Tag: fear

Healing Through Theatre: How I Gathered the Courage to Audition for a Play After a 20-Year Hiatus

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A few years ago, I decided that I wanted to try to do more performing. I know this may seem strange coming from an introverted librarian, but I do have a bit of a theatrical side (and definitely a dramatic side – just ask my husband!)

I naturally gravitated towards the arts as a kid.

I had always loved dressing up as a child – I would wear costumes out in public on a regular basis. My favorites were a bat costume and Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

I grew up singing a cappella in church, learning how to read music and sing the alto part at a young age. And I loved to sing, whether it was church hymns or Disney princess songs, I just loved singing!

And speaking of Disney, I really wanted to be an animator for Disney when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade. I would practice drawing scenes from The Lion King when I had free time in school.

I took piano lessons for a few years and played the clarinet in junior high band.

I never took dance lessons as a kid, but I loved dancing (I mean, who doesn’t?) When I was a young teen, the popular artists of the time were Britney Spears, N’SYNC, and Backstreet Boys (shoutout to all my fellow Millennials!) I had this VHS tape called Darrin’s Dance Grooves, and I spent hours learning the You Drive Me Crazy Britney Spears dance (and had to manually rewind the tape every time I wanted to restart the dance!)

In high school, I tried out for a few plays and was part of the ensemble in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Rebecca Nurse in The Crucible.

Fast forward to my senior year of high school. I tried out for another play (I can’t remember which one) but I do remember the feelings of surprise and shame when I realized I didn’t see my name on the cast list.

Fast forward again to my freshman year of college. I was really excited about the chance to get involved in theatre and choir. I tried out for the Homecoming musical, Beauty and the Beast. For some reason all they had available were ensemble roles by the time I tried out. I remember there were a bunch of us trying out as a group, and we all had numbers pinned to our shirts. The casting directors watched us a few times and then called out the numbers they wanted to have continue on to the next round. Unfortunately, my number did not get called.

Okay, so theatre hadn’t worked out, but I still had a chance for choir. There were two main choirs, sort of like A-team and B-team choir. During my audition, the choir directors were very encouraging, and they told me I was actually very good at sight reading music. I was so confident that I would get a spot in at least one of the choirs that I almost couldn’t comprehend it when I didn’t see my name on either of the lists – I remember just staring and staring, trying to find my name, and again the terrible feeling of shame overwhelming me.

I was devastated. I don’t think I ever let on to my friends or parents how crushed I was. At that time in my life, I very much avoided outwardly showing my feelings. I was pretty good at pushing those feelings down and pretending everything was okay.

After that it felt like a switch flipped in my brain – I decided I was obviously not cut out for pursuing anything in art, theatre, or music – and so I just stopped trying. I convinced myself it was time to move on towards becoming an adult and getting a “practical” career (which at the time I decided was being a teacher – ironically that did not last very long!)

I really didn’t imagine that theatre would ever be a part of my life again… but life continues to surprise me.

Fast forward many years later, and I have a son, Calvin, who decides he wants to try dance – and it turns out, he’s actually really good at it! He does ballet and gets to perform at Abilene’s iconic Paramount Theatre. It’s a gorgeous theatre located downtown and it just celebrated it’s 95th birthday!

He’s also an amazing artist.

And when he starts taking piano lessons, it’s clear he’s pretty gifted at that too.

I was ecstatic – I could live vicariously through my kid and watch him get to live out my dreams! (A mom’s gotta dream big, right?)

I convinced Calvin to try doing musical theatre last summer (2024) with APAC. You had to be at least 8 years old to participate, and he turned 8 the DAY BEFORE the camp started – so I’m pretty sure he was the youngest participant there! The musical they performed was Shrek Jr. Every kid who signed up for the summer musical camp is guaranteed a part, but they still have auditions to see who gets what role. Calvin had auditioned for a speaking role, but didn’t get it – he ended up in the ensemble (AND as little Shrek, which wasn’t a speaking part, but was still really cool!)

I remember the day Calvin learned what role he got, he was disappointed. Despite this being his first musical theatre experience ever, and him being the youngest kid there, he felt like he had failed. I tried to explain to him that this was all part of the theatre process, and it didn’t mean he wasn’t talented, but that as he gained experience he might get more roles.

