Thursday – Terrifying
In my first children’s book, the hero is a worried little bunny (Bertie Bunny). He doesn’t quite know how to calm himself. His heart races, his palms are sweaty and he has tunnel vision, only seeing that which scares him.
Being a smart little bunny, he knows intellectually that he shouldn’t be scared of the lizard*, but his nervous system is on high alert – fight, flight or freeze response has kicked in. He often freezes and doesn’t know what to do in these situations.
Have you or someone you love ever felt fear like this? It’s not a nice feeling. I am fortunate to live in a place where safety is grand. We can leave our doors unlocked and not worry about it. Not many people are that lucky. But the fear I felt when I was younger was in school. I was absolutely terrified of speaking in front of the class. As if the whole classroom was going to eat me alive! Back then, our school never really made an effort to coach us or train us in public speaking, so if you were a shy girl like me, you suffered.
A year after highschool graduation, I went to a Swiss university where the exams are both written and oral, encompassing everything we’d learned over that year. As I entered that first exam room for the oral, staring at me were two professors I did not know. They started questioning me. I froze like an ice block. Not a word escaped me and it goes without saying that I completely and utterly failed. I gave up. I cried for what seemed like hours, inconsolably.
Don’t worry, it was all meant to be, in a sense, because if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have later moved to the US with my future husband and studied what I had always dreamed of studying, Marine Biology. No more oral exams, no more extreme fear of public speaking until later in life when I knew how to face my fear.
There are many ways to calm one’s nerves if we are anxious or nervous. It’s not easy and it takes practice. Paying attention to your breath or your body is one way. That’s Mindfulness or present moment awareness. I talk about this almost on a daily basis, since I teach it to my highschool student who suffers from anxiety. And this is what Bertie Bunny learns too.
Bertie has a best friend, Maxwell Mouse, who teaches him to focus on his breath, and this gives the little rabbit a sense of calm that quiet’s his mind and slows down his pulse.
Can you relate? Do you have someone in your life who could benefit from learning some of these skills?
Be well sweet people, take care of yourselves and those you love.
*Psss, there is no lizard in the book. In fact, there are no reptiles at all!
