Fear

A life-long compulsion of mine is to use whatever imperfect and unreliable means I have to put words to things that don’t get talked about much. As a kid I became attuned to the material that hangs between the pauses in conversations. Auntie makes seemingly innocent but actually passive aggressive statement, Dad sniffs deeply and stiffens body posture. Mom clears throat extra loudly and starts to whistle Once Upon A Time by Frank Sinatra. Clearly, what wasn't being said was way more important than what was. As a teenager I ignored the content of lectures and discussions in order to study what lives in the quiet crease between eyebrows, sits on curved shoulders, or hangs in the space between people like light just one color outside of the visible spectrum. 

I've written a good bit about how, for me, an aspect of growing up in a white middle class/working class family was learning to pretend that things were great when they were not. I felt the effort that it was in my own family as we dealt with the natural pains of life secretly, and pretended to be endlessly happy socially. This probably attuned me to look for the unspoken feelings in others as well.

I also noticed that others around me seemed more interested in hiding things than I was. The skill of hiding difficult feelings is sort of like a white middle class superpower; like a cultural inheritance doled out to every native son, which maybe there just wasn't any left of by the time I reached the front of the line. Because I've always preferred to be honest about things. Especially the feelings that drive us. Which probably made me a difficult child. 

Maybe part of it too was that I was really bad at pretending. I do remember wanting to pretend... wanting to be someone who could be sad or tired or afraid, and still pull off an effortless, fresh-face-to-the-world happy looking glow. But I never was. I still am not. I get just under enough sleep one night and people say the next day, “Hey- wow, are you okay?” Or, I’ll devote a little time to doing something I love and people will say, “You look great... did you do something different to your hair?”

I was a gentle and curious little kid. I liked strangers and had lots of friends. I laughed big, and liked making other people laugh. I was happy a lot. But it wasn't enough. In case you don't know, white people in the 80s were supposed to be happy ALL of the time. You young'ns can forget your soft-focused Flashdance vision of the decade, filled with cute fingerless gloves and skinny belts and everybody solving their problems through breakdancing. For most white kids of any financial class, the 80's was full of 1950's-like pressure to pretend to be the Perfect American Family, but with puffy shoulder pads, giant perms, and painful family secrets boiling up to the surface in the form of really bad acne. 

When I wasn't happy, I was sad, angry, scared, bored, frustrated... like humans are. But I didn't hide those "ugly" feelings as well as others did. I wasn't hurtful or irresponsible with emotions, but you could see them in my face, which was, I guess, bad. When I was sad (I was told) my spine would curve, my face would lengthen, and I would cease to "sparkle" like the other white girls around me. "Janna, you're so pretty when you smile..." people would say. "Straighten your posture! Behave As If!" "Focus on the Positive! Notice the Light!" "Fake it till you make it, sister!" and so on. 

I was frustrated that most of the people I knew appeared to be always perfect. Although every once in a great while, this also looked strange. At my Grandmother's funeral, when tears came into anyone's voice as they were speaking in remembrance, they seemed to get angry at themselves for crying... clearing their throats and even slapping themselves in ways that reflected reproach. To me their tears were beautiful and appropriate, and I felt like even more of a weirdo for not understanding their shame. 

Every once in a while I found a friend or teacher who would share a difficult feeling without shame, or hear mine without reproach, and that seemed to create a great feeling of relief. It seemed like a way for difficult emotions to actually shift and leave, rather than just being stuffed down and paved over. I noticed that by honestly naming feelings (which this article talks about in a lovely way), I felt, and others seemed to feel, lighter, better, more understood afterwards. 

~

The feeling that I found to be the most unacceptable, and the most frequently denied in the culture I grew up in, was fear. It was a feeling I was told repeatedly to override, repress, control and rise above. I can understand this, as fear is by its nature a scary place to dwell. And not only that, but it can escalate into anxiety, which is not an emotion as much as it's a chemical state that's exhausting and oppressive. It also seems that in every form of occupation in our culture, from business to the arts to education to medicine to combat, there is an expectation that we will Show No Fear. In regard to international relationships, terrorism has become our greatest enemy, and we are simultaneously told to "Keep Shopping", and "Don't The Terrorists Win!"-- meaning that we are not to experience even a moment of natural fear after frightening things happen. (We are told this even while our leaders also subtly manipulate us by our fear, using it to further agendas, to get us to give up civil liberties, and founding principles of international welcome.) We are collectively encouraged to skip over fear and directly transform that energy into rage and counter attack, which, as we have learned, has it's disadvantages. 

