On fear

Breakthrough

Last night, I did something that really scared me. 

It happened during 2-hour seminar hosted by Hertfordshire-based leadership and development training organisation Neuvo Woman, entitled Breakthrough to Success in 2013. The session was designed to help local women business owners set goals for the year ahead, and climaxed in a karate-style board-breaking exercise. 

Many people have a fear of speaking in public. I don't. Many people feel uncomfortable speaking in front of others in a small group unless they are 100% sure of themselves. I don't. My greatest fear is potentially a lot more life-limiting than that. 

I'm afraid of hurting myself. 

Growing up, I did not have a great relationship with my body. It was fat (or at least, I thought it was – looking back at photos of myself in my teens I see I wasn't so fat), it never did what I wanted it to and I was useless at any team sport or physical activity that required co-ordination or risk-taking. Then, at the age of 19, I was diagnosed with MS and since then I've had a 'get out of jail free' card which has excused me from any physical activity that my head told me I shouldn't to do. 

Over the course of my 30s, as I began to enjoy real success as a public speaker and campaigner, I made a conscious decision to address the way I felt about my body. MS had become both friend and foe in this regard. On the positive, having a long-term, incurable condition made me realise how vital it is to look after your body. I don’t drive (by choice), so my body is my main mode of transport, and it requires – and deserves – careful maintenance. As I honed my skills as a public speaker I discovered even more about what my body could do for me as a means of channelling a message that could made a positive difference in people’s lives. 

In 2007, I took things to a whole new level when I accepted the MS Society's challenge to pose naked for British artist Melissa Mailer-Yates. I was very scared, and I documented that fear in a blog that I kept for the duration of the project. At the time, I didn't know what I was scared of, but it was an almost palpable malaise. Later on, I realised that it was all about control and my fear of losing that control having done so much work 'on' myself over the years to build a better relationship with my body. Moreover, it was fear of fear.

Beauty Through Strength

In the event, the experience of being painted nude turned out to be 100% positive, as my heart always knew it would be. However, that wasn’t the end of fear. 

People who know me well know that I have a terror of breaking a bone. I don’t trust my eyes due to damage caused to my vision by MS, so always cross at the green man (this drives my friends crazy). Vertigo has affected my confidence to walk on icy pavements, and has led to a hatred of snow. I'm by no means a health-obsessive, but I have my own rituals for avoiding what I consider 'high risk' activity that could result in my hurting myself. 

Why do I have such great fear of breaking a bone? Perversely, it's a consequence of great success. 

I have powered my way through life since that diagnosis of MS at the age of 19 by believing that while I can do something positive in the world then I will do something positive in the world. In my mind, this is who I am. The thought, therefore, of being 'out of action' due to an injury of some kind, scares me. A lot. Almost to the point of paralysis. 

Of course, the evidence is to the contrary. I have MS and yet I have achieved so much. Surely I will continue to achieve equivalent success if challenged in a different way. The brain isn’t always so logical however, and sometimes needs a bit of help to connect with the bleeding obvious. 

Towards the end of 2012, MS brought something brand new: crippling back spasms so severe the pain would cause me to faint. The result was a night on the floor and a very tearful call with a paramedic who spent an hour patiently coaxing me to stand up. 

Over the course of this experience, which lasted about 72 hours, the spasms themselves stopped being the issue. I had become so afraid of the associated pain that I’d become paralysed by my own fear. 

Eventually I needed to the loo, but was too scared to move, and remained perched on the arm of the sofa just 10 feet away from the bathroom but completely unable to move myself. It reached the point where I thought I would just have to wet myself - oh that life should come to this at the age of 41. 

In a last ditch attempt to avoid ruining the sofa, I scanned my brain for help. Over the years, I've received a lot of support from cognitive behavioural therapists and hypnotherapists who have helped me to learn how to develop strategies to help me to overcome 'blocks', i.e. thoughts that have stopped me from moving forward happily in life. I thought about this and remembered a conversation with a hypnotherapist about pain. 

Pain, you see, is a message. 

I pondered, what could that message be?

I used the mindfulness meditation techniques that I had been taught and contemplated how to get myself to the toilet. 

Eventually, after two hours of panic and no small amount of discomfort, it came to me – the best time to move was immediately after a spasm. If I could just breathe through a spasm (and fainting, though not ideal, would be okay) I stood a good chance of getting to the loo. I would have to be very brave but hey, I remembered, I am very brave.

Twenty seconds later, I was in the bathroom. 

Last night, when confronted with the prospect of doing something I'd never done before that could potentially hurt me, I had mixed emotions, the greater of these being fear. 

There was a mental battle in my head between the angel that reassured me that I could do this thing and would feel great afterwards and the demon that said it wasn’t a risk worth taking. 

My anxiety was compounded by having to act this scenario out in front of 13 total strangers. The 'me' of 20 years ago would have bluntly refused to take part without explanation. But I am no longer the 'me' of 20 years ago. 

I felt dizzy. I was scared I was going to lose my balance and I was scared I was going to break my wrist. 

So I did the thing that I've learnt to do in situations like this – I told everyone in the room that I have MS. Because I do have MS. That is who I am, along with all the other things that combine to make me me. 

I didn't say that I was shit scared of hurting myself – I think that much was obvious. 

Immediately the words were out of my mouth I felt the energy in the room, and within me, change. 

Before even I knew what was going on, the 1.5cm block of wood was in two pieces on the floor. 

Neuvo Woman Breakthrough to Success 2013

Neuvo Woman seeks to empower women to break through their barriers to become the people we are meant to be. I have no doubt at all that other women in the room were as afraid as I was of that block of wood and what it meant for them. You may very well think that anyone can karate their way through a wooden block and I daresay that's true. But we were breaking through much more than that; fears and strategies that we've all spent a lifetime constructing for our own 'protection' that truly have only served to restrict and prevent us for reaching our goals. 

I have been through some horrendous things in the past couple of years – enough to grant me a 'get out of jail free' card for just about anything. By breaking through that block of wood last night, I tore up that card. I now realise I don’t need it; I have all the tools and the ability and the power to break through fear. Truly, I can do anything my heart desires. There are no limitations any more.