In all honesty, there are tonnes of things that make me nervous. Being on a boat makes me nervous, and it’s not only to do with seasickness. Public speaking? Absolutely. Being out in the pitch-black dark of night where I live? Oh, yes. Interviews? Naturally. But I do all of them anyway.
What is the feeling of nervousness? Why do we feel it? I would suggest it is to do with the parasympathetic nervous system that puts us into fight, flight or freeze when we are doing something that we know has a potential danger attached, or where we have a vested interest in the outcome. But the feelings of nervousness should not stop us doing things, in a way feeling nervous shows us that we care, that we are alive. I remember feeling incredibly nervous on my wedding day, especially walking down the aisle. I think it was because my dress was slightly too long so I was nervous about tripping up, but it was also because all eyes were on me which is not something I feel comfortable about necessarily. I know my husband felt nervous too. It wasn’t because he was worried I wouldn’t turn up, he knew I was at the venue getting ready when he arrived. And for him, it wasn’t about tripping up as he walked down the aisle. No, it was being in front of a lot of people while we did something very significant – made a commitment to each other. Yes, alongside the nervousness was excitement and happiness and all those other feelings, but fundamentally we were declaring to the world that we intend to at least try to spend the rest of our lives together. That we were forsaking all others and that is a pretty big deal at the end of the day. We were placing a massive amount of trust in each other in that moment, not just for that day but potentially for decades to come. So, we were nervous. But not once did those nerves stop us from doing it, didn’t tempt either of us to say ‘I’m not comfortable with this feeling, so I’m off’.
I was similarly nervous when I had to undergo major surgery. There was no accompanying excitement or joy with this experience, though maybe a hint of relief that the aftermath would hopefully signal the beginning of the end of the illness. But the nerves were rampant the morning I was driven to the hospital and all through the checks and waiting for the operation itself. While there was a part of me that did want to get off the bed and say, ‘you know what, on second thoughts I’m not doing this’, I didn’t because I wanted to get better and this was a necessary hurdle to get to that point. I didn’t give up no matter how much the butterflies in my stomach and racing thoughts whispered that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all.
I have been on boats plenty of times, despite the fact that I suffer from seasickness. I will take the medication and invariably be fine. Yet, I am still nervous of them. I am nervous of being sick because I do have a phobia of being sick, but I am also nervous that while I am on the boat I am not in control of the situation, I am not steering the boat. And if it all goes wrong, I can’t just walk away because I’m on water. I am not the strongest swimmer and I do have a more pronounced fear of drowning than just a ‘that’s not how I want to go’. I love water, I love watching the sea, I love being near rivers and all of those things…but I am equally irrationally nervous of them. I cannot bear my head going under water, I don’t like being in the deep end of a pool and the thought of diving in fills me with utter dread. I have always been that way. But, do I allow that to stop me going on a boat? No, I do not. Because ultimately, there is an experience or a destination attached that I want more. That enables me to overcome the nervousness, the fear.
Walking alone anywhere at night makes me nervous. It’s an unfortunate fact of life very often for women. I don’t know any woman who has not had at least one experience where she has not felt threatened in some way, myself included. I have had my drink spiked, I have been chased, I have had a cab driver try to do more than drive me home, I have been groped on the tube and in the workplace…the list goes on and I know I am not alone. That these have not been isolated incidents. So, yes, generally I feel nervous when I am walking somewhere at night or even when I go for an early morning run. I remember running up a major trunk road and a van pulled into a verge a little way ahead of me. As I ran towards it, I calculated whether I still had enough gas in the tank to sprint because I could see that it wouldn’t be difficult to grab me into the van with minimal chance of anyone seeing. On the other side of me was forest, so I could just as easily be dragged into that. This is the sort of thing women think about often. Of course, nothing happened but after that I have felt nervous on that route since and use it at a time of day when the road is busier. There are times when your intuition tells you that you’re safe, and there are times when it tells you there is something wrong. And in this instance, I do allow my intuition to guide me. I rarely walk alone at night anywhere, I try to avoid getting taxis alone, and I never leave my drink unattended even somewhere I know well. In this instance, I don’t think you can throw away the nerves but you can work out mitigating actions to minimise the very real reasons why you feel nervous which is what I try to do. Because, again, there is an end result that I am pursuing which I refuse to not pursue because of the actions of others. I’m equally not prepared to not take precautions, though.
