little things can make big differences over time. It pertains to memory and any host of things about ourselves. There’s a lot to be learned from your particular walk here, like overcoming anxiety. You were saying that you found your way.
When you said emotional, that really resonates with me because we’re not motivated that much by intellect. It’s not that we don’t know things. We’re motivated emotionally by almost everything. Any change we want to make is not because we don’t know better, like to stop smoking, to stop eating so much if we want to lose weight, to work out if we want to be in better shape, and all the various things. It’s not that people don’t know. It’s our emotionality as it relates to those things that keep us from making positive changes. The fact that you’re able to do that in this way is intriguing. Let’s dive in. I’m almost tempted to go more towards the panic attack and the emotionality first. Is that okay with you?
Sure. Ask me anything.
The panic attacks, was it something that you had your whole life or did they come on over time? What was your walk through that?
I had anxiety probably mostly since I was thirteen, but they didn’t go to panic attacks until probably 2019. They were coming to a head. I was adding more emotion and suppressing more things. It got to the point where they started coming. I had a panic attack. One of the first ones I remember having was at the 2019 World Memory Championships in the 1st event.
You’d already been working on memory before you had panic attacks and anxiety.
In 2014, I started in memory. I had anxiety at that time. I denied it or I was oblivious to it because I thought this was the way I was right or the way people were. I then started having brain fog. First was the memory training and then I was starting businesses and later started having kids. These really big events in my life started bringing forth these suppressed energies and emotions more to the forefront and coming to the surface. It was intensifying.
In 2019 then, you had your first panic attack.
One of the first ones because there’s a spectrum. People call them anxiety attacks and panic attacks. They could start from, “Something inside of me feels like an adrenaline surge. It’s highly uncomfortable. I want to escape. I want to get out of here because I feel like something’s wrong with me,” or, “I feel very overwhelmed.” The point of the worst ones is that you don’t feel like you’re going to die but you know in your mind you’re going to die. Something is dreadfully wrong. The left side of my face went numb once and I thought I was having a stroke. It really mimics these intense things. They range in spectrum.
In 2019, I was at a World Memory Championship. This is a three-day event in Wuhan, China. This is December 2019. I did 10 events over 3 days. It’s one of my favorite events. I believe I’m going to be in the top five in the world. I’m that good. I turn the page over and the images on the page are blurry. The print was blurry. First of all, I got insanely frustrated and angry. The stress of the whole lead-up to that event, the adrenaline, and everything that I suppressed flipped a switch and I lost it. The demons started speaking to me. I started freaking out. I was getting hot. I was hyperventilating a little bit but I kept forcing it, like trying to memorize, and I completely bombed.
In this event, I could beat the world record in practice. I finished 145th in that event because I completely lost it. It was moments like this where I was like, “What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening?” Other people seem to be fine. They don’t talk about this. That led me to think, “What’s wrong with me? Why is this happening?”
When you asked yourself that question, where did that lead you? What was your walk from there?
As a memory champ and a nerded-out guy, you resort to supplements. You think, “I’m deficient in something.” You try guided meditations. You try to reframe your thoughts. You try to motivate yourself. You try to get out of that feeling. You escape from that feeling. You’re like, “I want to feel better. I want to try the new tropics in that route.” That was what I used to cope with it. I would have intense brain fog and try to go for a walk to break through it not knowing it was an intense amount of stress and emotional suppression that I was dealing with.
Coping Mechanisms And Transformative Processes
Those first methods that you used to deal with probably didn’t pay a whole lot of dividends then?
No.
What led you to find the key at the emotional level?
I had done a lot of coaching, like really top-level and world-class coaching of mindset. You’re thinking that was going to help in reframing your thoughts, belief stacking, and putting yourself in a high vibe state. It’s like a Tony Robbins type of coaching. There is nothing wrong with that, but if you’re in anxiety, you’re suppressing. You’re not dealing with anything. You’re pumping yourself up.
You have a vulnerable layer. If you put strong things on top, you still have that fundamental vulnerable layer, so it doesn’t matter what you put on top.
We’re talking potential. Everyone thinks, and I thought too, “I need to add skills and stack up to my life. I need to pump myself up, stack on top, and build,” instead of reveal. Unlocking your potential is about revealing what’s already inside of you. It’s blocked. We all have massive amounts of suppressed emotions and energies inside of us that are suppressed and blocked that are unresolved. That’s what you need to tap into. I didn’t know that at the time. Here I am pumping up and it’s getting worse. I’m having to pretend I’m okay when I’m clearly not around my friends and family.
Overcoming Anxiety: Unlocking your potential is about revealing what's already inside of you. We all have massive amounts of suppressed emotions and energy inside of us that are blocked and unresolved. That's what you need to tap into.
I’m trying to put the timeframe together since this effort started in 2019. We’re quickly going into the pandemic time, so that’s changing the way that we interact in the world. Meanwhile, you’re trying these various things. Walk us through the timeline as to when you started to get to that point where you got to that unblocking process.
In 2020, I had my first daughter, and a lot of stuff started coming up. Having a kid is intense emotionally. This is really vulnerable for me. People say, “Fon’t shake a baby. Put your baby down. Have a plan for when you get upset.” I always thought, “I’m never going to shake a baby.” I had my first kid who was screaming as a child uncontrollably, and I started to feel this insane amount of stuff come up. It scared me because I wasn’t going to shake my baby. I put her down. I’m like, “I understand why they say this.”
