For many introverted, shy, or socially anxious law students or lawyers, the physical manifestations of stress that are triggered by an interpersonal interaction, a command performance, or a public speaking event exacerbate the emotional impacts. Not only does it feel unnerving to sweat, flush, blush, shake, or experience a fluttering heart, shortness of breath, or tightening of the throat, some of these biological responses are visible to an audience, aggravating the speaker’s embarrassment or shame. Hilliard reports that “[r]oughly twenty to thirty percent of the participants in [her social anxiety support] groups have rated their physical symptoms as their number-one concern,” characterizing their outward indicators as “excruciating.”328 Those of us who endure such tricky automatic physical responses worry that when others see our external markers, they judge. We try to fight our instinctive biological reactions, chiding ourselves for being so weak. Why can’t we “just do it”?
According to the experts, this type of bodily response to stress is not one of abandonment, although we often feel betrayed by our physicality in those moments. Instead, our bodies react out of self-protection,329 a battening down of the hatches in anticipation of a storm. Hilliard explains that “[t]hese are the same bodily responses that are activated in an emergency involving some sort of physical threat.”330
Thus, experts like Hilliard suggest that, instead of being ashamed of or embarrassed by somatic reactions to interactive events, we can embrace these outward symptoms as “life coursing through [the] body.”331 Step 1 of our seven-step process invited us to recognize and consider the sources of the negative mental messages that appear in our minds at the onset of an intimidating event in the legal context. In Step 2, we focus on noticing individual physical responses to stress, understanding what is happening within our bodies, and letting go of the judgment associated with these behaviors which we previously might have misconstrued as weaknesses. In Step 4, we will make minor physical adjustments to transform our bodies, posture, and stance into pillars to bolster our voices. Flowers encourages that “[t]he body is a place where you can become more grounded and stable in working with difficult emotions like anxiety and fear. It can be an important ally in meeting challenging emotions and dealing with them well.”332
To illustrate, let’s use extreme blushing—my nemesis—as a test case. Serial blushers like me feel as though their introversion, shyness, or social anxiety is being flashed in neon on a colossal Times Square billboard for the world to see. Hilliard validates that blushing “is a topic often ignored or only briefly mentioned in most social anxiety literature.”333
I blush. I blush in meetings, when teaching, on dates, and even sometimes when a JetBlue flight attendant kindly asks me if I want another ice cube in my water. I can’t control it. When I try to stop it, the flush flames more brilliantly—fiery pinks and reds creeping up and around my neck and cheeks like ivy. Inexplicably, many extroverts and non-blushers feel obligated to point out my blushing: “Wow, your face is so red! Why are you turning red? Did you know your face is red? Yikes, your face is red.” Nothing makes a woman on a first date feel more sexy, beautiful, and goddess-like than when a man points out, “Geez, your face is so red!” Aestheticians mutter, “Wow, your skin is so sensitive. So sensitive! Why are you so sensitive?” I yearn to scream, “Leave me alone, people. I blush. Deal with it!” But, for years, I felt defective.
Before I started this introversion evolution, during negotiations on behalf of clients, if I tried to float a point I did not really believe in, I blushed. In depositions, if opposing counsel objected to a question and I was not spontaneously certain how to push back or rephrase my question, I blushed. As a professor, if I misspoke during a lecture or needed a moment to ponder an intriguing query posed by an enthusiastic student, I blushed. Each time I sensed the first heat trace of a blush on my cheek, before I knew it, its vines had spiraled around my neck. I routinely began to worry more about the blush than my spoken words. Turtlenecks and scarves dominated my wardrobe.
When I started to study introversion, shyness, and social anxiety, I discovered that blushing can originate from shame. Dr. Breggin explains the link: “Biological evolution has built a kind of lie detector into our bodies. When we experience shame, our skin lights up with a blush that announces, ‘You got me! I’m embarrassed, ashamed, and maybe even humiliated.’”334 He describes “a specific connection between the feeling of shame and the physiological dilation of the blood vessels of the cheeks and sometimes the face, neck, and shoulders. The increased blood flow can produce a sensation of warmth or heat. Many people also experience creepy, crawly, or prickly feelings in their skin during shame.”335 As I forged through my seven steps, I learned that my shame stems from censorious life experiences that whittled away the trust in my voice and in my worthiness of having opinions. My blushing is an instinctive biological response to a perceived attacker or critic, a manifestation of feeling like I have done something wrong—or that I am wrong—and therefore am unworthy of my audience. To best manage the blushing reflex with this newfound awareness, I had to accept that I cannot reprogram this aspect of my innate biological and physiological makeup, and I cannot completely erase my past. However, I can control how I respond emotionally to the blush, and whether I interpret it as a weakness. For nearly 20 years, to echo Dr. Breggin’s words, I felt ashamed, embarrassed, and sometimes even humiliated by my blush. I needed to find a way to cartwheel the message.