Interviews…oh my, is there anything worse? They’re like exams, an apparently necessary evil that we have to get through but they are enough to make us feel decidedly ill. Usually for me, the nerves kick in a couple of hours before the interview itself. I will have done all the preparations, all the research I can possibly do, then the reality of what I am about to do will hit and the butterflies start. That churning feeling in your stomach that you are about to be assessed. You invariably don’t know what the questions will be, bringing in uncertainty which the brain dislikes, and whether or not you will be able to answer them despite all your preparations. As I say, like an exam. I remember my finals at university, in two exams the topics I had revised had questions that were not worded in the way I needed them to be for my revision. I coped, just about, but the nerves didn’t abate after the exam until I had the results. A bit like an interview, when the nerves don’t abate until you find out the result. Again, I still put myself through them if the end result appears worth it. I don’t allow what I know will likely be a torturous experience to put me off.
Whenever I have been called to do public speaking, and I have done a lot of it, I have always said ‘yes’. I have prepared what I have to say, often not written a speech but perhaps some cards with bullet points to remind me. I know what I’m going to say, I know my subject, I know all of those things and usually I don’t feel nervous while preparing at all. Then usually in the last hour, I am beset with nerves and all the things that could go wrong. I particularly hate if I have to get on a stage and I can’t easily see steps, because I have short legs and sometimes it’s a struggle! Another time, I remember looking at the lectern I was due to stand at and noticing that there were a lot of cables all over the floor leading to it. While someone else was giving their talk, I visualised, in perfect Technicolor, me tripping over one of the cables and falling face first onto the floor. Perhaps with my skirt flying over my head for extra humiliation for me and comedic value to the audience. I cannot tell you the relief when I safely got back to my seat after it all.
Dates always used to make me feel nervous until I felt more comfortable with the person. And there were a few times I was strongly tempted to phone and say I couldn’t make it, though I didn’t. And some I really wish I had not gone on! I also didn’t attend some singles events because the nerves got the better of me – I remember one night driving across London to go to an arranged singles event, absolutely determined that I was going to do it then getting back into my car and going home without even entering the building. The end result definitely wasn’t worth the discomfort. No, those days of dating were never fun and I am glad they are behind me!
There is the question with all of this, isn’t there? Why do we feel nervous at all? What possible purpose does it serve? Well, I think for me it is attached to the fundamental survival instinct. It’s a way of telling us that there is something we need to pay attention to, something unfamiliar or uncomfortable that’s happening and are we really sure we want to go through with it? Our brain’s way of saying…perhaps stop and reflect for a moment. Is this worth it? And I think that is a vital process to go through. Because it does give us a chance to stop and reflect. To think – if this is starting to make me feel this way, is it worth it? Do I really want to do this? I know I have not gone places because I’ve been too nervous. There have been things I haven’t done because the nerves overcame me, and the end result, or potential end result, wasn’t worth the effort.
You can feel nervous about all the stuff that’s going on in the world. You can feel afraid about what’s coming next, but I’ve stopped that. I was getting very wound up about the state of the economy, politics, education, war, and all sorts of things that are going on around us at a macro level. But, I reminded myself of Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and the chapter about control. That those macro things are completely outside of our Circle of Concern because we have no hope of changing them. We can only change our reaction to them. So, I have stopped reading so much about them and I have stopped commenting on such things on social media. To the point where I closed my X account because I was being sucked into a place I didn’t like, becoming someone I didn’t like. So, I closed it all down because, truly, there is enough going on in my real life to make me nervous, I don’t need the things happening on the world stage to add to that.
I think we all feel nervous about many, many things in life. We might confuse nerves with other emotions, but I think for all of us there is a litany of things that make us nervous. It’s our brain’s way of keeping us safe and it also means we’re alive! But I think that, when the end result is worth it, we don’t allow our nerves to get in the way and stop us from doing things. I know I don’t.
Louisa Simpson 