All of your stuff, and this happens to everyone, comes up. It gets triggered and gets mirrored in certain high-pressure events, like when you’re starting a business, when you’re on stage, or when you have a kid. That’s when this started coming to the surface. Life was starting to get intense, even normal mundane things. In 2021 and 2022, I started this business and this coaching mindset of peak performance, trying to build myself up as I’m building a business and the stuff kept getting worse on the inside. I started having panic attacks. I started shutting down more. I started feeling overwhelmed more.
It seems how it works in life where it isn’t one big thing. Things tend to clump together. You have a baby and starting a business. I can relate to that myself. We started a family move and started a business. Why does everything have to happen at the same time? The big changes in our lives tend to clump together, it seems. It can be very overwhelming. That’s very common for people. This is not that long ago. You’re only talking about a couple of years ago when you were still dealing with panic attacks. Do you still have them to this day?
I don’t. That’s the thing.
Let’s hear about the “cure.”
This is in 2022. I started feeling really overwhelmed and debilitated. I would have panic attacks. That’s when I started to call 911 because I thought something was wrong. I thought I was having a heart attack. I remember going downstairs. My wife was making dinner. We were finished with the day. It was this overwhelming surge of adrenaline. It’s like an impending sense of doom. Something’s wrong. I start feeling jittery. I start feeling faint. I feel like I’m going to pass out. I feel like I’m going to have a heart attack. I’m telling my wife, “Call 911.”
I had three emergency room visits because I didn’t know what was going on. I did all the blood tests and the brain scans. I did all that. Nothing was wrong. I couldn’t find anything wrong with me, but the panic attacks were continuing to happen. I was in the emergency room waiting to go in when I was Googling what was wrong. Panic attacks kept coming up. I’m like, “I have to read into this,” and then I was like, “That’s what I have.” It was a relief, but at the same time, they kept happening more and more. No matter what I tried to do, they kept intensifying.
I was doing all the old methods, tips, and things, but they were only growing up and getting worse. That’s the moment when I was like, “I have to do something completely radical.” The day you have a heart attack is the day you realize, “I need to eat better. I need to change,” if you hit that wall. I hit that wall. I was like, “I need to stop doing what I’m doing. The Xanax isn’t helping. The blood pressure medication isn’t helping because I’m not getting to the root of why I have high blood pressure.”
A couple of things started clicking. You can call it divine intervention. I met the right people at the right time and read the right books at the right time. Everything clicked. All of a sudden, it clicked for me like, “These are suppressed emotions inside. This is what’s causing the physiological responses.” I thought, “Everyone’s trying to treat this mentally with therapy, talking through it, and digging into your subconscious and stuff.” There’s nothing wrong with those things, but it doesn’t get to the real root. I wanted to know, “With the emotional part, what do I do about that?”
I realized that it’s not so much about doing anything. That’s the left brain. That’s the mind. You’re trying to do. This is crazy. If you’re reading this and you have anxiety, you won’t understand what I’m saying, but you have to be. You have to allow that stuff to happen. It’s a completely different shift of getting out of your head, getting into your heart, and getting into the emotions and the sensations that are going on. If you have anxiety, you’re completely dissociated from those sensations. You completely unconsciously push them away or fight them anytime they appear. Any type of anger, frustration, and anxiety, you’re pushing them away, which is only stacking and making it worse.
This reminds me a little bit of the Jungian shadow work. Since we’re dual-natured, if you can be good, that means you can also be evil. Whatever our capacities are, there’s a dual nature to it. There are whole elements to ourselves that we don’t really want to admit or look at because it conflicts with our self-image of being that good person or that forward-facing image that we create.
This creates a tension in everybody. This is a universal thing. To grow and get past things, we have to do what Jung called shadow work. It’s reminding me of what you’re talking about where you’re willing to accept, “This negative thing is legitimately there. It’s there for a reason. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature in a way.” Am I onto something there? Can you comment on that?
100%. The shadow work, everyone has different techniques to that. I think of it like this. Imagine a circle or a ball. This is you in totality or fullness. It’s the full whole picture of you. We have a lot of dense, suppressed parts in there that we’ve ignored and pushed away our whole lives. I don’t want to label them as good or bad, but these are parts of us.
This is any moment in your life that you didn’t handle fully or didn’t process because it was uncomfortable. You pushed it away and it is still inside of you. It’s suppressed. We’re talking about unlocking potential. We want access to those parts. We want to integrate those parts of us or those shadow aspects of us. Anytime a negative, uncomfortable, and unwanted emotion is arising, you’re feeling it. We normally push that away, but we have to be. We have to make that flip to be in that emotion to allow it to be fully processed. We have to do whatever it wants to do so that it can be released and integrated as a part of our whole. That’s how we tap into our full potential.
What happens is we run into, like I did, subconscious blocks and self-sabotaging behaviors, like procrastination, overwhelm, and shutting down. I was running into that a lot. What a lot of people do to overcome that is, “I’ll make a list of motivational practices.” You can’t mentally or motivationally change these behaviors. The only way to change that is to fully allow that to overtake you to become a part of you so you have access to that energy. That energy is no longer suppressed. It’s a part of you. It adds to your voltage and your capacity or your potential.
