From Panic to Progress

Hi everyone,

I’d like to take you back to one of the most memorable moments of panic I’ve experienced in my life. It was a real turning point in how I came to understand myself and my anxiety. It was during junior year spring break in Hawaii with my college friends. Somehow, I found myself on a plane, at 15,000 feet, strapped to an instructor, preparing to skydive.

Leading up to that moment, I wasn’t really anxious at all. I had signed the paperwork, hopped in the van with my friend, and enjoyed the drive to a small airstrip as if it were just another day. However, the second we reached 15,000 feet and slid open that airplane door, my body jolted into full alert. I felt the wind whipping past my face at 150 miles an hour, and I stared straight down into what looked like an endless drop.

In that split second before we jumped, a realization hit me. I recognized that exact same feeling from countless times in my life. This is exactly what it felt like to be too terrified to speak to people. My entire body locked up as I looked below at the ground, just as it had locked up years earlier when a teacher or classmate expected me to use my voice. Skydiving at 20 years old, and walking into a classroom at 5, might look completely different on the surface, but the rush felt eerily similar.

Remembering the Intensity of Panic

That moment of clarity jolted me right back to those early days with Selective Mutism. Back then, my parents, teachers, and even some doctors weren’t sure what was going on. They saw a kid who wouldn’t speak or participate, but they couldn’t see the invisible tidal wave of anxiety forcing me to clam up. I didn’t really even realize what was going on. Many dismissed me as shy or difficult, and it took time—and a lot of mistaken diagnoses—before someone finally named SM for what it was.

The best way I can describe that anxious panic is to imagine your greatest fear standing in front of you. Maybe it’s spiders, snakes, needles, or heights. Now picture it getting closer and closer, until you’re right at the edge of it. This moment was a true realization for me in that my brain and body treated “speaking up in a classroom” exactly the way many people treat “jumping out of a plane” as an immediate threat. With this understanding, everything else about the way I sometimes acted in public started to make complete sense.

Small Steps Toward Confidence

For me, overcoming my anxiety was never about snapping my fingers and being able to participate right away. It started with deliberate, tiny steps. Sometimes they were literally moving a few inches further into the classroom each day or whispering a single word to my mom while a teacher was quietly in the background.

Each new step built on the last, just like learning to free-fall from a plane takes a tandem instructor, a harness, and practice before you can do it solo. It might seem wild to compare skydiving to learning to speak in front of people, but to my mind at the time, both were equally overwhelming. That day in Hawaii, I was instantly reminded me that panic has a familiar formula, no matter where it comes from. It’s the same adrenaline spike, the same shortness of breath, and the same flood of “what if” thoughts.

From Panic to Progress

So how did I move from that paralyzing fear to actually finishing that jump out of a plane years later? It all came down to:

1. Preparation & Support: Just as I had a tandem instructor who knew what to do at 15,000 feet, I had supportive psychologists, teachers, and family who guided me through gradual exposures in school.

2. Practice & Repetition: Whether it’s practicing how to handle the free-fall position or practicing how to greet a teacher, consistency rewires how your brain responds to fear.

3. Perspective Shift: Over time, I learned that while my panic was real, it didn’t have to control me. Even if I stumbled, I could remind myself that I’d been through tough moments before, and come out okay.

It’s easy to think that the big, spectacular moments are what make us realize our strength. But it’s often the smaller, quieter steps that lay the groundwork. Every time I dared to whisper a word in class, every time I managed to say a full sentence in front of one more person, I built the resilience to face bigger and scarier jumps later on.

I hope this story sheds light on the intensity of panic that can come with SM and how it can show up in other parts of our lives. The next time you see someone frozen in place or struggling to speak, remember that to them, it might feel like standing at the open door of a plane in midair preparing to jump.

To the next first,
Jonathan