The Introvert on stage
I left school at 16, and started college just before I turned 17, studying Rock Music and singing. Which required me to move out of home, into the halls of residence, as we lived too far away for me to commute. I remember thinking I was so grown up, and so ready to live independently. So wrong on many levels, but looking back, I have no regrets about it - so many of my life learning experiences were in that first year away from home, and it probably speeded up the process of some of that learning. I'm putting a positive spin on it (as is my usual way of being!), as I'm under no illusions that there are lots of things that were not good about that first year of independence, but I don't see any point in dwelling on things that may or may not have happened if things had been different.
I've done my fair share of public speaking over the years since, especially in the last decade or so, running my own business. Listened to all the advice around 'the more you do it, the easier it gets', and laughed maniacally at it every time.
When I was singing, no matter how well I knew the lyrics, my mind would go completely blank before I went on stage. I'm talking about the band playing the intro, me forgetting where I needed to come in, and then my mouth remembering at the right moment and blurting out the first line. No, that didn't settle me - I'd be singing the first line, panicking that I couldn't remember the second line. And so on ad nauseum (literally nauseous!), til the end of the song. Then begin again.
The panic running through my entire nervous system is hard to explain, but in just this last year, I've had an ADHD diagnosis, and my research and learning around that has helped me understand those feelings better. It's like my brain is trying to comprehend about 50 different things at once, and it can't just let me look at or consider one of them at a time (too many tabs open on your laptop anyone?).
So I'd be trying to remember the lyrics and then my brain would look at the audience and start to see familiar and unfamiliar faces. Remembering specific things about the familiar faces, and imagining things about the unfamiliar ones. I'd be having quite vivid imagery of myself tripping as I went on stage, or of how all of those familiar and unfamiliar faces would react if I did in fact forget my lyrics, or maybe even a long-term vision of spending the rest of my life never being able to shake off the stigma of being 'that person who tripped and fell flat on her face as she went on stage/forgot her lyrics'.
It was exhausting - I heard someone describe that feeling recently as 'Everything, everywhere, all at once' (yep, just like the movie), and I almost gasped out loud at how perfectly it described it for me. So many processes and thoughts trying to happen at the same time, until you can't distinguish one from the other, they all meld into one - no wonder I couldn't remember my lyrics!
So - at the end of 2025, when my youngest son was finishing school, and I was asked to do the speech at the graduation ceremony to thank the teachers and staff of behalf of the entire year cohort, I almost did the maniacal laugh I mentioned earlier. Considered putting forward other parents that I thought would be much more comfortable up there. But they gave me a couple of days to think about it, and I ended up saying yes, even though the discomfort almost physically stopped the word coming up from my throat and out of my mouth.
And, as is also the usual thought process after agreeing to do any kind of public speaking, I would have mini panic attacks on an almost hourly basis for the following few weeks before I had to actually get up there. I wrote the speech pretty early on, did some refinements, kept having to stop myself from phoning up and changing my mind, would frequently try and persuade my son that maybe he would be too embarrassed if I got up there in front of his classmates and all of their teachers and parents, so he would want me to cancel. But the day arrived, and I kept reminding myself of why I was doing it. I genuinely wanted to thank the teachers, I was actually quite honoured to have been asked (although my ADHD brain convinced me that I'd only been asked because I was one of the few parents who was finishing up at the school this year, with both my boys having completed high school now - which is another annoying 'symptom' from my non neurotypical brain - never being able to accept praise, and instead finding another explanation for any compliment I receive), and I am trying to get back into my writing again, so it was an excuse to sit down and let my creativity flow out.
I had a bit of time at the start of the ceremony before I was due to get up and speak, and I kept looking at the stage steps and imagining myself tripping on them on my way up. And imagining that the perspiration that was running down my back (it was a REALLY hot day, in a huge room with not much airflow and no AC!) would be a huge big dark patch on my back as I walked up there (did I honestly think I was the only person in there who was sweaty in that heat?!). Convincing myself that half the parents in that huge hall would be looking at me and wondering why on earth I'd been asked to speak and not them.
It's worth pointing out that my Extravert OH, trying to help, kept telling me to be careful not to trip on the steps going up to the stage - making the possibility even higher than it already was..
I didn't trip.
I got up there (and apparently my back was not a visibly sweaty, dark mess), took my reading glasses out of my pocket (very deliberately placed there earlier, during a very vivid image of me getting up there and squinting uselessly at my printed speech - cue awkward silence to haunt me for the rest of my life), opened up the page, and took a deep breath.
I looked up to see the familiar and unfamiliar faces in the huge hall - and realised that because I had my reading glasses on, I couldn't make out a single face in the crowd. All I could see were the words on the page in front of me, perfectly clearly - every single word. No chance to forget them, no faces to look at and imagine what they were thinking. I read it, was able to emphasise and deliver the funny bits appropriately - got a few laughs to keep me going, and fell into a comfortable speaking rhythm all the way to the end - and didn't trip on the way back down the steps.
Don't get me wrong - I was still unbelievably relieved when it was over, and I won't be putting my name down for a Ted Talk any time soon, but it did help me to see how I could be on a stage and not be completely filled with terror. Who would have thought that something as simple as not being able to see the audience, combined with having the lyrics/words in front of me in case of mind blankness, was all I needed.
Who knows, maybe the more I do it, the easier it will get? 😉
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