When I realized that, I was like, “This stuff that’s arising, this nastiness, paralysis, anxiety, or whatever it is, is what I want and need. It is the way through.” It’s not something bad. It’s highly uncomfortable, let’s be honest, but if I can allow that to go through me, process out, release for good, and become integrated inside of me, I become more whole. I overcome these subconscious blocks naturally because I can see clearly the patterns. I can see clearly what was holding me back and feel that energy. It’s a radical shift from doing that mentally.
What did that look like for you experientially then?
I teach these same three things, and I do them. For anyone overcoming, number one, you have to realize your nervous system is dysregulated if you’re in anxiety or panic. It means you’re tense or highly tense. There are decades of tension in your body, which is stagnating your nervous system. You’re always switched on. You’re always in doing mode even if you’re sitting down. You’re like, “I got to be productive. What am I going to do? What am I going to plan ahead?” You have to shut that off. You have to learn how to. I teach people. I would lie down and completely release all the muscles in my body. I release my mind for 30 minutes a day, sometimes twice, to get into regulation.
Would that be like meditation?
I don’t like to call it meditation. I want to be very clear here too. If you are having anxiety or panic, traditional meditation is harmful because you’re bypassing that. All this stuff is arising and people think, “I need to calm down or feel better.” If you’re focusing on your breath, you’re stuffing that stuff down because you’re not dealing with it. It’s going to come back again.
It’s the same thing with taking the edge off with a glass of alcohol. There’s nothing wrong with doing that, but you’re shoving back down that edge. It’s the same thing with anxiety and meditation. I wouldn’t call it meditation. If anything, I’m not only relaxing muscles, but I’m dealing with anything that’s arising. I’m reconditioning myself to be in any sensation that’s arising.
I hear it talked about a lot in terms of getting to that place of relaxedness using your muscles, whether it be exercise or some sort of energetic output. Long-distance running, people do that as well as swimming or whatever. Short of that, for people who aren’t in that physical condition, it’s at least getting to a place where they’re fatigued. Is that akin or is that not what you’re talking about?
Generally, you want to be in a relaxed state almost 24/7. I know it is completely unrealistic to do it 100%. One of the problems I have with meditation or exercise, and not that I have problems with those things, but the mentality is, “If I do this 30 minutes a day, then the rest of the day, I can do whatever I want.” You snap back into the old pattern.
If your nervous system is dysregulated, I don’t want you to relax for 30 minutes when you’re doing your meditation or exercising. We need to learn how to sustain that relaxation throughout your entire being or your day. It is so that when this stuff comes up, and it will because that’s unavoidable, we don’t tense up and hold it in or react. We allow it to come up. It’s a completely radical shift.
Go back to your first experiences with this process where you were allowing yourself to be there. Is it memories of those triggers or those experiences that produced those emotional patterns? I’m trying to get a handle on what that feels and looks like for people to be able to embrace it.
Let’s talk about the regulation and the laying down because there are a couple of different things I do in addition to that when the memories or the triggers come up. The regulation is I would completely surrender control. When you’re in anxiety, you’re trying to control to feel better. You’re trying to either avoid something that doesn’t feel good or get something that feels good. That’s generally how we’re conditioned.
I’m letting go of that control because the control that mind is going to keep you in it. I have to recondition that response of control and more or less surrender control of my body, my breath, and my muscles so that it regulates my nervous system to allow this stuff to arise. What I’m doing is not only regulating and relaxing, but I’m saying, “I want this stuff out. I’m going to relax to allow this stuff to come up.” That’s completely different than, “I need to take Xanax or meditate,” because that means I don’t want to feel this way.
It’s the exact opposite. Whatever it is, you’re inviting it forward.
Knowing that’s why I’ve been having anxiety all this time. It wants out. It keeps coming to the surface, so I’m inviting it to come and release.
Nervous System Dysregulation
You said there are three parts. I don’t want to interrupt that, but the thing I’m left wondering about is your experience with that, especially at the beginning of that transformative process for you and what your experiences were. Was it something that happened quickly or did it take a period of time? What was your walk through that?
I was completely exhausted. Panic attacks and anxiety are so mentally, emotionally, and physically draining. That was where I let go and let my body heal, relax, and rest. It’s not just about resting and sleeping. It’s about completely relaxing, allowing my body to recover on its own, and giving it what it needs. My whole life, I had pushed through sleep and exhaustion to achieve, so it was a completely different ship for me.
I had to relearn that at 3:00 when my mind said, “You still got 2 or 3 hours left in a day. Do something productive,” I had to let go of that feeling if my body and my mind felt exhausted, and had to listen. It sounds so simple. When we’re hungry, we eat. When we’re thirsty, we find a drink. When you’re in anxiety, you do not listen to your body when it’s tired. You do not listen when it’s exhausted. You keep pushing. I learned that it is very simple. It’s listening to myself. It was a relearning of that for me.
It’s almost like you were going against some societal conditioning in the sense of expectations of others. “Play like a champion. Be tough. Winners fight to the finish. Make that one more call because that’s going to make the difference in your fate for the rest of your life,” these are some of the things that we hear. If we are trying to produce some sort of outcome, we can be emotionally invested in whatever that might be. What’s your view of that environment?
That is collective conditioning. We’re born into a world, a country, a culture, or parenting that promotes that. I don’t want to blame anyone here. In the first years of your life, this forms a structure of your ego and your identity. In the first seven years of your life, you are in a theta brainwave. You’re a sponge. You listen to what your parents say. You listen to what your teachers say or the society, your church, or your community. You absorb it all to form a structure of how the world works, beliefs, and all of that. It forms your conditioning.
