Maybe nerves aren't such a bad thing?

Fear and creative flow

On Sunday, hours away from a book-club event at the church that I attended growing up, my fear started creeping in. Historically, this is when I spiral. This time I did a few things differently and found myself in a state of creative flow.

The day did not start well. I woke early with my toddler after a short night of sleep following a dear friend’s wedding. I’m always anxious after a night of little sleep, and now I had three hours to prepare to meet an unknown number of book-club members in a place I wasn’t sure I belonged. I had no idea how many attendees would have read or want to discuss the book, or if the discussion would focus on religion (mine or theirs?).

A few years ago, this would have been a set up for failure. I would have berated myself for not sleeping enough and predicted all the ways that the event would go wrong. This was what happened before tests, performances, swim meets, and cross-country races over the years. I always did better in practice than at the meet.

For a long time, I blamed my fear, thinking the problem was that I felt more of it than other people. Fear was getting in my way.

I’m starting to learn that my response to fear is what gets in my way.  

I did some good old self-beratement before the Sunday’s event, to be sure. I also did a few things differently.

I did a NSDR/yoga nidra session, a practice I’ve recently picked up when I am having a hard time sleeping or can’t get my heart to stop pounding.

I am no expert on the science here, but for a nervous system like mine, NSDR is the only thing I have done that can approximate the benefits of a mid-day nap (something I’ve never been good at). More than anything, I get out of my head and into my body, and my heartrate slows.

Then I started talking out loud to my husband David and my mom about how fear actually feels in my body, and I remembered how helpful it can be to actually feel that feeling.

I talked about how my fear has never left as I have put myself out there for book events this summer. I keep expecting it to. But then, primed by NSDR, I started describing how the fear actually feels, the churning in my stomach and the buzz in my arms and legs. And I talked through how this feeling is my body and mind preparing for action. It's this feeling that focuses my attention on what matters so I can be present in a high-pressure situation, even on only a few hours of sleep. And it never lasts forever.

When I can move away from the label of “fear” to focus on how my body feels, and then reframe that feeling as a preparation for action—especially creative action—the mean internal voice quiets down.

And so I brought the churn and buzz along for the ride as we drove to the event, telling myself that this was exactly how I needed to feel.  

Then I walked in the room with a smell that brought me back to childhood Sunday school, no one met my eye, and the bad predictions started back up in earnest.

I was in my head, spinning with stories about how this could only go wrong, when one woman came up to me and began talking in low tones about how moved she had been by Maud’s story. The parts she related to, the way it was told. She shared vulnerably about her own life. I started to feel a bit more settled. If nothing else, one person in the room had read and been touched by the book. That was something.

I introduced myself, did a short reading, and offered to answer any questions. I braced myself for a few polite questions, followed by awkward silence.

One deep, insightful question after the next followed. It was the kind of discussion about the book I most hoped for when I wrote it.

Here’s the kicker, the thing that separated this event from so many in my past: Not once for the next hour-and-a-half did I get lost in a train of thought about how I was doomed to fail. Instead, I was in a creative flow state. My body and the feeling, intuitive part of my mind were doing exactly what my fear had prepared them for. And my critical mind had gotten out of their way.