On Fear, Self-Doubt and Holding Back

Yesterday I watched myself hold back for fear of looking foolish and learned a lot about not leaping.

Dear friend,

Yesterday I experienced the opposite of leaping and unexpectedly learned how much not-leaping I have stored in me. I am usually busy cheerleading myself and others to leap or after leaping. I rarely notice the energy of holding myself back, the energy of fear.

A certain kind of fear is probably more deadly to my spirit than fear for my life or fear of bodily harm or fear of misspeaking or forgetting someone’s name. That’s the fear of looking bad, of not executing something perfectly, of being unsure in my body, being a beginner and sucking at something.

Chances are good that if you know me, you’ve already seen me be bad at something, forget something, or execute something awkwardly or un-prettily. But clearly, this is about how I see myself and how painful it is to see myself—and judge myself—as looking bad while I do something I haven’t mastered. I’m thinking of what “you” are thinking of me, but it’s really I who am thinking it.

It happened in tai chi class. I could feel it coming.

“Last time with me,” announced my teacher. That meant that next time we’d do the part of the form we were working on, on our own. I was already gone.

“Now you do it,” she said.

I froze. I shook my head no, and stood there wringing my hands while she reminded me that’s what class is for, that’s what being a beginner is, that’s how you make it your own, etc., etc., etc. Everything she said washed over and through me like a tide of words with nothing behind them but good thoughts. They weren’t strong enough to penetrate the wall I’d built around myself.

Part of me watched, astounded. I am not a teacher-challenger! I am a good girl! I cooperate! I am brave, strong, daring! I am a leaper!

And yet I refused.

It had to do with feeling awkward in my body. My body’s undergone a bunch of changes, which it has to, when you’ve lived almost seven decades. I weigh more than I ever have. My knees hurt. My hips hurt. My balance isn’t as reliable as it once was. I usually like my curvy body, but every once in a while I catch the undercurrent of self-talk that goes something like, “blah, blah, blah, democracy…but what about your thighs?”

After all these years in this body, feeling that I can’t one hundred percent count on it is disconcerting. I used to lack confidence in my abilities, but in my head I’d think “Well, at least I look okay.” Now I feel like I look bad, and that is—not the me I always thought I was. After years of being the active person, the person on the go, the person who spent an eight hour shift on my feet, the person who preferred being busy, the person whose dream was once to walk across the country like Peace Pilgrim, to feel like when I put my foot somewhere I’m not sure I won’t stumble, is weird.

I’ve taken a few good tumbles in the past couple of years. When I worked in homecare as an occupational therapist I would have to ask about falls. I kind of didn’t understand the eyerolls. Now I do. I’m a faller. I genuinely qualify.

There has never been a time when I wasn’t self-conscious, but there was a time when I was self-conscious and still tried things. As a young teen, I was drawn to the balance beam. I couldn’t tumble like a cheerleader or run fast for track and field, but I could fearlessly walk along that 4-inch-wide beam, sit, lie back, bring my legs over my head, and do a forward roll. I even tried out for basketball in ninth grade. (Jammed my finger, screwing up both basketball and piano for a while.)

But what I learned yesterday is that I have a particular kind of self-consciousness and lack of confidence related to moving around in space and being watched. I feel very vulnerable, and, frankly, I hate that. I’ve danced during rallies and demonstrations. I’ve twirled and shimmied on dance floors. I’ve performed with frame drummers and processed down church aisles during somber services. In 7th and 8th grade at the Rec Dance, I was shushed for snapping my fingers while dancing, a sin I didn’t know about, but couldn’t bring myself to care about or stop doing.

This is new.

When I started my “weight loss journey”—which is what the app I’m using calls learning how to eat less and exercise more, without feeling deprived and grouchy and sad all the time—my big goal was to feel more confident in my body. With summer coming, I want to be able to go out on the water and do the things I want to do with confidence. I want to do the things other people do. When the knee board or tube comes out, when the swimmers are doing their laps, I am no where to be found. I’m holding down the fort. I’m gardening.

The O.T. in me says, okay, you have some sensory issues. You don’t like feeling untethered, you lack confidence when your body is moving. Motion insecurity. Cool. That can be remedied. It’s not a moral failing. It’s neurological. But any physical or occupational therapist worth their salt can tell you that these kinds of neurological issues come with feelings, emotions, memories, worries, beliefs and, of course, compensations.

And the psychotherapist in me wonders how many other 60-year-old+ women also feel like they wish they had the daring and confidence, if not the body, of their 14-year-old selves. Because as much as puberty is awful, and the lessons and messages about having a woman’s body start getting really loud, and the pressures about appearance and how we choose to carry ourselves in the world intensify exponentially, aging also has its poignant, hurtful changes.

I feel like part of the trick of aging is learning to play to my strengths, but yesterday I discovered just how limiting that can be. I want, above all, to feel free and adventuresome in the learning process. I want to feel playful as I stumble my way through the movements of the form. I want to mess up and say, “Oops!” and move on. I want to be a blissful beginner.

I don’t want to feel like I’m holding back tears from my cells when I try and fail. I want to heal those cellular tears. The only way I know to do that is to name them, feel them, respect them, and wash them out with a promise not to give up on myself and a prayer for grace—and not just the physical kind. The only way to heal those tears is to leap when it is the very hardest, when it feels absolutely, without a doubt, one hundred percent impossible. And cry them.

I want my primary relationship to be with myself and my body, not with an imaginary critic that holds me to unattainable standards of perfection. I want to be as kind to myself as I am to you.

Yesterday I discovered a growing edge, an often invisible space that in an agonizing moment showed me just how frightened I am and just how uncomfortable I am with my own limitations. But every growing edge contains potential that, as unfathomable as it seems from one side, holds untold reward from the other. It’s getting to the other side that is the journey of a lifetime, and for that we need courage. And what is courage if not that which arises in response to fear, when tolerating the intolerable becomes impossible, and we must leap?

Sending up a prayer for this, for me, for you, for the journey ahead.

With much love,

Phyllis

Sign on my refrigerator, perfectly illustrating how well my partner and I are matched. Photograph © 2025 Phyllis Capanna