When I’m 35 years old and I’m looking at my to-do list at 8:00 in the morning, and I’m overwhelmed, all of a sudden, I’m thinking, “I got to be productive. I got to do this.” It’s all falling back to that structure that formed in my life. It’s the ego or the voice in your head. Part of the deconditioning from that isn’t through the mind. I’m not going to sit there and argue with my mind and say, “It needs to be this way.” If you engage with your ego, your ego wins. If you push your ego away, your ego wins.
It’s so incredibly smart, that voice in your head. It knows how to get you back on track to what it wants. My friend talks about this. I told him I wanted to wake up earlier. Everyone wants to wake up earlier with a rhythm and schedule. He said, “If you’re going to do this, you have to wake up at the same exact time 365 days a year. Whether you’re sick, injured, or whatever event is going on. I don’t care. Do it.
The moment you deviate from that, your subconscious will start pulling you back. It will say, “I’m sick. I can rest today. It is that powerful.” You have to understand what the ego is. It is not you. The voice in your head is not you. It’s a conditioning. It’s a construct. We’re not arguing with it. We’re not battling it. We’re aware of it. We’re drawing our attention inwards deeper than that.
Ego and that the voice in your head is not you. It's a conditioning and a construct.
I’ve been thinking and I speak in terms of the ego being like an organ. It’s there to keep the species alive and keep our genetics going forward in time. That’s what its function is. It isn’t us. It’s a part of us. A lot of our problems come from blurring those lines between the ego and the deeper sense of who we are as a whole.
It’d be like us thinking we are our hand, our arm, or some part of ourselves. That is a part of you. It’s not you, but to think that’s all of it is a less empowering model than if you can see the greater whole. When you say if you engage with the ego, it wins, you do mean engage on its terms and try to go head to head with it. I’m trying to understand what you mean by engaging with the ego.
If you’re feeling guilty about something mentally and you mentally start going in and start giving yourself all the reasons why you’re not guilty, you’re proving that it’s right because you’re arguing with it.
You’re never going to win that argument because it’s not based on argument.
You’re acknowledging it, having a problem with it, and giving it energy.
The Unhooking Method
If you did already, I missed it, but you said there were three things. You said the nervous system is dysregulated. Did you get to the other two yet?
Not yet.
Let’s keep going.
The second step is what I call the unhooking method, and I teach this. It’s that flip from the moment you have a negative emotion. It’s anything uncomfortable or unwanted. We all know what this is like. What do we normally do? Normally, we try to do something to feel better, and that’s not a good thing.
We eat a piece of chocolate.
It can be chocolate, food, or alcohol. Go for a walk. Listen to a podcast. Go to the gym. Do meditation. Talk to someone. There’s nothing wrong with those things, but if you’re living a life of debilitating anxiety, paralysis, and things like I have, those won’t help you, and that’s controversial. Feeling better in those moments will not help you in the long run.
I teach people how to unhook me. It’s leaning into that feeling and being in that moment. It’s very hard for people to do initially if they’re left-brained. That’s because the moment something happens, even if you don’t go do something to feel better, you sit there in your head and try to figure out either, “Where did this come from?” and start digging or you try to figure out a mental solution. You’re like, “I need to be grateful.” That’s a common one. You engage with that. Let’s stay out of our heads, be in that uncomfortable sensation, and allow it to process out, knowing that data will process out for good. It’s gone, that part of you that’s suppressed.
Are we afraid of it metastasizing into a depression? My own daughter struggles with this dynamic and I can’t tell why. There’s nothing surface that we can point to in terms of anything that we could say as a trigger, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real for her. I know other people fall into these same patterns too. The overall fear or the overall label people put on it is it’s a depression, a condition, or a permanent feature of who they are. If I’m feeling a little anxious and I am either using that label for myself or fearing that I could fall into that label, I could become averse to allowing this process of unhooking that you’re pointing to. I could be even less comfortable with it. What’s your view on that?
People typically fear that they’re going to manifest something very uncomfortable in their lives. There’s so much garbage out there, and I’m sorry to say this, about manifesting and our thoughts and feelings. That is completely untrue. People are afraid of having negative thoughts and feelings. They’re like, “It’s going to bring something scary. I need to focus on the positive.” It’s so not correct.
The reason you are manifesting and bringing these events into your life is because you have this stuff suppressed inside of you. This negativity is so balled up inside of you and for me that it comes up. You go, “No,” and push it down. It keeps coming your whole life. You’ll have very loud occurrences in your life mentally and emotionally until you’re faced with this stuff.
The only way to have that positive light is to deal with this stuff as it comes up. It will not attract more. You’re resolving it. There’s this deep fear. Unconsciously, people push it away, first of all, because it’s uncomfortable. Second of all, they don’t want to manifest or bring anything worse on, which couldn’t be farther from the truth.
This is the prevailing wisdom in the world of psychology, at least that which is commonly spoken about on podcasts, the internet, and so forth. I’m excited by our conversation because what you’re pointing to is something that I’ve had an innate sense of, but I couldn’t quite point out exactly why. What you’re doing here is pointing to the reason why it’s working this way. This is a super valuable thing.
We’re still in the intellectual area here because we’re talking about, “I think this.” We have feelings about the feelings, so we still need to somehow jump the modality from what we perceive intellectually to what we are allowing ourselves to experience in our internal landscape. Can you put some more light in that space?
