I have the Spiderman Syndrome.
Lately I’ve been experiencing a series of embarrassing
uncontrollable bodily functions. There are moments when I am in the midst of
talking, when suddenly my voice starts to break, my hands tremble and I could
feel a sudden heat wave caused by a quick rush of blood to my head and I could
literally feel my face turning red hot. My ears feel pressured and sounds
become muffled. My throat dries up and my heart beats at an alarming rate. And
I feel like it is hard to breath, my head gets heavy and my vision starts to
darken. I want to throw up, fart, crap, hiccup and sneeze all at the same time.
These moments occur during a meeting, for example, when it
is my turn to speak in a group of people. I could only translate these
physiological actions of mine as nervousness, anxiety and fear.
I have never had this happen so often and so fast. It is
interfering with my daily activities and needless to say, it is exasperating. I
have no control over it and as much as I try to calm myself, it is quite
obvious to the others around me. It is embarrassing and frustrating.
I’m a lecturer and talking in front of an audience has never
been a problem for me. As a student in college, I loved doing presentations and
enjoyed talking to an audience. So it is puzzling to me, why all of this is
happening now.
I shared this predicament with my husband, to give me some
perspective and get me out of distress, he told me about the Spiderman
Syndrome.
Spiderman went through this phase in which he doubted
himself. He started questioning whether he was really worthy to be a hero. He
didn’t believe he was. He knew he had the abilities, the power, but he didn’t
believe how he could help anyone with those capabilities. He started to lose
his confidence and his powers began to dwindle. He wasn’t able to stick to
walls, his spider senses wouldn’t work and his strength was gone. The villains
trashed him mercilessly.
If this is similar to my case, then what happened to me was
that I didn’t believe in myself. There is a difference in knowing you can do
something and believing that you could do it. I know I can speak well, that is
my ability. But I didn’t believe that what I spoke of matters and is worth
listening to.
My husband says that I have a hard time accepting
compliments and believing that people see I have great potential. He points out
examples where I would normally express doubt and disbelief when someone says
something nice about me.
Why? I analyzed the times when these incidences occur. I’m
trying to understand this problem, why it happens and how I could fix it.
There are times in the past, when I was younger, where when
in doing something, I incurred some negative comments, some snide remarks that
hurt me. I was young, and every time
this happened I would lash out, lose my temper and in the event, sometimes
people got physically hurt. The onlookers have this look in their eyes, I was
being judged and it changes things. People start distancing themselves from me
because they thought I was weird and they didn’t want to be involved with me. I
had been labeled at times as being too intense, high strung, too ‘over’.
As I got older,
instead of lashing out, I recoiled and crawled back into the comfort of my
hardened shell. A wall, a fort I successfully built for myself to protect me
from harm or hurt. I became silent, introvert and never wanting to be in the centre
of attention.
Lately, I have been involved with new groups of people that
forced me to go outside of my comfort zone. These people have a tremendous
amount of positive energy and what my husband calls a ‘supercharged’ optimism.
They are volunteers from a non-profit group called Thinklab who are known as
the Agents of Change. They are made up of people from different backgrounds and
age, all coming together for the same purpose, which is to change the design
industry in Malaysia and make it better. It is refreshing and inspiring to be
with them not only because of our shared interest in design but ultimately
because they are honestly nice people. Compliments and acknowledgements are
abundant and hardly a word is uttered in spite or hatred. Criticisms are
delivered tactfully and for the purpose of betterment. Meetings are concise,
fulfilling and purposeful. I instantly clicked with them in a short time.
But I’m also feeling the pressure to perform. I mean, it is
so inspiring to see these young people, so passionate, committed and full of
conviction in what they do. So much so that I didn’t think that I am good
enough to be with them. I got scared that I couldn’t deliver what was expected
of me. What if I say the wrong things? What if they see how stupid I was? What if I can’t achieve the task that they hand to me? What
if I screw up because I didn’t understand and was just too slow in
comprehending?
Seeing how they work together, it teaches me a lot. Being
nice always works better. Though it almost always is never easy. Especially for
me, getting angry when things don’t go the way I want it to. And a positive
attitude is contagious, it inspires and rubs off on people, making them want to
do great things. And sometimes you just got to force yourself to do something,
even though it is hard and you would rather not.
I hope that I would be able to overcome this fear of mine.
It would take time, I guess. And I just need to keep on trying and believe that
I am capable of great things. There will always be opposing voices that hurt.
But this is my battle that I have to fight.
The greater the
battle, the better the triumph. Fighting!