âMy entire life changed forever in a 1/10th of a second when I was 22. I was in the middle of a take doing a movie, and I had my first anxiety attack. And anxiety is something Iâve dealt with ever since, and at one point it was so bad that I couldnât do the on camera anymore. When you go back and you watch Boy Meets World, youâll notice that I gained something like 30 or 40 lbs in the end seasons. And it wasnât because I got lazy and I was eating, it was because I was medicated. That was the only way I could get on camera. So there was a time where the anxiety really hit me badly. Beforeâinitially, and anybody who deals with anxiety knows thisâinitially you donât know what it is. So you have your first anxiety attack and you start to, what I call, spiralâwhere all of a sudden youâre just in your head: âWhatâs going on with me?â âIâm dyingâ âOh, Iâm having a heart attackâ 'Itâs cancerâ. And then you go get checked out by your doctor and he says itâs anxiety and you go, 'No, it canât beâŚyou donât understand! I have a tumor. Iâm dying, thereâs something horribly wrong with me.â But you find out thereâ s not! And so I had to go to therapy, which I had never done before and thought was such a cliche, which of course itâs not, but you think 'Oh, Iâm an actor in therapyâ. Well, I needed it. I needed that with the medication. And the medication worked exactly as it was supposed to for me. I was on it for like a year and a halfâI havenât been medicated in 12 years nowâto bring my serotonin levels to where they were supposed to be and then I was weaned off them. Then I did talk therapy and learned how to deal with my anxiety. But I deal with it on a daily basis. Iâll have a panic attack like 4-5 times a week. And itâs one of those things now where itâs a process I go throughâbreathing through it, knowing what it is, and talking about it helps 1000%. Itâs been a long time [since first getting anxiety] and it initially cost me my career on camera. I was at the peak of my careerâjust finished BMW and I had signed a huge deal with ABC and Disney. I started doing other television shows for them. I was doing movies. And then it got to the point where I could no longer audition. I could not, my body physically would not let me go through the stress of the audition process. Iâd start shaking uncontrollably. Iâd start sweating. I couldnât sit in the room and do it. So I thank god voice over work was there, because I got to at least do what I love and entertain people, and then slowly the panic attacks started to subside as I was no longer on camera. And I realized maybe thatâs what it was. So I threw myself into voice over work, which was the absolute love of my life, and it saved me. Then Girl Meets World just started and initially I said, 'Iâm not going to do itâ. I was in my head my about itâ'Thereâs no way I can do itâ. All these rumors came out about me: I was agoraphobic, I was this, I was that. And I said, I have to do this again. I have to try. If Iâm ever going to get back on camera, they could not mastermind a better place for me to go. I know people on the set, I know all the actors. Michael Jacobs has been amazingly helpful, asking me what do I need to come back here. And I went and I did my first episode and the audience cheered and gave me a standing ovation. And I almost cried. Because it was 15 years I couldnât be on camera, and there I was again. And I was like, 'holy shit, I can still do this!â. And doing three episodesâitâs changed my life again.
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