Sure. The intellectual fears and anxieties are real, but they’re a part of the ego structure. Anytime you’re in there trying to figure out what your fear is and try to give bullet points to disprove that fear, there’s nothing wrong with that. The fear, imagine it’s an energy in your nervous system that’s deeply suppressed. The way you’re going to resolve that fear is not through intellect and force but through letting go when that comes up.
If you’re feeling nervous for an interview, a podcast, or whatever and you feel some anxiety come up, you surrender to that. Allow that to permeate your being and do whatever it wants to do. The mind is going to go crazy. It always does, but bring yourself into the body and the sensations. Keep focusing on that, and then it will be released. You’ll have a moment of clarity. You’ll see the pattern. You’ll have that release moment. You’ll realize not intellectually but emotionally that it was a completely unfounded fear.
The way you integrate and expand is not through the minds. I’m saying this as a memory champ. I’ve obsessed over hacking my brain my whole life. It’s not through your mind that you expand. It’s through this suppressed energy and this fear. When you say face your fear, feel your fear. Let it take you. Jump on the back of the demon. Ride it out and befriend it, and it will inform you.
When you say face your fear, feel your fear, let it take you, jump on the back of the demon, ride it out, befriend it, and it will inform you.
I’m wondering if this is part of the appeal of why people like scary movies. It’s not really that fun being afraid, but people do seek scary movies. Maybe that’s a proxy or something like that, I wonder if there is a psychologically useful effect of purposefully being afraid or being on rollercoasters or something.
I don’t know. Everything we seek is for the way we feel. It gives us something. It gives people something. Why do you want $1 million? You want $1 million because of how it will make you feel when you have that house and those things. It’s not the $1 million to sell, but the feeling of everything. Everything we chase is for a feeling or to avoid the feeling.
The unhooking method is inviting those feelings and letting them. You’re unhooking from the feelings by allowing them to wash through. Wherever they’re going to go, you let that go.
You’re unhooking from the control that you’ve been conditioned to have.
You’re not trying to steer it. You’re not trying to suppress it. You’re not trying to deny it. You’re letting it rip, letting it go, and seeing what happens.
You’re letting go of control.
Was this something that you had to do by yourself or with other people? Did you have to set aside time? Did you have to be alone? What did it look like in these kinds of situations?
I did it by myself. You don’t need a priest or a therapist to do this. It’s helpful if you have someone you love. If you feel like you want someone to sit with you or hold space, sure. Parents can understand this. When a child is really upset as a parent, you don’t need to do anything other than embrace them and hold space. You hold emotional space where you’re solid and sturdy. When you’re in anxiety, you do the same thing for yourself. You can be the safety for yourself and develop a tolerance for these feelings.
I hated doing this initially. I did not want to do this, but if I felt anxious or overwhelmed, my immediate reaction was to grab my phone and scroll to distract myself. Put that down. I would be. I would sit wherever I was and be with it. I would relax my body and be with it. I had to figure out how to get through my mind. Initially, it’s not easy to do if you’re conditioned to stay in your mind, which all anxious people are, but you can do this on your own.
It’s the source of it. The source of the anxiety is wanting that outcome, being attached to something that you are afraid of that's not going to happen.
You’re exactly right. When you have anxiety, you are attached to outcomes or things. The anxiety comes because you lose control. You feel like you’re losing control of that, so you try to grip on with more control.
The way you talked about it there, I think that it was almost like a skill that you were building.
It was a complete reconditioning of how I handled reactivity, negative emotions, and uncomfortable situations. The moment stuff comes up, we run. We bail mentally and emotionally or we get triggered or react. We all do this. It was complete reconditioning of that which took devotion. It wasn’t easy.
I’m thinking of some friends and people I know who are so repressed that the slightest bit of emotion, they want nothing to do with it. They immediately either change the subject or they’re out of there either physically or mentally. You’re saying they created a tremendous prison for themselves that holds all of that crap inside and then got to live with that stored-up energy. It’s never going away. It’s going to find its way out one way or another. It might either be a panic attack. It might find itself in a physical attack. You can get sick over it, right?
100%. This will get louder. It’s a pressure cooker in there.
Catalyst Integration
You said three. We started with our nervous system being dysregulated and then the unhooking method. What’s the third piece?
The third piece is called catalyst integration. Catalyst means a big trigger or something big that happened that was emotional. Integration is how we take that suppressed part of us and integrate it back in. In all of us, there are boulders inside of us. It is moments of our past, attachments, things with other people, or situations that we are holding onto intensely.
We don’t even realize it, but they are causing blockages, intense emotions, and surges. Catalyst integration is how we release those. Therapists love to dig into the past. They’re like, “What are you worried about? Where did this come from?” and all this stuff. Doing all of that builds and strengthens all the neural pathways that are causing the anxiety and keeping you in it.
You think that therapy can do some harm. One of the things as a consultant in people strategy is I find myself in coaching conversations a lot. I never call myself a coach, but I am in that space. You get in this gray area where we’re going into some heavy-duty emotional stuff. Where does being a consultant or a coach end and a therapist begin? My demarcation point is I never go into the past. Staying on what we’re going from here on out is how I’ve always regulated my conversations as well as understanding that there are things in the past that they have to deal with.
It’s not something that hasn’t ever been attractive to me. I’ve never wanted to go back there because nothing we’re going to do will change that anyway. It’s interesting what you said about reliving the past. You’ve got to let whatever comes out and live it through rather than put more weight to it by saying, “How horrible this story was.” Talk about that a little bit more.
