#002 diary entry - if only she knew she could be a columnist for vogue if she wanted
the correlation between my childhood ideas of success and anxiety
I’m coming back to this post almost a year later (I wrote this in December of 2023) & it feels more relevant than ever. It sat in my drafts for the last 10 months, forgotten (much like this entire substack to be honest, after I let my fear of people finding it and cringing, get the better of me [lame, I know]). But I think it’s a discussion that deserves to be resurfaced…
It’s talked about so much more in our age and I’ve definitely internalised all the ways it effects me day to day - it’s a feeling i can recognise in myself when it comes up - i observe it passing like a canoe on a lake or sometimes a speedboat (rarely though).
But something I’ve begun to think about only more recently is how anxiety can stem from childhood thought patterns and/or mindsets that we never quite lost.
I feel like for a while we’ve known how events from our childhoods impact who we are as adults, like we’ve been there, we know. But i think realising how these things actually shape us, how certain behaviours & thought patterns left unacknowledged, manifest their unresolved-ness in adulthood is fascinating.
I’m saying this from the perspective of a dancer who has, from the early stages of starting dance, felt anxiety about going to class and, since the pandemic attended a total of 6 dance classes… max. One of the reasons being; aforementioned *anxiety*. This feeling has been reignited recently from experiences I’ve been having that have ultimately, despite how much I’ve grown and learned about myself since gaining a degree, traveling overseas, going through shitty experiences and forming new relationships, plopped me right back into my 18> yr old, pre 4 year dance hiatus, mindset.
Here’s the back story that provoked this post:
I attended a dance audition (so randomly, out of the blue - like who am I to think, post 4 yrs no training, that I could slide right back into the scene [I say this but the hopeful side of my brain still thinks this is possible]). No.94 out of a few hundred. Long story short, I didn’t get through. I cried in the car, drove home, ate schnitzel wraps and watched YouTube in my bed for the rest of the day. Fine, spiral over.
What was more overwhelming for me to witness in myself, like a passerby watching someone slip and fall, was the way my brain went into this crazed overdrive, hyper fixating on (and worst of all COMParing) all the things wrong about me, the reasons why I’m not still dancing (in the same capacity), what success is, why I don’t have it etc etc etc. This all lasted well over a week until a few nights ago when I decided I was going to go to this open dance class….I didn’t go. It was going to be 3 hours long, ending at 11:30pm and it was a half hr drive away … the fit I had worked myself into all day pre this class I thought I was going to attend tired me tf out. I felt just like I had felt all those years ago, on a Wednesday night, after school, mentally prepping myself to go to dance when all I really wanted to do was go to bed.
At this point you may be asking, but Ella, why did you keep doing it and continue to try if you feel this way? It sounds like you hate it? I too am asking myself this and ultimately it’s because I still love to dance - I love the verb and none of the adjectives that come on the side (small, skinny, confident, fearful, intimidated, contorting, pain, anxious, unease, uncertainty, loneliness … did I divulge too much…), . But I also think, there is a small part of me that did it and continues to try do it because of this ‘perceived idea of success’ we (or idk, just I?) immortalise from childhood.
As a child, we’re influenced by the things we’re allowed to consume, the things our friends think are cool, books we read, tv shows, pop stars etc. I wanted to be Zendaya on Disney’s Shake it Up for as long as I can remember. And these things we internalise at a young age, we continue to quietly hold a flame for into adulthood. They will always occupy some level of sacredness as this protected childhood dream, perpetually admired, fossilised on this eternal pedestal. Unchanged. I think there’s another level of success achieved when one actualises a childhood dream of there’s. I’m not sure why this is … maybe because it demonstrates a certain level of ambition and drive for one thing. The length of time with which you’ve persevered with this passion legitimises and/or justifies it further. Thus the part of me that for 10 years answered ‘dancer’ to the question' ‘what do you want to be when you grow up’, feels, in many ways, a notion of failure when I don’t get the audition, or can’t even make it out of the house to the dance class. It’s not the loveliest of feelings.
The fear of feeling this manifests itself as anxiety as I pre-empt the idea of failure which reminds me of the worry I used to experience before going to class when I was younger; scared at the potential internal reaction I could have if I don’t get picked to perform whatever choreography we learned that night in-front of the class, ie: (in my head) I might not have danced that dance in the top tier of dancers that were there that night.
What it boils down to, I’m realising as I’m writing this, is a fear of failure - and one that has seemingly been quite present for a large part of my life. There are other components that I believe contributed to my anxiety about dance as a child like never really having teachers or role models that I felt comfortable with and equally energised by, having certain figures and characters that intimidated me and an overall fragile level of confidence that was so easily cracked that I think I worried about that happening more than I actually tried to build it up.
But *fear of failure* is such a conniving, (I would go as far as to say) deceptive little concept because it’s something I’ve always thought I understood - it comes across pretty self explanatory - the fear of not succeeding - but it has taken me THIS long to recognise it in myself. It’s not until now that I’m able to associate some of my anxiety to this concept. It almost seems too watered down and simple. I suppose to zoom the microscope in further, I would rephrase this particular feeling as a *fear of disappointing your childhood self* - not living up to your childhood expectations for yourself.
Which is, *relief* (breath of air), a much easier phrase to combat because childhood me didn’t know or understand HALF the options that would be open to me as a ‘grown up’. Who was I, at age 8 (gd even 16!) to set expectations for my future self when I’d barely dipped my toe into the pool of possibilities that life offers. If she did know, maybe her childhood dream would have been to illustrate and design menus for restaurants ?! Or work her early 20s in a flower shop? Or become a columnist for a cool magazine (actual goals). Or a designer in a graphic design studio!? Dancing in the Westend honestly still sounds divine … but I continue to try to figure out if that’s me talking or 12 yr old Ella…
It only gets easier (I can only hope), once you’ve boiled these little anxieties right down to the bone and made sense of them (admin I know).
I think setting goals and having ambitions is, of course, human and healthy and overwhelmingly positive for the most part. But I also think it’s just as healthy sometimes to let go and let life play out. This doesn’t mean letting go of dreams and passions, more so being involved with life without being attached to it. I think that’s the core of what I’m really trying to say. Attachment = anxiety.
Maybe once I’ve relinquished my attachment to certain ideas of success I hold, i’ll be able to go forth and experience some of it for real.