My Secret Fear

For someone with an anxiety disorder, I have managed to do a lot of scary stuff. Things like: moving away from my family, getting married when I was a dumb 22-year-old, moving to another country without a job or a place to live—twice! having kids, and telling a deeply personal story onstage at The Moth.

But the actual Scariest Thing I’ve Ever Done was none of those things. It was self-publishing my novel last year.

Maybe that sounds like not a big deal, but honestly, during the entire 6-month process I was WRECKED, mainly because I have a giant fear of other people thinking I am stupid.

Yes, I was the 6th grader who toted around a leather-bound volume of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare like it was a magical talisman that could protect me from porny 90s culture which treated all femme girls like complete bimbos.

Yes, despite all evidence to the contrary, there’s still a part of me that fears being reduced to my reproductive organs. This fear stockpiles my shortcomings and whispers them back to me in the middle of the night. Waiting for my novel to publish, it fed me nightmares of all my Super Smart Literary Friends reading my book and thinking, “I can’t believe she thought this was good enough to publish, she must be delusional.”

The fear was strong, so much so that I SERIOUSLY CONSIDERED not publishing my book at all. Like, I announced it and then thought maybe I ought to just take it back?!

Lessons from a Border Collie

When I was growing up in rural Montana, we had a border collie named Mickey who, in accordance with his breeding, liked to herd other animals. Sometimes this was cute, like on hikes when he would nudge laggards onward. (Nothing like a border collie snout to the backside to make you pick up the pace.) But it was a problem when Mickey started chasing our neighbors’ horses.

My dad installed one of those invisible fences around our property and put a shock collar on Mickey. When Mickey got too close to the perimeter, he’d hear a buzz, and if he kept going and crossed the fence line, he’d get a small electric shock.

The trouble was, Mickey soon decided that a small, short shock was worth the price of freedom. He’d take the charge and keep right on running.

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Fear is a Fence

Mickey’s shock collar came to me as I was reflecting back on fear and the scary decisions I’ve made. These past two months, we’ve been looking at the Problem of Fear—what is it? How do we learn to live with it? So far we’ve covered:

-Being a Scaredy Cat

-Fear of Being a Laughingstock

-Sorting Out Rational vs. Irrational Fear

-Fear of Travel

-“Faith Over Fear” (and why I hate it)

-Fear of Strangers

-Fear of Hell

I think fear is like that invisible fence, it keeps us close to home, stops us from exploring. Like with Mickey and the horses, that can be a good thing. But many times, our fears are a fence that is far too small, a rigid boundary that keeps us from growing.

Don’t Forget: You Have Survived Worse

Fear wants us to play it small, to never try. But we, like Mickey, can learn to take the shock and keep going. This is the biggest gift I’ve gotten from having an anxiety disorder: I now know that (most of) my fears are irrational and that I will survive doing the Big Scary Thing. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.

So when I get scared, I try to imagine what my life would be like if I had listened to fear and “stayed inside the fence” so to speak. Would I have ever left my hometown? Met my husband? Had my kids? Had any sort of career in writing or activism?

Once you decide to take the charge and keep running, you know you can do it again. And so, if fear is holding you back from something you want to do, something that would be meaningful to your life, that’s my advice to you. Embrace some corny Millennial #YOLO energy or your nearest Nike slogan and go for it.

Remember that you have survived worse! Let each new feat pave the way towards a bold life.

BONUS MATERIALS:

-MY BOOK, in case you’re curious

-want to learn more about how bad the 90s were for women?

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