If we’re digging cognitively and mentally in the past, that can be very harmful. What we really want to do and what I learned is tapping into that feeling, feeling that feeling, and processing the past through the heart is more important. It’s where it’s all at. If a therapist is digging for the past and what happened in your childhood, your mom, and all these things, you’re mentally being asked questions and strengthening these neural pathways.
What catalyst integration does, and I learned this through my own experience with my grandfather which I can share that story in a second, is when you’re tapped into an intense trigger and a reaction, it’s attached to something in the past. You don’t have to know where it came from. The most important part is to feel that feeling fully.
When you're tapped into an intense trigger and a reaction, it's attached to something in the past. You don't have to know where it came from. The most important part is to feel that feeling fully.
Some of the people and situations in your life are very visceral. We can make a list of things that bother you. I do this with my clients. I’m like, “If you notice someone that really bothers you, write it down.” We’re going to use that person in catalyst integration. I guide them through how to do this on their own. You go to that moment of that person, and the moment you think about someone or something that bothers you, it opens up stuff naturally. It is keeping you out of your mind here but more into the heart of feeling through that moment.
This is bizarre if you’ve never experienced this. If you’re tapped into a stressful trigger or person and you’re feeling anger, resentment, or whatever, you can bring up and ask your subconscious, “Where is this coming from?” In your own contemplative state, you ask, “Where is this really coming from?” A memory from your past might emerge. It could be something you haven’t thought about or something you didn’t think affected you, but it will emerge in your subconscious. It will come up.
I guide people through how to do that on their own without me. You don’t need someone. You need to know one person that bothers you. Get into a comfortable place or be with someone you love to walk through this. Be in that memory, feel that memory, feel it as uncomfortable, and let it happen. You can then ask your subconscious, “Where did this come from?” and it will unwind. I guide people through how to release that.
That’s fascinating. That’s very interesting and unique. Are there other people that do it the way that you found out? I’m not that familiar with this approach.
Yeah. I learned about this technique from Aaron Abke. He has more of an intellectual approach to this technique. I tailored it more towards how I utilized it in the past. Teal Swan also has a very similar approach to this, too, of accessing these boulders. All of these techniques, I wouldn’t say I’m pioneering, but I’m certainly adapting them in a very simple way.
The problem I see is when people get into this stuff, they over-intellectualize it. If you’re anxious and you’re the left-brain person like I was, you try to figure everything out step by step. It isn’t about step-by-step. It’s about tapping into a different realm of simplicity and deconditioning your way of thinking. I try to play at it from very simple emotional access of how we access this stuff.
My head’s a swirl of all kinds of things that you’re pulling up here in terms of the way we can take this. Being a memory champion and then talking about some of the dangers of suppressed memories or at least playing around with them and giving them undue attention and weight is a very interesting dichotomy to me there for you, your story, and your individual walk through this world.
One of the couple of things related to memory that has come up repeatedly in my continual trying to figure life out is learning about, first of all, how scarily incomplete our memories are and how inaccurate they are. Through research, they find that our perceptions versus what happens are way further apart than what is comfortable or what we would normally predict. I’ve seen this in numerous different ways, and it manifests in a lot of different ways.
The other thing is whether it’s accurate or not, our memory, they are almost always, to some degree, obsolete. In other words, let’s say one of your triggering events was being rejected by the opposite sex. That rejection may not have been a real rejection. You felt like it was. Whether it was or wasn’t, the accuracy of it doesn’t matter. You still have the traumatic feeling of rejection. It doesn’t know any different.
Let’s say you’re happily married. The issue is no longer a factual matter. It’s truly obsolete. Yet, that energy and pattern is still there. You’re still feeling. This is attached to the ego that you were talking about where the ego part says, “You’re not all that attractive to the opposite sex. Your genes are in trouble,” or, “You’re not where you could, should, or want to be. Therefore, you should be doing this other stuff.” It pulls you in directions that have nothing to do with what you would choose, want, or think makes sense. Yet, there you go. What do you think about that? Did I thrive?
Yeah. You nailed it. The way I like to think about it is the moment in the past when you got rejected by the opposite sex, in that moment, you were so bothered and couldn’t handle that that not only did it suppress, but it fragmented. That part of you is trapped in that fifteen-year-old body. It’s trapped in the past. Let’s keep it that way. This happens more when you fragment that part of you and it gets trapped in the past.
The bothered part of you from the past ripples forth into the future. Meaning, when you have an argument with your wife or whatever and you have these thoughts come up, that fifteen-year-old fragmented version that’s still bothered and still suppressed is rippling out into the present. That’s why the patterns keep happening, the unconscious and subconscious patterns. It ripples out and affects us.
The way we resolve those is not just through catalyst integration, but through releasing the sizzle of that fifteen-year-old self so that the pattern changes and the energy comes back. For all your computer nerds out there, we’re defragmenting our psyche. We’re bringing all of these parts back that were suppressed. We’re bringing them back online and organized into our present, which brings forth our potential and our capacity.
One of the things that I’m thinking about this process is it doesn’t have to take forever. From your own personal story, all of this transformation for you has happened in a relatively short amount of time, right?
Yes. This process that I teach and walk people through took two months of devotion and I was no longer having any panic attacks. I was completely out of the dread and the heaviness of the anxiety. It’s life-changing.
