We have a twelve year old border terrier named Kasey who is absolutely terrified of fireworks. Kasey looks a little bit like Benji, only she’s smaller and has less teeth. I absolutely adore her.
Kasey became a little uneasy around fireworks around 6 years ago. I remember walking her around the neighborhood and she was a little worried, but it was minor and walking seemed to help. But her dread grew.
Now, 6 years later, she grimaces, paces frantically, hides, pees, and pants uncontrollably. This week it’s been a double whammy with thunderstorms every day (lightening is equally terrifying). Plus neighbor kids (adults?) lighting fireworks at random moments in the evening and throughout the day on July 4th but also subsequent days leading up to and afterwards. It’s been a week!
In previous years, we tried sedatives, CBD and a variety of calming herbs. None of them helped much. This year, we tried some new things.
We brought Kasey into my recording booth (which is mostly sound proofed) before much noise started. I turned on classical music and she actually settled. She wears a diaper which she doesn’t love (and helps us more than her) but eventually she forgets about it. We’ll take the wins where we can and this is definitely a win.
Irrational fear in the body is a tough nut, regardless if you are a person or a Kasey. As humans, we don’t always catch that our idiosyncrasies, habits, or odd behaviors often happen because of energy that got stuck in the stress response cycle in the body, but they are.
How can you tell? If it’s something you wish you didn’t do, or crave, or say, or react to, it’s probably the result of an event when your body was overwhelmed and paused the stress cycle. That pausing is a brilliant mechanism but it’s the reason issues can arise, including performance anxiety. Unpausing the cycle isn’t hard necessarily, but it’s nuanced and pacing – especially going slow is important, otherwise you can re-overwhelm the system again.
If performance anxiety is something you sometimes struggle with, please consider attending my next free webinar. It’s called “Be More of Your Authentic Amazing Self & Loosen the Grip of Performance Anxiety”.
I’ll show you Somatic Experiencing techniques you can easily incorporate into your day to day life. Afterwards I’ll send you a pdf with the tips and tricks I shared. If you miss or can’t attend this one, don’t worry! There will be more webinars. Just sign up and keep an eye out about upcoming events that pique your curiosity.
Register at Spring Back Coaching dot com. Everyone is welcome.
Wednesday, June 10 th at 5pm EST.
After the webinar, I’ll send you a PDF with some techniques to help you work with performance anxiety in your own body.