For all these reasons, fear has been escalated in our country's social status to the height of Greatest Enemy. Perhaps this is why there is a national campaign against fear, and why for the last 75 years Americans have been surrounded by motivational posters, trite slogans, annoying memes, militant middle-aged coaches and bad personal development gurus all challenging us to prove our personal power-- to prove our very lives-- by conquering fear.  

I wasn’t afraid much myself until I got Mono in Junior High. I had some childhood fears before then... nightmares that translated into waking fears, and some separation anxiety when I was small. But I grew up in a demographic where my needs for food, shelter, transportation and medicine were routinely met. All of my extended family including grandparents were alive and healthy for most of my childhood, and there wasn't much violence in my neighborhood. No bombs were falling from the sky. Apart from a dumb neighbor's dog who would occasionally chase Amy Haskel and me up a set of monkey bars while walking home from school, there wasn’t a lot to be scared of. Then I got a weird virus that changed the landscape of my life.

I was attending a performing arts magnet school, our school colors were purple and silver, and our mascot was THE UNICORN. So perhaps needless to say, I was in love with being alive. I got mononucleosis from the drinking fountain (I know, boring way to get it. But it was a performing arts school, so most of us were too busy choreographing dances and making airbrush pictures to be making out). I didn’t want to stay home and miss any days, but I should have stayed home and missed days. People with mono are supposed to take a break and lie around for several weeks to fight the virus, rest and recover. But I don’t remember much about being home resting. What I remember is being at school with glands in my neck the size of ping-pong balls, my heart beating a hundred miles a second while I was dancing The Can Can.

The Can Can was a full-on recreation of the most absurdly aerobic form of high-kicking, Rockette-style line-dancing that has ever been invented. Exactly WHY I was dancing The Can Can while I had mono remains a mystery to me. Whether it was my own wish to participate in an esteemed program, or my parents New Age philosophy of “Choose to be Healthy and Think Yourself Well!” I don't know. I do know that I shouldn’t have been there. With all the exercise I got sicker and developed a rheumatic fever that damaged both a valve in my heart and my cochlea or inner ear, which is the part of the vestibular system responsible for balance.

In the years following the virus, through high school and college, I had frequent episodes of extreme vertigo. I also suddenly had heart palpitations... unpredictable spasms in my heart muscle sometimes accompanied by shooting pain... squishing, fluttering, and scariest of all, my heart would sometimes stop for about 3 seconds and then start again with fierce pounding, racing to make up for lost time. Both things repaired and improved some through my growing years. But at 12 years old, when my body had only felt safe before, those daily experiences made me very afraid. 

In retrospect, fear seems to me like a very reasonable response to all that. But my fear was treated at the time by the people who loved me—parents, friends, teachers and extended family members—like a kind of extra disease. My close friends (thankfully) didn't have any similar experience to relate to, and were confused by my fear. Adult's responses to my fear ranged from barking at me for it-- sort of drill-sergeant style ordering me to snap out of it-- to giving me New Age pamphlets and books like Love is Letting Go of Fear, and The Dragon Doesn't Live Here Anymore, to offering me special strobe light goggles that would alter my brain waves into a more relaxed "theta" state, to attempting to "toughen me up" by intentionally scaring me; jumping out from behind curtains and walls to startle me. Which was all pretty dumb.

No one just acknowledged my fear and held me in it. What I wanted was for someone to understand my fear as a regular thing, and not shame me for it. If I'd known the words at the time, I probably would have loved to hear someone say, “I believe that you will be okay. But it makes sense that you are afraid. Having this happen in your body would be really scary for anyone. I love you and I'm so sorry this is happening.” 

But that didn't happen. And as it was, I couldn't make the fear disappear any better than I could hide any other 'undesirable' emotion. And with trying to make my fear go away, things got worse. The pressure to deny and erase the fear intensified it and turned it into anxiety, and by the time I was a sophomore I was having full-blown panic attacks on a regular basis. I was terrified because I couldn't seem to control my own mind, and I became afraid of being afraid. It was a painful way to live, and without much healthy support to help me out of that state, I had to find a way out on my own.