That by itself is massive. My guess is that it would’ve had other effects on you as well that were perhaps surprising or positive. Can you point to anything else besides the panic attacks that have been dividends from the work that you did?
Sure. I had a lot of shame growing up. It was not just parts that were embarrassing about myself that I was afraid to share, but parts and talents that I had that I wouldn’t bring forth to the world because I got made fun of it or didn’t value it when I was younger. I allow that to come forth because I don’t care what people think anymore because things don’t bother me. I’ve become unbothered through this work. I was so judgmental of myself and others that I kept all this in. The root of shame is judgment. We have an intense judgment of others and ourselves, and that holds all this stuff in. For me, I released shame. I released a couple of other nasty patterns.
The root of shame is judgment. We have an intense judgment of others and ourselves.
If I’m being honest, I was slightly manipulative to get my way or to get things I wanted in a very sly way. Some people might say narcissistic. We all have these tendencies, but those things are gone. I’m feeling lighter. Relationships are more fulfilling. I can have deeper, more vulnerable conversations like this. I’m a human being. People open up more to me because everyone is going through the same stuff.
My heart is open. That’s the big thing. I’m out of my head and in my heart more. If you’re in anxiety, it drove me nuts when my mentors were saying, “Get out of your head to get into your heart.” I was like, “How do you do that? What are the steps for that?”Being in your head and being in your heart are completely different energies and feelings. My heart is open, and I’m willing to share more.
I’ve started this new company with the Eye of Power model. I’m trying to get it into organizations, so I’m wearing the sales role more than I have before. I’ve been revisiting my conversations and so forth. My first inclination is to go into all the reasons. I could talk about how I came up with a whole picture and what it does for people and all that, but I’ve learned that that doesn’t matter. What really matters is the heart. First of all, how much do I care about helping this organization? How much do the leaders that I’m speaking with care about their people? How much do their people care about helping themselves and the people around them?
It really does all come down to love. It’s not the emotion of love, but the act of love, which is supporting, wanting the best for other people, and putting what’s the best of you toward the best of them. That’s the sense of love that I mean. That’s the fuel of the entire world. Guess what? That’s not new because that’s what Jesus Christ says. This is how it is.
As you were speaking about the shame, I was thinking about The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that, but it’s the same thing. Don’t take things personally and always do your best. Be impeccable with your word. Don’t have shame with yourself. Do what you think is best and hold to that. You do those four things and you’re on the right track.
Unconditional love is one of the guiding principles of my life. It is maybe the one. You said Jesus embodied that. He didn’t just talk about it. He was it. He showed us how we can do the same thing, not mentally, through words, and not just loving other people. We can love the parts of ourselves that are suppressed and unwanted. We can allow them up, and we can share them with the world.
Everyone thinks love means hugging, kissing, flowers, romance, and intimacy. That’s a human definition of love. For me, it’s much more simpler. It’s full acceptance. It’s overwhelming acceptance. If I’m fully accepting every bit of Tom, it doesn’t mean I have to agree with you. I fully accept and embrace you as who you are. I see all of you, allow all of you to be, and not judge it. It’s like, “His role is amazing. What he does is cool. I love what he does, what he is about, and what he is learning.”
If I can do that even with the people I hate and the people I’m resentful towards like the politicians and the evil people in the world or you can find an acceptance of their role and say, “That person woke me up because of how corrupt and evil they were. I’m thankful for that person in the world because now, I’m awake and mature and I see things from a different perspective,” that perspective of unconditional love is what freed me ultimately from my anxiety and panic.
That’s mind-blowing. That’s such a beautiful concept. I start crying over it because the process that you laid out is what it is. It comes down to acceptance of what’s real and true. You let it flow. If you don’t get it in the way, then you’re not going to have problems. The pain, fear, and problems are blocked energy. That’s what I talk about in the Eye of Power a lot. The pain quadrant is our relationship to pain. It’s understandable because it doesn’t feel good. Shame doesn’t feel good. Fear doesn’t feel good. None of it feels good, so our natural reaction is to push it away, deny it, and distance ourselves.
When we can get in a relationship with what its function is, which is, “Pay attention. Wake up. There’s something blocked here, let it go,” your word of acceptance seems to me the magic word right there. See it for what it really is. You might as well embrace it because you don’t have any choice. Reality is what it is. I don’t think that you can do much about it. We waste a lot of energy on things that we have no control over. There are very few things that we do have control over. One of them is this thing we’re pointing to, which is our attitude towards how things flow.
I couldn’t have said it better. When you have anxiety, you are in a resistance to reality. You’re not trusting reality. We have to learn to let go of that control that we think we have over things or our lives. We’re forcing things. We’re resisting what is happening in our lives and seeking out something to feel better, but that doesn’t work. It never will. It’s futile. Not only do we have to surrender, but we have to accept everything that arises, the uncomfortable and the good. If we stop resisting the uncomfortable and allow it to happen, we’re going to be at peace much quicker.
It’s not a panacea, rose-colored glasses, or anything like that. Life has a dual nature to it. You’re going to be in seasons of joy and you’re going to be in seasons of sorrow. One thing is for sure. We’re all going to meet our maker one way or another. We’re mortal. This is not a bad thing. One of the ways that illustrated this to me was the writings of Anne Rice with the vampire milieu. The curse of vampirism was immortality. You don’t want to be immortal. When you have all the time in the world, nothing really matters. It’s our mortality that gives us that specialness of meaning and purpose. It’s our limitations that highlight the things that we’re capable of.
