Author Blog: Focusing Under Pressure
Earlier this week, Daniel Smith, whose newest book, “Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety,” is now available, wrote about hearing voices. His blog posts are featured on The Arty Semite courtesy of the Jewish Book Council and My Jewish Learning’s Author Blog Series. For more information on the series, please visit:
In my last post, I described the technical difficulties that occurred when I appeared on Talk of the Nation earlier this month. Instead of the regular broadcasting configuration — a single interviewee responding to the questions of a single interviewer — I was forced to contend with a welter of voices and noises created by wonky technology, all while trying to sound poised, normal, and more or less intelligent.
When the problem first occurred, I experienced a very familiar and unpleasant sensation: anxiety. My muscles tightened, my heart sped up, my brow started to sweat, and I felt a growing constriction in my chest muscles. Worse, because it threatened the proceedings, my thoughts began to race, first and briefly with questions about my sanity (“Where is all this noise coming from!?”) and then with questions about my abilities to handle the situation (“I’m going to lose on air! I’m never going to get through this”).
But then another feeling took over, also familiar but this time much more comforting: focus. Once the host started to ask his questions — he was unaware that I could scarcely hear him through the din — all my worries burned off in the heat of what needed to be done. I was here. I was speaking live on national radio. I had no choice but to go forward.
I have a job to do, dammit!
This is a reaction for which I have become, throughout the years, very, very grateful. Not all anxiety sufferers do well under pressure. Does that sound like an odd formulation, given that anxiety is generally thought to be all about being bad under pressure? Well, it isn’t. Anxiety is more often about being bad with the consideration of pressure. Anxiety feeds off of uncertainty, contingency, and doubt. But high-pressured situations don’t necessarily contain these elements. As often as not, high-pressured situations wipe uncertainty, contingency, and doubt right off the table. And what is left in place of these things is… necessity. Purpose. The need for action. In short, the present moment and nothing but the present moment.
It is for these reasons that in my adult life I have often yearned for a more publicly performative job than writing. Writing is not only solitary, it is a deferment of performance. At the writing desk, one can always look back at what was already written and forward to what has not yet been written. This is a sure formula for anxiety. Performers, people who work on stage in front of live audiences, don’t have the luxury of this looking around. They are forced by conditions of immediacy to deal only with what is in front of them: this line, this reaction, this emotion, this idea.
Oh, to have that pressure more frequently! I’m in Los Angeles at the moment, talking about my book and seeing some friends. Maybe it’s time to go on a few auditions.
Visit Daniel Smith’s official website here.
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