~

I am grateful to all that guides us through hard times, and lets us reach destinations in spite of mismarked guide-posts. To make a long story short, a lot of what I learned about moving through fear as a young person is what I’ve been sharing with people ever since-- kids through elders in the Public Speaking, Storytelling, Acting, Improvisation, and Improv for Anxiety classes I teach. Which is that fear is just another feeling. It's not something we need to declare a Special Battle on. It is not an almighty dragon that needs to be slayed, or a monster that lies in wait (unless you attempt to deny it or repress it, in which case it can become monstrous just like any emotion can become when it's denied). We give fear too much power by deeming it the Evil that Must Be Shunned. Banishing it pushes it into the realm of the body, the dreams, the unconscious self, where it gropes around blindly attempting to find expression through various unsettling means. Accepting it and just feeling it honestly actually helps it to go away. 

Here is an example. A person with performance anxiety takes the stage and their palms sweat, their hands or knees tremble, they might tear up, or feel their heart race or their voice quiver. At that moment, the message they speak to themselves is: “Overcome this! Don't feel this way! Don't look this way!” Which is not only totally useless, but it stokes the fire of anxiety. The escalation from fear to anxiety is born from the attempt at repression. A person tells themselves: "Stop feeling like you feel," and when they can't stop it, they feel frightened and embarrassed that they can't control their experience. They become ashamed of their blushing, trembling or sweating. And this ALL comes from the belief that honest feeling is something to be hidden or overcome. That belief always gives birth to anxiety. Because it presents an impossible problem: "I should not be as I am." 

What a fearful performer can do instead, is accept how they are feeling, and bring it with them onto the stage. If you're speaking your own words, name your feeling. "Hi everyone! Wow, I'm so nervous to be up here!" The response will be surprisingly warm. Even in scripted theater, where you can't break from a script to name the feeling, your real life presence is wanted. It enriches everything. Theater isn't like life in this way: no one is asking you to hide emotion. Seeing people feel is what we go to theater for. A person who stands before others without shame over being seen blushing, sweating, feeling, is beautiful. And their self-acceptance helps others accept themselves. These brave performers transcend the lie that we are supposed to hide our natures. Many of my creative colleagues in Chicago are finding bold and gorgeous ways of coming out from behind that lie every day. The resulting work is beautiful, and I love being with them on the individual and collective journey. 

Which brings me to this foggy mountain misty night where I am... not in Chicago, but sitting in this bright little apartment beside a dark river in Oregon. I’m here because I’m taking time to deal with a medical diagnosis that is very scary to me. That of the insulinoma, a neuroendocrine tumor on the pancreas. After my initial intake appointment here on the day I arrived, my first surgical test was scheduled for the first week in December. So, meanwhile, I have some time. And I am SO AFRAID in all of this, in a number of ways and for a number of reasons. And my reason for writing this essay maybe... is to say that I respect and accept my fear, and I hope that others will do the same. 

~

I like to think most of us are more emotionally skillful now than people were in the early nineties. But in the weeks since this diagnosis, it seems to me that while we have become perhaps less aggressive towards fear in personal interactions, we've also become a little more careless around it. Not many people are trying to shame or hypnotize me out of feeling natural fear this time around, but, occasionally, people say careless things that provoke it. In watching these exchanges, I've become more attentive to how I do this to others also...how my friends do it to each other... and how a bunch of people in positions of authority do it to everyone without much thought. 

We've all witnessed someone being thoughtless in the presence of someone who's afraid. It's like when your friend is afraid to fly, and you overhear someone say to them, "Yeah, I've heard that type of jumbo jet you'll be on is the kind most likely to crash." Or when a woman is coming near to the time of childbirth and her friend is sitting chatting blithely to her about the dangers of preeclampsia. Or when someone feels a lump under their arm and mentions to their friend that they're going to the Doctor, and that friend says, "Yeah, you should get that checked because it could be lymphoma." The statement is not meant maliciously; is usually just an accurate expression of what the speaker's experience or concern. But it is said with a astonishing lack of empathy and awareness.

A few weeks ago I was in a natural health practitioners’ office. And without seeing any of my test results, bloodwork, imaging, or having spoken with any of my medical doctors, he looked me squarely in the face (after just moments before asking me how to pronounce “insulinoma” and then typing some words into his laptop) and then sitting there in his white coat and graying temples, he said to me, “You have cancer.” When I gently corrected him, sharing that may perhaps not be the case, he said that I was "clearly a sensitive person" and that I "give too much importance to words." I am not taking the accuracy or inaccuracy of his diagnosis as my subject here. (My own understanding is that insulinomas are “benign 90% of the time” according to The Mayo Clinic, Wikipedia, and the National Institutes of Health websites, and to my surgeon, but I will find out more about my own situation in that regard after a biopsy.) What I am taking as a subject is the practitioner’s lack of responsibility for his power, and his lack of consideration for my fear. 