That duality you pointed to about whether somebody bugs you or you hate somebody to have that acceptance is true down to the core of it. Everything has its purpose, place, and meaning. When you allow yourself to be open and accepting, you also allow yourself to increase your wisdom as it relates to your ability to understand what’s real. That never changes. You’re oriented in the world that way. Another way I talk about that in the Eye of Power is the closer we get our models to reality, the more power we have. They’re never going to be exact because we’re beings of limited perceptive power, but that’s what we’re here for. The work of our life is to bring those things in our own unique way.
Your story, to me, is extremely inspiring because it’s very dramatic. You’ve got super high highs of being a worldwide memory champion. We didn’t even talk much about that journey. I thought we’d talk a good amount about that, but it didn’t turn out this way. Maybe next time, we can get into that. If we ever get a chance to talk again, I would sure hope to.
You talked about the walkthrough acceptance of what was real and true within yourself to unlock it. The fact that it’s not that long ago is another thing that’s really hitting me hard. You’re a young man. You got a lot ahead of you. I can’t wait to see where it leads. It’s a super inspirational story. Thanks so much for being with me.
Thank you for digging in and asking some really good questions to allow that to flow through me. People need to know this. Not only can I do it, but everyone else can be empowered to do this themselves if they’re willing to go there.
Closing
That reminds me to ask you this because I’m thinking, “Maybe I could use John’s help with a few things here.” For those who are reading, how should they proceed or reach out to you? What would you coach them to do to move forward in the way we’ve been talking about?
I guide people through this three-step process to release anxiety, chronic anxiety, and panic for good. I have a program or offer one-on-one mentorship there. You can go to ReleasePanic.com to look that over. You can even book a call with me to talk this through and see what works for you or if this will work for you. For everyone reading, I recommend getting a free guide that goes into this deeper, whether you have anxiety or not. If you have suppressed emotions and you want to know how to do this, I have a video at ReleasePanic.com/Free. Sign up there. This is what I do, walk people through suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, and some nasty stuff to realize that there’s nothing wrong with them and it’s that they’ve blocked themselves and how they can do the process that I did too.
Thank you so much. I appreciate that. Personally, I don’t necessarily struggle with panic attacks. Before we started talking in the interview, I shared a little story with John about an experience I had about getting on stage and getting all surprised. I had a speech memorized and couldn’t function. It really shut me down.
I wouldn’t necessarily call it a panic attack because I was functional and I could think. I got back up. It was weird feelings that were uncomfortable. I don’t think it matters who you are. We’re all works in progress. We can all get better as it relates to our level of acceptance. Wherever we are in our walk, we can always move forward. People like John are gems for us to be able to shorten our learning curve.
I have tons of people who don’t have panic attacks who reach out to me for this same solution. As you’ve read, this is for anyone who’s a human being, but the people who are really suffering need this and want to move through this. I have tons of people who don’t have anxiety and panic who do these programs and processes too because it’s life-changing.
Thank you. I appreciate it so much.
I appreciate you. Thank you.
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John, thank you so much for being on the show with me. This was a special discussion. I feel personally impacted by it. I hope everybody reading feels the same way. As a matter of summary, I want to talk about the process that you found, the three-step process. The first is our nervous system dysregulation. It’s the ability to shut off. When we’re in anxiety and so forth, we think we have to be in control. That can function as a prison. We need to find a way to allow those feelings to go forward.
That’s number two, which is the unhooking method. It’s to lean into those feelings. Let them feel those fears, anxieties, or whatever they might be. It could be shame or distasteful things that we hold space for. Let those things go, breathe, and dissipate in a way to complete the cycle of whatever they’re trying to do for us.
That’s number three. The third piece was the catalyst integration. It’s about integrating that suppressed piece. Once that’s free, it can be integrated into. It adds to who we are as a person rather than holding us back in a disjointed state, which, in one way or another, we tend to all be in. This is an extremely valuable process. I’d encourage anybody who’s feeling suppressed in this way to reach out to John and avail himself. We know it worked for him and it has worked for many of the people he has helped. It’s a very valuable thing that we’ve had John Graham on our show. Thank you, John, and thank you for tuning in to the show.
Important Links
About John Graham
John Graham is a 3x USA Memory Champion, Grandmaster of Memory, Entrepreneur, and mentors High Performers (including a World Record holder).
He's a world class mind and innovator...but his dark secret is that he had to overcome daily panic attacks and chronic anxiety.
Mainstream methods (therapy, meditation, supplements, etc.) did not work so he discovered counter-intuitive methods to release suppressed emotions and release the control conditioning of his mind to free himself of panic and anxiety, for good.
He's performed insane mental feats on TV shows all over the world:
Super Brain (China) 400 Million Viewers
SuperHuman (USA) with Mike Tyson
Xtra Ordinary (Indonesia) 20 Million Viewers
Incredible People (Russia) 4th place finish
He's been an entrepreneur since 2012 and failed with at least 5 businesses along the way.
He was always a bad employee, because he wasn't meant to work in a cubicle for someone else.
He's a proud father (and husband) of 3 girls.
He does NOT have a naturally gifted mind, he read a book called Moonwalking with Einstein that talks about memory championships and mental feats in 2014. That book started him on the journey of learning mental techniques and competing all over the world. He won his first USA Memory Championship in 2018 and most recently in 2022 and 2023.
He helps high achievers release their panic attacks and chronic anxiety, for good... at releasepanic.com/free.