TED, Fred and Ned

The pitfalls of storytelling

Once upon a time…

A few years after I opened my yoga studio in Santa Monica, a student approached me one day after class. She said she curated TEDx talks and asked me if I would consider giving one on the topic of hope. She’d been taking my class for a long time and knew I’d be able to hit it out of the park. I thanked her and said I would give it some thought, but inside I was instantly panicked. I knew it was a great opportunity, but I also knew that public speaking scared me the way losing your balance and falling into a great, endless fiery abyss where you will burn as you hurtle through space for the rest of eternity, might scare you. It’s a weird thing - you could put me in front of five thousand people to lead a yoga class and I’d be absolutely fine, but take those same five thousand people (or even fifty) and put their asses in chairs, staring at me? Please let the world open and swallow me whole. It’s something about the focal point. If my job is to help people focus on themselves and to give them tools to quiet their minds and calm their nervous systems, I’m good. If the focus is on me, that is the most vulnerable thing in the world. It’s like asking me to go to the grocery store naked and singing wildly like it’s no big deal, and have myself filmed for all to see while I do it. 

This TEDx thing came up about a year after my first marriage ended. I was talking to my therapist, a brilliant woman I’d found as my world collapsed. I’d been in therapy on and off for most of my life, and when I got divorced and had tiny kids, I knew I would need support. I told her about the talk and how I wanted to do it, but had crippling anxiety about speaking in public. She laughed. “I know what you need,” she said, “you need propranolol.” She told me she also had a huge fear of speaking in public, but she traveled all over the world training therapists. She and her husband led courses and workshops that often had thousands of trainees. She said her doctor had given her a prescription, and that it was magic. It removed the feelings of anxiety - the racing heart, shaking voice and hands, feelings that you were going to die - without creating any fogginess. You’d be you, without the fear or symptoms of fear. She also said that after she’d used it for a while, she didn’t need it anymore. She’d gotten so comfortable getting up in front of people, the terror subsided and was no longer a problem. I asked her a million questions about side effects, about whether it had ever failed, about everything. I also told her I felt a little like I “should” be able to calm myself down without medication. After all, here I am teaching people about different breathing techniques, meditation, ways to quiet the mind … didn’t it make me a fraud if I couldn’t calm myself down enough to give a talk without needing medication? She asked me if I thought she was a fraud because she’d needed medication. After all, wasn’t her job to help people manage their fears? This lady was no fraud, so it got me thinking.

We spent the rest of the session talking about the story I was telling myself about who I’m supposed to be, my lack of self-compassion, my exacting expectations and demands about what I should be able to face or withstand without help, and whatever other ways I was shoulding on myself. It turns out it’s very common for people who’ve experienced trauma to have fear of public speaking. You don’t feel safe in the world, so the thought of any number of people sitting and staring at you while you try to make sense is terrifying. I left her office, called my doctor and got a prescription. Of course there’s no way to “test” whether it’s going to work, because you can’t replicate the feelings you’re going to have the day of the event. I had to take it on faith, but I trusted my therapist and my doctor had concurred. It seemed I was the perfect candidate for this medication, and that many people overcame their fears and didn’t need it after a while. I was petrified leading up to the day. I worked on my talk for weeks. I practiced it in my head over and over again. I had notecards in case my mind went blank. I worried somehow I’d be the one person who wasn’t helped by the medication, and that I was going to get up there and forget everything I knew about everything. I got to the event space. I’d already taken one pill and was supposed to take another an hour before I spoke. I didn’t feel any side effects. I felt adrenaline, but no anxiety, no racing heart, no shaking hands. I still wasn’t certain I’d be okay when it was my turn to talk, but it was too late to turn back. My son was in the audience, sitting in one of the chairs, legs swinging. He smiled at me with total confidence and looked at me like I was everything. His absolute faith was so incredible it made my heart hurt. I didn’t want to let him down. I didn’t want to let myself down, either. My daughter was home with a sitter because she would have cried not to be on my hip. I got up and to my great relief, I was fine. I didn’t go blank, I didn’t shake, I just opened my mouth and talked about hope for eighteen minutes and didn’t die.

