Fear shouldn’t always be feared.

Image description: Jacci Pillar standing behind stage piano, arms to stretched out to the side in mid story, with a bright coloured graffiti wall behind them depicting scenes of Footscray in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

Being back on stage for Midsumma Festival was awesome — particularly as I faced one of my biggest, life long fears by doing so. That fear was of playing piano and singing in front of a crowd. I also got to share a green room with some awesome people for Pride of Our Footscray Community Bar ‘s comedy event “You Can’t Say That in Front of Your Father”.

I battle imposter syndrome and gut wrenching anxiety every time I get on stage and the thought of singing on stage was mortifying prior to 2019. I didn’t really understand why, I’ve hidden in choirs and still enjoyed singing, but was terrified to do it publicly.

Then I did some work with Richard Lawton, the author of Raise Your Voice, and it changed everything. If you are battling a fear of speaking or singing, I strongly recommend his book or classes.

Image of front page of book with a large cartoon microphone — titled “Raise Your Voice — Transforming how you speak, sing and present — Richard Lawton”

It turns out I was battling messaging from my childhood that says artist pursuits are not valuable or acceptable. But it’s part of who I am and it took until my mid 40’s to overcome those fears and just decide to do it anyway.

And one of the biggest bags I carried around was wanting to learn to play piano and being told, “only smart people play piano and your little fingers will not let you”. Family criticism of my singing voice stopped me singing in choirs and other public places from about ten years old.

I faced it the first time in front of a large audience for a show called Tickets on Myself on opening night of Melbourne Fringe 2019. Then of course…lockdown…and workplace injury stopped me in my tracks.

I am also doing a PhD and so performing is taking a back seat, but it’s still in the car with me!

Whilst I have been singing on stage for a while now, it’s been sporadic and terror filled. So at Midsumma I performed my first song composition after some piano lessons with the incredible Spencer booked through Scarlett Music. Spencer was so patient with me. The song is a rudimentary tune but fun. Two out of four performances I felt like I killed it, the other two not as happy with, but still well received. But I also got great crowd feedback.

I am often surrounded by other performers who look at me like I’ve got two heads for talking about these fears. And I admit that I wish it had been natural and encouraged throughout my early life so I could feel like they do about performing, instead of carrying this awfully heavy baggage, like I have throughout my life. But that baggage is much lighter now, and may soon just be a handbag instead of a costume trunk.

But being back on stage was awesome and I have to say, I am glad I didn’t give it all up after the last 12 months of recovering from a workplace injury and COVID lockdowns. Performing online and on community TV during that time helped my recovery enormously, but I needed to step foot on stage and face this fear.

There are so many sayings about overcoming fears.

But here’s my take on fear, because like failure, it’s often misunderstood and misinterpreted:

• Normalise fear like any other emotion. That means, you can’t always face fear alone and it is nothing to be ashamed of. Speak to experts in the things you fear. Not just the usual psychologists and counsellors, but people who specialise in public speaking or singing or dancing or whatever it is you are afraid of doing. Don’t let that fear of asking for help compound the fear you want to examine.
• Fear is not less valid than love. It’s part of us, it exists for a reason. Learning to measure how useful that fear is, is the way to dealing with that fear. Understanding fear is no different to understanding what we love or hate and no less or more important. You can love the wrong thing or person, just like you can fear something that need not be feared.
• Fear is important to our overall well-being. Some fears protect you from other layers of experience and there is no shame is avoiding triggers. Fearing something is a layered experience and some fears need to be left alone and not conquered. In fact, sometimes avoiding something that triggers your fear is a good thing, preventing further trauma. Sometimes we might need to overcome that fear, but either way, if we take time to listen to fear, the end result can be improved well being.
• Fear is not necessarily negative. When fears need to be faced, seeing them as a way to be careful with ourselves and act to build resilience is not necessarily negative at all. Taking time to understand our fears and nurture ourselves through that process is an act of self-love in order to face some fears, and similarly, it can also be an act of self-care to not face other fears.

But I’ll end by saying, that by conquering this fear, publicly, I am definitely feeling better for it.

Originally published at http://jaccipillar.com on May 4, 2021.