I posted something about this experience on facebook at the time, and the stories people shared in response-- of people who said THE WORST kinds of things to them in the most frightening moments of their lives—were incredible. Stories of doctors, pharmacists, loved ones, acquaintances, in moments of fresh diagnosis or threat, spilling blazingly insensitive ridiculousness all over the place. And since that post, I’ve heard more stories of people saying these things to my friends, “Oh, wow, that thing you have? I’ve heard people suffer with it for like 15 years, and you just feel like dying all the time.” Or, “Oh no, that thing your mother was just diagnosed with? People never live more than a couple of months with that.” Or, "Oh yeah, that procedure you're about to have? It's the most painful thing I've ever experienced in my life." Or “Oh that thing your daughter has? I’m so sorry. My cousin died of that.” And then worse, they do what that practitioner did and shame the person they are speaking to with an eye roll, or a sigh, saying, “Gosh I wasn't TRYING to frighten you. You have to get your anxiety under control.”

That is wrong. People are impacted by one another. And it is as much our responsibility not to say careless things to provoke fear in each other, as it is for any individual to "keep their fear under control." If we heighten a person's fear by saying wildly inconsiderate things, the appropriate response is definitely not to then shame the person that we have frightened. And while it's true that we can never predict or control another person's experience, it's also true that we have the power to impact others, and it's smart to take responsibility for that power. If more of us did only that, the world would be better. 

(A note here for folks who bristle at having it suggested that you consider your impact on others: being mindful of your impact doesn’t equal self-censorship. Taking responsibility for your power to effect others doesn’t mean compromising Who You Are. It means taking the same care as you would to not shout “Incoming!” around a Veteran. The same care you would take not to open a can of sardines around a pregnant woman with morning sickness. Being considerate of your impact is a way that you can very much express yourself with care and authenticity.)

Fear is one of our oldest animal processes, and not wholly responsive to logic. When a friend is in fear, it's easy for us to heighten it. And heightening someone's fear can have a real effect on them. Sleep can be lost, laughter stopped, brainwaves rattled, and stress hormones raised  during a time when they most need their strength and optimism. That happened to me after I talked with that practitioner, as it was the 4th time someone had said something similar, and I finally couldn't work the magic of making it wash off my back. I was rattled and hurting for days. So, I can attest that carelessness is not inconsequential. Certainly we can recover from it, but the work it takes to do that pulls energy and time that are needed for other really important things, like restful sleep, healing, and hope. 

We can help someone who's frightened by just thinking about what we say before we say it. If nothing else, the effort will be noticed and appreciated by the people we love. And we will most likely save them some time by picking out the craggely bits from what we're about to say, so that they don't have to do that work for us. We can just say to ourselves, “This person is scared right now. Will what I am about to say make them more scared?" 

(And a note to those who think that frightening people toughens then up: exposure therapy is a thing in which a person gradually and methodically confronts their fear, whether it be stairs or snakes or heights. And it works in a safe and consistent container provided by a therapist. You are not a safe container. Randomly throwing an occasional snake at someone with a heightened fear of snakes doesn't make you their life-fixer. It just makes you mean.)

~

That's all I got. This is obviously something I've had the opportunity to think about in my life. And so I'm hoping that, for all the trouble it's been, it might be worth something to someone else. Maybe my many chances to think about it will save someone some time or pain. I hope so. I hope it's at least something we will all start to think about more. 

And also, like I said earlier, I am scared right now myself. Sitting in this warmly lit room in the dark by a river, I feel very afraid sometimes. I have something on my pancreas that a whole handful of people now have carelessly described as cancer (and then tell me "not to worry so much about words”), which may require a surgery that some other people say may cause me to lose my spleen, and others say may have me end up in a nursing home if I don't "get my strength back" and recover properly. I am afraid that if I am put under general anesthesia, I will die, which is something I've felt my whole life, and I'm not yet clear if that is a healthy intuition, or some kind of old trauma. Both the test in early December and the surgery if it is recommended require being put to sleep. So it's all scary. Not all the time. But sometimes. Sometimes I feel tired and lonely. Sometimes energetic and happy. Sometimes in these mountains, I feel awe and wonder. Sometimes I feel very peaceful. Sometimes I feel angry and sad and disappointed. Sometimes I feel joy and am laughing. And all these feelings are welcome. Even the fear.