The last few months, my daughter and I have taken a lot of detours down FEAR AVE. She had her first ever dance and singing competition last month followed by her first season ever playing baseball in any capacity. She missed T-ball and went straight into coach pitch softball. Thanks, COVID! So, a lot of our conversations have started out like this:
“What if I mess up?”
“What if I forget the words?”
“What if I strike out?”
“What if I forget to watch the ball?”
My go to response is “Have fun and do your best, that’s all you ever have to do!” But, at this age, she doesn’t like that answer! She is looking for a little more guidance at this point…
Most of the time this is where you would insert the “Practice Makes Perfect” conversation, right? This is where, as a Physical Therapist who treats patients with brain injuries, I should respond with:
Did you know your muscles have a memory? There is this little brain underneath the big brain called the “Cerebellum”. And get this? It has these cells and fibers that can fix your movement. Like if you swing and totally miss, this cerebellum knows it and can fix it the next time! And it just keeps analyzing and adjusting the movement until you hit the ball! It’s like the Jiminy Cricket of movement; it just sorts it all out for ya!! (We are big Disney fans, what can I say?) Then it will REMEMBER it, even if you don’t!! It gives your muscles a memory!!! So, the more you sing and swing, the more you practice, the better chance you have at getting it right!!!
EXCEPT…I’m a Physical Therapist that treats patients with brain injuries. So, what I ALSO know is that we humans have a branch of our nervous system called the Sympathetic Nervous System that automatically takes over when we sense fear. That fear can make our muscles forget sometimes! That system is responsible for the “Fight or Flight” reaction. It makes your heart rate go up, your blood pressure increase, and gets your muscles ready to MOVE in a fast and furious way with all that muscle memory stuff thrown right out the window!
But wait! There’s more…
I happen to also have A LOT of life experience in a whole different response to fear!! Fear and I have a long, sordid past. I was horribly shy when I was a child. A random, nice soul in a grocery store could say “hello!” and then bam…. face red, body frozen, and no words. Things like saying “hello!” seemed impossible. As early as five years old, I can remember my dad trying to help me work through fear. He would have the “worst case scenario” talk with me. When I was afraid, we would discuss in detail what I thought was the worst possible thing that could happen. My dad would say:
“If we can handle the worst, anything better than the worst will be easy!”
And in a lot of ways that mental exercise helps me navigate fear even today. I mean there was a weird phase from age 15-25 where I would answer with super helpful and dramatic things like “My whole life will be OVER!!!” But all the other years, the exercise was beneficial.
I also had terrible night terrors as a child! Well, really, I still have night terrors as an adult. They come in clusters. I can go years without one, but once I have one, I can usually bet on a good month of more night terrors. They are way worse than “a bad dream”. When I have a night terror, I wake up sweating, heart racing and my body is stuck. Just FROZEN. I wake up trying to scream, trying to run, trying to breathe but my body won’t do any of it. It usually takes 30 minutes on average, a lot of box breathing and a lot of Jesus for me to calm down. Once I calm down, I immediately become afraid of when the next one will hit. I end up afraid of the freeze more than whatever caused the night terror in the first place. It is a rough cycle!
I can remember as a child just trying to get myself to calm down enough to be able to physically get up and sprint to my brother’s room!! After the age of 6 or so, I knew I was too old to still want to sleep with my parents, so, I just went to my brother’s room instead. He rarely woke up and so I was at least allowed on the bed and I wasn’t alone! I guess my thought was if the ghost or the bad guy or life was going to get me, at least he was going with me!! Bless his clueless heart!
A couple of years ago a security specialist came to our work and talked to us about what to do in the case of an active shooter. He explained to us all that no matter what he told us that day, if we ever actually encountered an active shooter, we would automatically do one of three things:
Run, Hide or Fight.
He said there is no right or wrong answer, but he recommended we figure out which of those three actions our body would automatically do. I just kept thinking:
“But that’s not the worst case scenario! He didn’t say Freeze! And I’m going to Freeze! I’m going to turn red and I’m going to freeze!”
Turns out even in my late 30s, I’m still afraid of the freeze!
So, with all of that said, isn’t it quite ironic that of all the people in the world…my poor baby girl is left with me to talk her through fear?! God and his sense of humor!!
The good news is that I am a Physical Therapist who has a lot of experience treating the bravest, most resilient patients who have suffered head injuries. So, I keep up as best as I can on some of the current Neurological Research. And in the last few years some super, super smart researchers have figured out something cool! Turns out that part of the “freeze response” occurs in the…
Drum roll, please… cerebellum!!
The response starts in the amygdala like we always thought but it appears to be regulated by some of those same fibers in the cerebellum that are responsible for muscle memory!!
Research is hard and takes a LOOONG time! A lot of it still needs to be done for us to know 100% how this whole freeze fear thing works. But in the meantime, I’m going to use my best guess to assume that:
#1 If the cerebellum can make your muscles move automatically without thinking about it, then the cerebellum could train your body to freeze, without thinking about it. Which explains why after I froze once, the freeze became my go to response to fear even when I tried to fight it.
#2 Which maybe means I have a chance to teach my baby girl’s body to MOVE instead of FREEZE from the beginning! And the more she moves the less chance those fibers have to remember “the freeze” at all!
Singing teachers and softball coaches already sort of know all of this. They will tell you they would rather have a kiddo who sings the wrong note than one who freezes every time the lights come on. They would rather have a kiddo that swings early than one that doesn’t swing at all, right? Because “stage fright” and “scared of the ball” kiddos take a long time to unlearn the “freeze”! It’s not even their fault…It’s all neurological!
So, when my baby girl looks at me and says the “What ifs…” I answer like this now:
“Just breathe and sing loud, baby!”
“Just breathe and swing hard, baby!”
Maybe she will hit the wrong note. Maybe the pitch will be too low or outside. But I have faith that her Jiminy Cricket Cerebellum can work all of that out!! Especially once the fear subsides and her muscle memory system can take over! And sooner or later the high notes and the home runs will come her way!
Unfortunately, we all know that there are far more evil things to be afraid of then a high note or a softball! But maybe, someday, we will find out that my guesses are right. We will find that we CAN in fact train our nervous system enough to MOVE instead of FREEZE in fear without even thinking about it! If every time we are a little nervous we MOVE, our cerebellum will remember to MOVE when the fear is big.
That way if ever the “Worst Case Scenario” happens…
If ever we are faced with insurmountable evil, like an active shooter…
We will NOT freeze! We will Run! Or Hide! Or Fight!
For now, I will pray the worst case scenario NEVER happens and I’ll keep encouraging us all to:
“Sing Loud and Swing Hard!”
Because BEST case scenario… when the fear has subsided and the microphone is on and the pitch is just right…
We will hit those high notes and those homeruns, friends!
Safe Travels!!
