Stand Up to Anxiety

I’ve been seeing a therapist since the beginning of this year. When I made the decision to see a therapist, I was feeling stuck in a rut but also ready to take on some new challenges, specifically related to overcoming anxieties.

One fear that I’ve had since college is public speaking. I just remember how intimidating those classrooms full of complete strangers seemed. I had a couple of speeches I had to give for classes where I completely froze up and was unable to present my material. Sometimes I’m still haunted by that sea of faces staring at me blankly. Looking at me like holy shit what’s up with this guy. This is bizarre. And me trying to work through it. Not knowing how to fix it.

It was pretty humiliating. From those experiences, I learned that any type of public speaking was to be avoided. Because it will most likely bring me pain. So I’ve generally tried to avoid public speaking, especially in professional settings.

The one thing I did in my past that didn’t cow to this fear was improv. Back in 2008, I was feeling pretty hope and changey (one could say), and I signed up for improv classes partially to take on this fear. I performed for a couple of years around the city and pushed myself in ways that I previously thought was not possible. One time with the group Improvapy I performed improv at a CancerWalk in front of hundreds of people after the Jesse White Tumblers performed (a tough act to follow!). But ultimately, I stopped doing improv because I knew I needed to figure out a career. Guess what I decided on? One that involves long periods in front of a computer and minimal human interaction–computer programming (hmmm).

So during the initial consultation with my therapist, she asked what fears I wanted to take on and public speaking was one of them. We started to discuss ways that I could do this and she mentioned that Second City had classes tailored to wellness/mental health. I decided to take the one that involved performing stand up comedy. Previously, I never really had any interest in stand up because the focus is all on you, you are responsible for the entire performance and it’s obviously less team-focused than improv. Plus, I was convinced that I would not be able to memorize an act and perform without notes. But it was all part of the challenge.

The first day of class was a rough one. It definitely did not feel good getting up and talking in front of people. I remember one of the exercises was just to share some perspective about something you love or hate, and I was struggling to even get words out, I was so in my head. But I stuck with it and ended up attending every class through the session.

The class was structured so that each week we would get an assignment to prepare and perform a 3-5 minute set related to a different sub-category of comedy. Like one week was just roasting yourself, another was purely observational humor, another was act outs (performing parts of your act in ways that are different than you, different voices, body movement etc.). By far the hardest week was one liner week. Think comics like Steven Wright or Mitch Hedberg. We had to write 30 one liners and perform all of them no matter how bad they were. I had a lot of bad ones. I think this one was my worst: I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fully do it, but I’d really like to quit biting my nails….and blowing my hammers!

My class size was pretty small, so you really got to know everyone in the class, and it was a really supportive group. The teacher was Erin Field, who is a phenomenal teacher and professional stand-up comedian in the city. She always had wonderfully constructive notes about the performances and gave ideas about how to further develop them. By the end of the class, I felt like everyone began to flourish. We had all come a long way since that very first class where everyone seemed so unsure of performing in front of others.

After the class completed, Second City slots time at one of their theaters for the students in the class to perform a collection of material the students created during the class. Our teacher Erin hosted the show, and it had music and lights, all the works. It was a cool experience and a really fun night. My performance is below. Note: One of my classmates met my brother Dylan earlier in the night and incorporated, “Fuck you, Dylan!” into her set before I performed, and it kind of became a theme for the night. I had to join in as well.

Anxiety was definitely there during my performance. It didn’t go perfectly. A couple of times I started to freeze and perform things out of order or outright omitted parts of bits. But overall, I was able to perform the whole set as intended without too much looking at notes.

I’m going to keep performing stand up. I have signed up for the level 2 class at Second City and will be starting that soon. My teacher’s advice to me is that I need to keep getting more reps so the fight-flight-freeze of anxiety won’t be as much of an issue, and I will eventually feel more comfortable up there. I also know I need to keep working on my material and timing and such.

Overall, the class was a complete win for reducing symptoms of social anxiety. It has benefited me in my professional and social life. I feel more open and willing to speak at times when I might have otherwise remained quiet. I also met a lot of interesting people I would not otherwise have met and made some new friends, which can be difficult to do the older you get. If you’re interested in the class, the information is here: https://www.secondcity.com/classes/chicago/stand-up-to-anxiety/

Thanks for reading and if you have anxiety and ever talk with someone about, send me a message. I’m all ears. Like the great state of Iowa. ;)

Take care.