I didn’t want him to give up on something when he had so much potential. I didn’t want him to be afraid of failure or taking risks.

And then it hit me – that’s exactly what I had been doing for years. As an Enneagram 1 (aka. Perfectionist) I had avoided or quit anything whenever it was apparent I wasn’t immediately perfect at it. I had given up on theatre and singing and a pursuing a career in anything I didn’t think I would be guaranteed to succeed at (like being an animator for Disney) – because of the fear of failure.

There’s a good reason to fear failure – it hurts. A lot. Especially if you’re the type of person that sometimes ties their self-worth to their achievements.

However, I knew that modeling risk-taking, especially a willingness to fail, would be extremely important for my kid. But it meant that I had to finally face some of my own fears and hurts that I had been avoiding for so long.

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women fighter in sunset

Running with Knives (Part 2): the Self-Preservation Instinct

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We each have a self-preservation instinct, to preserve our body, its life and effective function. This instinct, therefore, focuses us on physical safety, well-being, material security and comfort. Anxiety or stress may combine with this instinct to drive us to conserve or hoard energy and resources in response to demands from the environment or other people.

“Enneagram 27 Subtypes” | Integrative9.com

My therapist and I are both big fans of the Enneagram.

It’s pretty clear that I’m an Enneagram 1, but each Enneagram type also has a dominant subtype, or instinct. My therapist asked me which subtype I thought I was (the choices being self-preservation, one-on-one, or social), and I said I thought maybe I was a dominant social type. She smiled politely while shaking her head, and said to me, “self-preservation.”

We laughed together and I immediately knew she was right.

So much of my struggle with anxiety comes from the unknown, and being worried about being unprepared. I’m a worst-case scenario thinker, I expect the worst to happen so that if it does, I will be ready. Hence, why I always carry a knife in my pocket when I go out for a jog.

This is part two of a series on trauma, explaining how an event that happened 17 years ago still affects me today. (You can read part 1 here, where I share my story of almost getting abducted while walking my dog at night.)

In this post, I’d like to focus on the aftereffects of that traumatic event, how it changed me, and how I’m trying to strike a healthy balance between being overly fearful and feeling safe.

After watching my attempted kidnapper drive away that night, I went back inside and probably went into a bit of shock. I felt numb. My parents called the police and I remember a policeman asking me to describe the man. It felt so arbitrary, I knew they weren’t going to catch him based off of my generic description of his estimated height, weight, and hair color. I was so mad at myself for not memorizing the license plate number of his car.

The next day I went to school as normal and I don’t really remember thinking much more about it, except that my mom made sure I agreed I was never again going to walk our dog alone at night.

I do remember making a rule for myself that from that day on, I would never be out alone at dark – whether it was walking a dog, going to the store, checking the mailbox, or going for a run… and I followed that rule religiously from then on.

Of course there were times when I couldn’t quite avoid it entirely. Sometimes I’d be leaving from a friend’s apartment after dinner, or from working the night shift at the library, and I’d have to walk back out a ways to my car in the parking lot at night, by myself. I would always have my car keys in hand, ready to use them as a weapon. My old car had a key where you pushed a button and they key popped out of the side, like a mini switchblade – I figured it might be good enough to do some damage if I needed to poke an attacker in the eye.

I am usually always aware of my surroundings. Is there someone walking behind me? Is it a man? Which way would I run if he started chasing me? Does it look like I could outrun him?

I began to view most men as potential threats – if I was at home alone and the doorbell rang and it was a man, I wouldn’t always answer it. I’d let my dog bark and bark and bark until the guy left. If I did answer it, I was keenly aware of where the man was standing, and if I felt like I sensed any danger from him.

If I was getting into an elevator, and realized it was going to be me and a man alone inside, I would either wait for the next one, or have a very stressful 10-second ride to my floor as I hoped I did not get attacked.

It’s hard to say whether my prepare-for-the-worst, self-preservation personality was caused by my traumatic event, or if I naturally had those tendencies in me anyway. My guess is that it’s a bit of both, but that my traumatic experience intensified those tendencies, especially when it came to my physical safety.

It’s only been very recently that I’ve been working on finding the balance between recognizing the dangers out in the world, and being able to live in the world without fear. I do think it is important to be on guard against potential threats, but I don’t think it needs to be something that causes anxiety all the time.