A few months later, about a year-and-a-half after my divorce, my mom convinced me to get on the dating apps. She said a great guy wasn’t going to knock on my front door or show up in my living room, nor was anyone likely to approach me out in the world while I was covered in small children. I connected with a man who seemed nice enough, or at least didn’t appear to be a serial killer. We can call him Fred because it works for the title, I don’t actually remember his name. We arranged to meet for coffee and a walk. He was nice, but extremely awkward. I figured he was nervous and did my best to keep the conversation flowing, but it wasn’t a match. I was relieved to get back home to my kids. Not long after I got home, Fred texted. He said he thought he’d blown it. He really liked me, but he’d googled me the night before our date and watched the TEDx talk. He said he knew I wouldn’t be into him because he sold car mats that were manufactured in China, and he could tell from my talk I wouldn’t be okay with that.

I hope the theme is emerging, here, but let’s recap. I had a student who had a story about me, and the story was I would be great at giving a TEDx talk about hope, and she surmised this from taking my class for a long time. She saw me in one environment, one I was comfortable in, and she extrapolated. Then, I had a story about myself that involved not needing to rely on any help to calm down in any arena ever, otherwise it made me a fraud. Third, we have Fred, who had a story about me based on a talk I gave. We’re all making up stories about ourselves and each other all the time. It makes sense, we’re wired for stories. For a very long time, stories were what we passed down from generation to generation - they’re still how we make sense of ourselves, each other, and the world at large. The thing is, sometimes (often) our stories are wrong. Fred and I weren’t a match, but it wasn’t because of car mats. It probably didn’t help that he showed up to coffee with that story in his head, though - it definitely affected the way our date went. In the case of my student, her story about me was one I wanted to embody. I wanted to be the kind of person who could get up and talk about things that mattered even when people weren’t in down dog, so I figured out how to do it. Needing help sometimes doesn’t make me a fraud, it makes me a human, so I got to look at my own story around that. I let Fred down easy, but I did tell him deciding things for people without even knowing them is probably not the best policy.

The thing is, I’d fallen prey to that myself with a guy named Ned, and that is his name, and he won’t mind me using it because we are still friends to this day. Ned was in one of the first yoga classes I taught when I moved to Los Angeles in 2001. The previous teacher had traded coasts with me, and moved to NYC. He left behind a packed class of very loyal and unhappy regulars who were not pleased to have me show up that first night. They, in fact, groaned. This class was at Crunch in West Hollywood, which boasts a vibrant and awesome gay community. The class was filled with mostly ripped gay men. They really liked the last guy, they had no use for me, unless I was going to be bitingly funny and teach a very sweaty class. Lucky for me and them, that’s my specialty, or so I like to tell myself. After a couple of weeks, I’d won them over. I’d even been invited out for drinks a few times which was life saving because I didn’t know anyone in Los Angeles. But there was this one guy Ned, and I could not crack him. He stood in the front row, in the middle. The studio had a mirrored front wall, so the whole class could see him. The studio also had glass walls and weight machines around the outside, so people would be pumping weights looking in the studio while my class was in down dog, looking out. It was like getting people to focus at a nightclub. There was even pumped-in music. It was incredible training for me as a teacher. But Ned hated me.

It was becoming a problem. Every time I would say anything remotely philosophical, any time I would try to draw comparisons between what was happening on the mat to what might be happening in life, Ned would roll his eyes and sigh loudly. I realized Ned must have this membership, and this time slot must be the only one that worked for him. Maybe he liked the intensity of my class, but couldn’t stand me as a person, didn’t think I was amusing, or hated the sound of my voice. Whatever it was, he was so expressive about his distaste it was not going unnoticed by everyone else in class. And it stung. I wanted to talk to him about it, but he always arrived just on time, and left the second class was over. Until one night, a few months later, when he waited as I gave out sweaty hugs to anyone who wanted one. 

