Snorkel-Screaming through Presentations
Somewhere between middle school and early adulthood I grew afraid of fish touching me. I didn’t realize I had this fear until my mid-twenties, as I was snorkeling off the coast of Maui, I looked down and began
~s c r e a m i n g~
through my snorkel.
Sometimes I think about the people on the beach. They were probably having a perfectly nice afternoon, which was abruptly interrupted by the snorkel-and-ocean-water-muffled cries of a terrified woman who could not tear her eyes away from the colorful reef fish and eels in the water below. Like maybe they were having a picnic, enjoying the sunshine, and they look up to see this random snorkeler a couple of yards out flailing around in the surf, and all they could hear was “Mmnnnnnnaaaaaannnghh!!!”
Did I leave the water and swim to shore? No. I continued staring into the deep whilst snorkel-screaming for a solid 10 minutes. When it comes to fight, flight, freeze, (and I think now there’s fawn?) that was the first time I ever remember having the “freeze” response.
This is a post about phobias.
I have other fears, which I would describe as moderate-to-severely healthy. Public speaking tops the list (normies). I can’t stand clowns (very normal). I will run the opposite way if I see a snake (also seems pretty normal). Birds flying near me, swooping, or creeping up too close on the ground (less normal). Honorable phobia mentions are: wooden tongue depressors or popsicle sticks (I played clarinet in the sixth grade and now the mere idea of licking a reed makes me cringe), and I do not like feet (self-explanatory).
I don’t know why my phobia about fish doesn’t prevent me from swimming in any body of water, but my husband’s phobia about sharks gives him extreme anxiety any time anyone in our family wades out more than waist deep in the ocean. Maybe because his phobia involves three rows of teeth? The World Animal Foundation notes that statistically, you are more likely to die taking a selfie, than you are from a fatal shark bite.
I’m sure someone with a degree in psychology or neurology can explain it better than I ever could, but the assumption I’m working off is that my husband’s brain is less broken than mine in this one particular way. My amygdala’s response seems to be suppressed when it comes to sharks mistaking me for lunch (or fish touching me), whereas his tells him to get the h*ck outta there.
In The Strange Brain of the World’s Greatest Solo Climber, J.B. Mackinnon interviews Joseph LeDoux, a neuroscientist at New York University and has this to say about Alex Honnold (of Free Solo fame):
At least as important as the brain that Honnold was born with, however, is the one that he has wired for himself through thousands of hours of risk-taking. “His brain is probably predisposed to be less reactive to threats that other people would be naturally responsive to, simply because of the choices he’s made,” LeDoux says. “On top of that, these self-imposed strategies that he’s using make that even better, or stronger.”
Which makes it sound like fear suppression, engaging your “fight” response, or “doing it scared,” must be (as a lot of things are) a combination of nature and nurture. LeDoux seems to suggest that not only do we come with some predisposition for how our brains are wired, but we can also Malcolm-Gladwell-10,000-hour ourselves into being a little less fearful. And I like that.
I have been doing this with the act of public speaking for a very long time. In college, I realized I have an aversion to speaking in front of a group of strangers when I’m standing up and giving a presentation to about 10 or more people, especially if I don’t know any of them. Small groups, virtual presentations, and sit-downs with known quantities don’t seem to bother me. Weird problem for a girl who, at five years old, would hold her entire family hostage with renditions of songs from the movie Beaches while dancing atop the living room coffee table. I don’t know where the problem started, all I know is it wasn’t a thing, and then one day it was.
When the mic is on and I have a bunch of people staring at me, what feels like hot shame takes the wheel for some reason, and my physical body begins doing things my brain doesn’t want it to do. I freeze, and I have very little control. My throat will constrict, my hands and my voice will shake, my palms get sweaty [knees weak…mom’s spaghetti], I’ll start thinking about Eminem lyrics and then lose my train of thought. When I can hear my voice shake and sense the audience start to pity me, there’s a snowball effect that happens and I realize I’m about to bomb in a very visible way. I have even publicly cried in conference rooms a few times when I was forced to present something I felt ill-prepared for. This is hands down the most embarrassed I’ve ever been and I have done the wobble at a wedding stone sober.
I was prescribed Toastmasters, and tips for coping during presentations (including but not limited to: hiding my hands behind my back, staring at foreheads instead of eyes, taking deep breaths and pausing before I continue talking) from friends and colleagues because this is such a common phobia, and an omnipresent threat in the business world. Sometimes you will need to present stuff to people.
It wasn’t until my mid-thirties that a medicated and much more together friend of mine witnessed me having one of these public speaking episodes and relayed to me that I was having a panic attack. I didn’t know that’s what it was. Anxiety and mental health were not common topics when I was coming up. I thought I just had an allergic reaction to public speaking.
I have more fear of public speaking than I do of sharks, snakes, clowns, birds, popsicle sticks, and feet combined, and yet I continue to do it.
For one, I think it’s healthy to do things you’re a little bit afraid of because you’re essentially trying to build courage. Courage is the thing that propels you forward in the face of fear, it’s kind of like a muscle, or whatever Brené Brown says because that’s probably more correct. I seek out opportunities to get better at speaking in public because without practice, I can’t make perfect.
For another, I like teaching. I enjoy sharing what I know with other people. There is a reward that I get from presenting ideas and sharing how my brain works that I don’t get from hanging out in a snake pit or being in a pool of clear water with fish touching me.
And for a third thing, it continues to be something I’m not good at, and I will always double down on leveling up. That’s obstinance for you, another one of my many great qualities.
I’m not here to tell you to Fear Factor your life, okay? There are perfectly good things to be afraid of, and perfectly reasonable responses to those fears. We don’t all need to be Bear Grylls just doing things the hardest way possible all the time. But I do want to impress upon you that when you encounter stressors or fear that don’t pose a legitimate physical danger, like public speaking, you can often choose to push past your initial gut response.
David Foster Wallace talks about the power of choice in This is Water. Coincidentally water is the theme I chose for this post, and he’s one of my very favorite authors, so it works out. In This is Water, he’s talking about choosing to be conscious of what to pay attention to during the banality of everyday routines. And what is public speaking if not a banal routine part of corporate life. It starts with a parable:
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”
He’s essentially saying that like fish, we’re often so immersed in ourselves that we can’t see the obvious things surrounding us. He goes on to say [in order to have], “awareness of what is so real and essential, what is so hidden in plain sight all around us all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves, over and over, this is water, this is water.” And this is the thing that has helped me most when it comes to public speaking. When I’m frozen, and I’m snorkel-screaming my way through a presentation, and I have all these fish staring at me, and my heart is pounding in my ears, I have to take a deep breath, look around and remind myself, “This is water.”