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My Sister Rachel (Part 5): Challenges

EricaLeave a comment

I’ve never written a series this long before, but I’m planning to wrap this series up in a 6th post to come soon. If you missed any of the other posts and you’d like to read them, just do a search at the top for “My Sister Rachel” and they should all pop up.

I’m going to try to keep it real in this post, and today’s topic is “challenging times.” Coincidentally this is also the longest post in the series, so bear with me if you attempt to read through it. I’m sure it’s no surprise that there were times with Rachel that were really difficult and stressful. Honestly, there were many times that just really sucked. I don’t say that to blame my sister or my family for how things were, it is just a true statement due to the circumstances we found ourselves in.

Rachel had limited abilities to communicate with us how she was feeling or what she was thinking, and I’m sure much of the time she felt frustrated that we didn’t understand her. She probably felt frustrated when things didn’t seem “right” to her and none of the rest of us were doing anything to fix it. She wasn’t aware of all the social rules that most of us follow (like giving others personal space, or knowing to stay quiet during a movie so as not to bother anyone) and so inevitably she would commit many social taboos that would draw attention, very often negative attention.

Anger

I was probably only in Kindergarten or elementary school, but by that time I had already learned to associate Rachel with negative feelings and outcomes. Without even realizing it at the time, I strategically began to avoid being around her or interacting with her. I had learned that I needed to keep myself and my things away from Rachel if I wanted them to be out of harm’s way. As I said in an earlier post, we really didn’t play together much anyway (due to being on different developmental levels), and so we each kind of did our own thing and had our own interests. We had our own rooms and our own toys, and my toys and belongings were very different from Rachel’s (again, due to our differences in abilities). I’m not sure if that was the reason Rachel seemed so intrigued with my room and my things, but there were many times that she would take something of mine, and essentially destroy it. Sometimes she might find a tag on one of my stuffed animals and rip it off (tearing a hole in it) or she’d crumple up a drawing I was really proud of. I don’t think it was done intentionally against me, but it made me so upset. (I’m sure older siblings have experienced similar situations where a younger brother or sister broke something of theirs.)

One time in particular when Rachel broke something of mine stands out to me. Earlier we had gone to a science museum, and I had gotten a wooden stegosaurus skeleton that you could put together piece by piece, kind of like a 3D puzzle. (It was so cool!) I had assembled it and had it on display in my room. I think the door to my room was open and I was in another part of the house, but I remember hearing a crash and running back to my room to find Rachel standing there and the stegosaurus smashed to pieces on the floor. I’m not sure why this event, out of all the times Rachel broke something of mine, sticks out in my memory, but I remember being devastated. That event might have been the catalyst to cause us to put a lock on my door.

I mentioned that I had learned to keep not only my things, but myself, away from Rachel in order to avoid harm. Another not-so-fun thing about Rachel was that around this same time (Kindergarten or elementary school) Rachel started having violent tendencies. If she got mad, her way to express it was through hurting herself or someone else. And if you were the person nearby, you might find yourself hurt. Rachel was always bigger and stronger than I was, despite us being the exact same age, so fighting back wasn’t a great strategy for me. I learned instead that I was much faster than her, so I could outrun her if she was trying to attack me. There were still plenty of times though when she would get me by surprise, and being the good girl I was, I knew I shouldn’t try to hurt her back. That was SO frustrating to me – it never felt like justice was served. (Probably was the start of a lot of repressed anger for me to be honest.)

On one occasion, however, I did retaliate back at Rachel, and I didn’t hold anything back. We were older, maybe junior high age, and Rachel had hit me or hurt me somehow. I remember being so mad, and I decided I was going to hit her as hard as I could. And I did. I slapped her on her back so hard that it left a hand print, and I remember Rachel started to cry. (Sorry Mom, I don’t think I ever told you that before!) Of course then I felt terrible, but it was a mixture of feelings – I knew I shouldn’t have done it, but at the same time it felt like I was standing up for myself. (I’m sure there could have been a better way to do that…)

Fear

Besides being fearful for my physical wellbeing sometimes (her violent outbursts did get better over time), I began to have a lot of fear about what other people would think – whether or not they were judging me or my family for how my sister behaved.

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