20.17 Blog #32: Praise is my Kryptonite

Today is World Mental Health Day, so I thought I’d throw my tattered flat cap into the ring.

I wrote a blog a-g-e-s ago about my anxiety in a social landscape which you can read here.

I constantly have this little voice in my head telling me I’m shit.  I’m worthless.  I’m a failure.  I’m not going anywhere.  After I perform, no matter the response from the audience, seconds after leaving the stage I’ll be strategically analysing everything that went wrong, or could go wrong, with the set and night.  Glass half empty?  More like glass gets smashed.

I had a mentoring 2-days with Third Angel which was staggering useful about funding, company structure and planning for making theatre work.  It seems so natural now, but it took me years and years to even begin to consider applying for pots of money or stepping outside the comfort zone of small scenes because I thought:  “Who would want to give me any money?”  “Who would want to book me for a gig?”  Cos I’m naff, said the brain.

 I shudder at arrogance and ego like Gollum squirms at Elvish rope.  Overly confident poets and artists really get my back up.  They are few and far between in our scene, but their swagger seems alien.  Yet praise is my Kryptonite.  If someone says:  “That were good, Henry” I think they are:  Lying, wrong, confused, stupid as I say “Thank you!”

It’s because my brain, for whatever reason, has been wired over years to see the negative than the positive.  The brain is a muscle, the more you exercise it the more it grows in a certain angle.  I recently did an online CBT course in trying to rethink how you think.  I’m trying to do more mindfulness exercises.  Eat healthy.  Go for walks.  Listen to less angry music.  That’s hard for me.  Love my angry music.  Any further recommendations welcome.

In our last slam we have a number of poets come down to read very personal poems about their identity, sexuality, gender, mental health and survival.  It was very impassioned and beautiful and, I’d like to hope, somewhat empowering.  And that matters in that moment, at that time, in that space.  All strong pieces, all being shared, all being appreciated.  The hierarchy of poetry seemed not to matter a jot (it might have helped our guest, Jackie Hagan, celebrates the mistake, the failure, the incompetence, the imperfection).  

Thanks, poets x

World Mental Health Day is raising awareness, and poetry is a perfect tool to say to an audience “HEY I feel like this!”  Rather than paste over this fear, better to show those cracks as we rebuild the house.

“Bran thought about it. 'Can a man still be brave if he's afraid?' 'That is the only time a man can be brave,' his father told him.”

Thanks Well-‘ard Eddard.