When you want to run and hide

Welcome to the ArtsBound Newsletter. Every Tuesday, I share three thoughts or insights meant to help performing arts students and young professionals flourish in their life and career. Today we’re looking at fear: 1) how it affects our body and thinking (and, therefore, our ability to perform), 2) the impact it has on key moments in our career, and 3) why, perhaps, it’s not always all that bad.

- 6-minute read - 

(NOTE: If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free.)

1. The temporary effects of fear on our body and thinking, and how it impacts our performances.

Our culture is becoming increasingly emotions-literate as the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and psychotherapy continue to report valuable information to the public about how our emotions impact our lives. Popular media (i.e. the movie, “Inside-Out”) have even made the topic more accessible for kids.

If you’re in-the-know about emotions, this may be review for you, and you may wish to skip to the next item in the newsletter. But if you are new to thinking about emotions - yours or those of others - you might find the following to be insightful.

In 2003, Paul Ekman published a definitive book on the emotions titled Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life. Much of what I share below is from this work.

When I taught music and theatre, I would often discuss with my students the issue of stagefright, a variety of fear especially relevant to performers.

Fear is an instinctual response to a perceived threat, be it physical or psychological. Triggers for fear can be learned (e.g. going to the dentist) or unlearned (e.g. a heavy object flying at your head).

Fear encompasses both the “flight” and “freeze” components of the fight, flight, or freeze response. When a threat is perceived, one may freeze or hide (e.g. an animal trying not to be seen by a predator). If that doesn’t work, we may try to get away from the threat as quickly as possible.

Your body and mind undergo the following responses when fear has been triggered:

• Blood rushes to the large muscles in your legs, preparing you to flee;

• Your heart rate and breathing will quicken, also preparing your body for action,

• Your eyes widen, so as to take in as much of your surroundings as possible, and;

• Your mind becomes hyper-vigilant with your focus narrowing to exclude everything except the threat, assuring the the threat won’t sneak up on you.

This is why, when we are nervous about a performance, we might pace, our hands may shake (because blood is flowing away from them!), we forget our lines, etc. If you feel trapped and powerless to do anything in the face of fear, the experience can be quite unpleasant, with worry, dread, or even anger flooding your awareness. 

But if you feel as though you can do something about that threat, the hyper-focus you experience can help you problem-solve, and in the case of a performance, even sharpen your ability to complete the task at hand.

Finally, just as triggers can be learned, they can also be desensitized. The best way to deal with stagefright (after acknowledging it) is to find safe forums to perform in which you can move through fear and realize, even if something goes wrong, the negative consequences are negligible… and you didn’t die!

2. Tess Marshall talks about fear… and lots more.

Earlier this summer, I interviewed actor/singer, Tess Marshall for The ArtsBound Podcast. Tess lives and works in Manhattan and has performed all over the country in stage shows. 

In our conversation, Tess discusses how fear acted as a hindrance for many of her classmates and colleagues as they pursued their careers (as a point of interest, in many cases, their fear was inherited from their parents or other loved ones). 

Knowing that fear causes us to hide or run from danger, it makes perfect sense that the fear of failure, success, or being seen as an imposter would hold us back from taking the healthy risks that successful career pursuits often require. Furthermore, if our focus is narrowed to include only the threats we perceive, we end up blocking out the possibilities that lie ahead.    

Just as triggers for fear can be learned or unlearned, they can also be grounded or ungrounded. It is important to recognize, examine, and challenge the fears we have to see if they are truly worth holding.

Fear is just a tiny part of my talk with Tess. She has a profound perspective on what it takes to avoid comparison and maintain a healthy perspective on your own worth as a person in the midst of a highly competitive profession - an inspirational message for any listener.

Listen to my whole conversation with Tess.

3. Can fear play a positive role in your life?

I’m going to start with a short story. When I was 25 years old, I went on a backpacking trip with a friend on Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula. During the trip, we spent two nights on a backcountry seashore called Shi Shi Beach. The landscape was stunningly beautiful - cliffs covered with evergreens and huge rock formations rising out of the water.

Twice a day, low tide would reveal even more massive rocks, and these were covered with sea life!

One of the creatures we found on the rocks were mussels. We had been eating peanut-butter-and-honey sandwiches for a few days now, and my friend thought the mussels would make for a tasty alternative to our trail food. 

I liked the idea of eating wild, but I had developed a deeper respect for unknown landscapes - and an appreciation for my lack of knowledge and experience in them - as I had spent the last several weeks driving cross-country and visiting wilderness areas that were brand new to me.

What if mussels were like mushrooms? You can’t just go eating any mushroom you find in the wild! I expressed caution to my friend, citing my lack of knowledge on mussel species.

We boiled our spaghetti instead.

When we left the next day, we read a sign at the trailhead that we had ignored on our way into the backcountry. This is what it said:

“Warning: Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning toxins present in shellfish at this location. DO NOT EAT THE MUSSELS!” 

The sign was referring to toxins produced by naturally occurring algae in the water which are known to cause life-threatening neurological effects.

Good thing we didn’t eat them!

Negative emotions have a bad reputation in our culture. Still, there is usually one of them that we have adopted as our go-to response to events we perceive as negative. I know people who have become quite accustomed to being disappointed (sadness/grief), being critical of others (disgust), and being frequently angry. Personally, I’ve become very accustomed to experiencing fear.

Any of these emotions, in excess, will hinder our ability to be present in our life, to take notice of the ways in which the Universe is acting on our behalf, and to confidently heed the call of our intuition.

However, each of these “negative” emotions also has a rightful place in the experiences of our life. I have a very difficult time expressing anger, even when I’m feeling it. But I’m learning, for example, that when expressed mindfully and with special attention given to not harming others, anger is a highly important component to our response to injustice in the world.

There is a lot of talk in the self-development world about how fear is the main factor holding us back from living into our potential. In many cases, this is true. Our evolutionary imperative to not die is great at stopping us from taking healthy risks. We can overcome this when we realize that, for most of the risks we would take in the pursuit of our greatest potential, the worst-case scenario is rarely death.

So yes, overcome your fear! But don’t be silly! If a given situation could, within reason, end in you dying, a little bit of fear is just fine.

Learn from my experience. Let “reading the signs” in your life include reading the warning signs. And practice being mindfully present to healthy expressions of all your emotions - including the “negative” ones.

See you next week!

Lee

PS - If you know a student or young professional who is searching for their niche in the performing arts world, consider forwarding this email to them. If this email was forwarded to you, you can sign up to receive my newsletter every Tuesday. It's free.