He asked me if we could talk somewhere away from the gym, some other time. I had the feeling there was something serious on his mind, he seemed distraught. I thought it would be good for us to get together. I told him I took my dog to Runyon Canyon Saturdays at 11am to hike, and that he could meet us at the trailhead if that worked. I didn’t think he hated me enough to hurl me off a cliff, and my dog weighed 150 pounds, so it seemed like a safe bet and a good place to talk. He met us there that weekend, he arrived first and he had treats for my dog. As we hiked, he started talking to me openly about really personal things. He was vulnerable and kind. About thirty minutes in, I told him I was really confused. I said I was very touched he felt he could confide in me, but I’d really thought he hated me so I didn’t understand what was happening. He was stunned. He looked at me like I had twelve heads. He asked me why I thought he hated me. I mentioned the eye rolling and the sighing and what I perceived as dirty looks. He said he was rolling his eyes at himself, not me, that some of the things I said in an offhand way were a shock to his system and really gave him pause. So for a good six months I thought this man hated me, when really he was grappling with his own demons while he was on his mat, which is exactly what I hope people will do when they practice with me. And I told myself a whole story about what was happening. 

It was such a good lesson. Ned became a great friend. When I moved to Santa Monica and stopped teaching at Crunch, he rode his bike six miles each way to practice with me, multiple times a week. He hated me that much. He still practices with me online. He’s one of my favorite people. We live in a fast-paced world. People like to make decisions quickly. We’re always putting things (and people) into categories, and the most basic ones are: I like this or I don’t like this. This person is cool or not cool. This person thinks like I do, or they don’t. If someone likes one thing, they probably like all these other things, too. We’re deciding things about other people constantly. We’re filling in the blanks. We’re not letting people talk. We’re more interested in being right than kind. It’s exhausting, and I’d guess we’re getting it wrong about half the time, maybe more. Sometimes we’re telling ourselves stories so we can live with what happened. Sometimes other people are doing the same thing. You might be cast as the villain in someone’s story because it’s the only way they can get through the day. You might make yourself the victim or the hero of the stories you tell yourself. The fact is, if you really want to know what’s happening with someone else you have to ask, and not just ask, but listen with the intent to understand, with the willingness to consider that maybe you’ve gotten it wrong, or that you’re clinging to your own story because it’s easier that way. 

It happens online all the time and it’s so disheartening, because we spend so much of our time connecting there. It contributes to the emotional fatigue we’re all dealing with, one way or another. There was a post this week about the large percentage of Americans who don’t have passports and don’t travel internationally compared to citizens in other countries. The story was: Americans don’t travel because they’re insular and self-absorbed and grew up thinking theirs is the best country in the world, so why travel? A whole host of Americans responded that they don’t travel because they can’t afford to travel. They’re too busy trying to afford health insurance, to put food on the table which is harder now because groceries are so expensive, they use their PTO on sick days for their kids, they can’t afford to not work for a week, and on and on. And people in other countries like Canada and Australia said no, that’s not why, it’s because you’re insular and self-absorbed, so shut up and listen to me because I know more about your country than you do. (Not all people in Canada and Australia, I think most people there are wonderful and kind, truly). My point is people scream at each other on the internet and cling to their stories about why things are the way they are, and it doesn’t help anyone or anything. I’ve had people attack me for doing too much or too little about the devastating and heartbreaking events happening all over the world, without asking me what I’m doing or not doing, or why I’m doing things the way I’m doing them. There isn’t much you can do when people make up stories about you, except to keep showing up in the world as yourself, and try not to worry about it. 

Stories can be amazing and weird and wonderful. They can be life saving - I grew up with my head in books and don’t think I’d be here otherwise. But sometimes the stories we tell ourselves keep us isolated or angry, distrustful or feeling besieged, victimized or heroic when really, it might be better if we just admitted we don’t know how it started, how it’s going to end, or what’s happening with any of the characters except ourselves - and not even ourselves some of the time. And a huge dose of empathy goes a long way.

The End

If you’d like to meet me in real time to talk about the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we create about other people and how it can lead to trouble, I’ll be here 2/23/24 at 11:15am PST, or you can wait for the Come As You Are podcast version. If you’d like to meet me in Portugal I would love that so much.