Robin Meade: "I Am The Author Of My Own Life"

Robin Meade: "I Am The Author Of My Own Life"

By Alissa Krinsky on Sep 07, 2009 09:00 AM

It was June 12, 2009, and Robin Meade was about to parachute from a plane for the first time. She would share the skies on this jump with former President George H.W. Bush, celebrating his 85th birthday. The U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team would guide them, with the event recorded by TV cameras.

Meade tells TVNewser she felt "no anxiety at all." And that was significant. A "great exclamation point at the end of the sentence of my complete trip through the world of self-doubt," she says.

Self-doubt. Lifelong feelings of worry. Anxiety attacks. It's all laid bare in Meade's new book, Morning Sunshine!: How to Radiate Confidence and Feel it Too, officially out Thursday.

It will come as a surprise to those who "know her as the composed, upbeat host of 'HLN's Morning Express With Robin Meade'", as the book jacket states.

In Morning Sunshine, Meade tells of a watershed moment in the late nineties, when she experienced her first panic attack while anchoring a weekend newscast at Chicago's NBC station. Stressed out by the pressure to do well at her job and to please new management, Meade's confidence wavered. "Along the way, I really lost who I was, and who the real me was. 'What if I'm not what they want?'...it just escalated from there."

It was confusing. She had grown up singing in her church choir, went on to become Miss Ohio 1992, and then a broadcaster. "I'd done hundreds, maybe thousands of news shows up to that point in my career. So why was this happening to me?" she wondered.

"I've been confident in aspects of my life, yes. When it came to being a news anchor, that was my job, and that was how I made my money, so I didn't want to mess up."

The attacks continued — about 30 over two years — but even though her general practitioner diagnosed the episodes as anxiety-related, Meade was reluctant to seek out a social worker or psychologist. "I refused to get help, I was so mortified," she says, also concerned about confidentiality in light of her visible local profile.

Finally, Meade's husband arranged for her to work with a holistic chiropractor who "challenged my thinking...I really had to learn to stay in the present, which I think most of us have a hard time doing."

Meade also had to learn to break a lifelong habit of worrying about whether others liked her. "I put so much value in someone else's opinion that it really just kind of degraded my own opinion [of herself]..."

She says she now has "more control of my life. I am the author of my own life." In Morning Sunshine — so named for the greeting she gives during her daily HLN newscast — she offers tips on being confident and happy, and shares life experiences.

In Morning Sunshine's acknowledgments, she thanks CNN brass for being supportive of the book. These days, she writes, "I've done a complete 180 from my confidence-challenged days...I've found my confidence."

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/hln/robin_meade_i_am_the_author_of_my_own_life_130374.asp

Anxiety attacks nearly put an end to HLN anchor Robin Meade's career

By Richard Huff
DAILY NEWS TV EDITOR

Monday, August 31st 2009, 4:00 AM

Robin Meade

Robin Meade comes off as a happy-go-lucky, confident anchor on HLN's daily "Morning Express."

But not so long ago, she suffered from near-crippling anxiety and self-doubt that almost sidelined her career.

"I dealt with it for two years before I got help," says Meade, who documents her battle with anxiety in a new book, "Morning Sunshine! How to Radiate Confidence and Feel it Too," out Sept. 10 from Center Street books.

Meade, whose HLN show is enjoying its best ratings ever, said the anxiety emerged one night while she was doing weekend newscasts at a station in Chicago and was handed some breaking news to read.

"I felt sweaty," she writes in "Morning Sunshine!" "Just as I opened my mouth to speak, the set seemed to fade into a gauzy haze. My breathing was jagged."

A co-worker gave her some water. By the time the video clip for the piece ended, she had calmed down a bit, but the incident exposed a larger problem.

"Some things are seared into your brain," Meade says of the incident. "That day is for me. I know the outfit I wore, I never wore it again."

Meade reveals that she was at first embarrassed by her general practitioner's preliminary diagnosis: anxiety attacks.

She eventually found help from Amelia Case, a chiropractor who heads up the Universal Health Institute and who taught her how to come to terms with her anxiety and lack of confidence.

The book follows Meade from that night in Chicago through the diagnosis and treatment and to HLN. Along the way, she offers ideas on what she - and the readers - can learn from her experiences.

For many, the tale will come as a shock. "I don't think my bosses here, or the people I worked with, had any idea that I struggled with anxiety," she says. "One of the most freeing experiences was when I handed in my manuscript."

When the book was done, she gave it to her bosses at HLN.

"I'm not hiding part of myself," she says, 'Not that I needed to hide anything. It's not like you say, 'Hi, my name is Robin, and 10 years ago, I had self-esteem issues.'"

Meade says her problems stemmed from focusing on what people thought of her, not on what she thought of herself.

"My measurement was whether I was likable or not," she says.

Part of the problem, she says, was being so focused on her job and never saying no. In addition, she didn't have the ability to be comfortable as herself.

It's different now, she says, She's comfortable in her role at HLN, where she started in 2001, and in her own skills.

Even so, Meade says she still has to work on her anxiety and confidence.

"If I feel like I'm slipping back into a tendency of wondering, 'How was that, do you like me,'" she says. "I can catch it and get myself out of it."

also: http://robinmeadeblog.com/?page_id=5052
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/2009/08/31/2009-08-31_anxiety_attacks_nearly_put_an_end_to_hln_anchor_robin_meades_career.html