The answer appeared when I read Hilliard’s book. Hilliard suggests that a die-hard blusher, rather than immediately feeling self-conscious (which of course perpetuates and flares the fiery burn), can try to take “ownership of blushing.”336 Be the blush. Hilliard releases the stigma of an embarrassing blush by reframing it in a positive light; “[t]o see a blush is to celebrate life’s living … fullness, ripeness, color, and flourishing life.”337 She advises life-long blushers to “[t]hink of your blushing as footprints left by the blood surging into the blood vessels under your skin. They symbolize the fact that life is coursing through you.”338 Further, “[b]lushing is a reminder that you are a vibrant human being, complete with a rich array of emotions. It’s a package deal. We laugh, we cry, we fume, we flame.”339
I resolved to “be the blush.” The next time I felt a blush coming on, I noted the initial flash, and instead of tumbling down the ravine of automatic self-loathing, I paused, and swapped in a new message: “OK, so I’m on a first date with an intelligent guy who speaks three languages, loves to travel, and is interested in my book about the Socratic Method. I met him five minutes ago and I am in full-on blush mode. He probably thinks I’m hideous. Oh, wait, no. This is just life coursing through me. I’m alive. Yay, me. I can’t stop the blush so I might as well just let it do its thing and it will go away. Relax and talk to this guy about Socrates.” That blush took forever to subside, but eventually it did. (So did that relationship. He never called me again. But, score one for Team Blush! I learned that I could keep calm, be myself, and the adverse physical response would recede.)
I kept “being the blush.” Sometimes, while teaching, if a full-on blush smeared across my face, I said out loud, into the microphone, “Wow, tough evidentiary question. Let me ponder that for a second. Geez, I’m turning red right now. Well, there’s nothing I can do about it, and it will go away so…” A few students laughed—which I chose to perceive as supportive rather than judging—and I forged onward and answered the question. And each blush subsided.
NOTING PHYSICAL RESPONSES TO LAW-RELATED STRESS
Here in Step 2, it is important to take the time to notice individual automatic physical reactions to stressful law-related interactions. These will vary for each one of us. Just as we transcribed the specific words comprising our negative mental messages in Step 1, we must get down to the physical nitty-gritty, cataloguing which physical response occurs first, second, third, etc., and the exact sensations, movements, and progressions within each biological reaction. When you anticipate or participate in an interpersonal exchange, do you feel a rapid heartbeat first, followed by sweating? Or do you experience shortness of breath or lightheadedness? Do your hands or knees start to shake?
After indexing your chronology of physical responses, the next step is to understand their biological cause. Legal communication experts Brian K. Johnson and Marsha Hunter explain, “[f]eelings of anxiety and excitement inevitably trigger the flow of adrenaline, which sends excess energy coursing through your system.”340 They reiterate that adrenaline is both a sword and a shield; it “is a natural hormone released by the adrenal glands. It flows through the body when your instinct signals a need for extra energy, perhaps to defend yourself, run away, or respond to the pressure of performance.”341 Indeed, “[a]drenaline is a natural source of energy while public speaking, but it can be a nuisance unless you understand and channel it.”342 To build upon an analogy propounded by Naistadt, think of adrenaline like a white-water rapid river,343 and our physical bodies like the shoreline. If we close up and compress our bodies in self-protective mode, perhaps crossing our arms or legs, hunching, bracing for a blow, constricting our airways, and confining our blood and oxygen flow, we limit movement of the tempestuous current inside us. This can cause the pent-up energy to bounce around aimlessly, agitating us, and hindering our peak performance. Naistadt urges, “Nervousness is not a sign of weakness! It is a sign of excess energy that you must learn to control and redirect.”344 She explains, “[i]f we don’t have a way of releasing and channeling that excess energy so that it flows evenly and naturally in a positive, productive direction, it may explode from us, throwing us into overdrive, or implode on us, creating inhibitions.”345
Once we learn to recognize our instinctive self-protective physical reactions—in posture, stance, pose, breath rhythm, vision focus, and voice intensity346—and learn how to tweak and adjust those anatomical and physiological habits, we can harness our energy and use it to help us perform like powerhouse athletes. Johnson and Hunter encourage, “by learning to control your breath as well as the movement of your legs, arms, hands, and eyes, you can channel the power of adrenaline and dictate how your body responds to it.”347 They reassure that “if you learn to recognize the impulses to fight, flee, or freeze, you can counter adrenaline’s negative effects by proactively gaining control of specific parts of your body.”348
So, for now, focus on recognizing your individual physical responses to performance-driven scenarios and tag them with new labels; instead of flaws or weaknesses, they have purpose, and with enhanced awareness, can be fine-tuned to support instead of hinder our mental faculties. “OK, now I’m blushing, not because I am an embarrassing wreck, but because life and vibrancy are surging through me. Now my hands are shaking because adrenaline is pumping me up with excess energy that I haven’t quite yet learned how to channel. OK, I’m short of breath because I crossed my arms and legs and am hunched down in my chair in self-protective mode; maybe if I open back up, my breath will normalize …” We identify and label these reactions, and honor their transience. Sweat evaporates, shakes subside, blushes fade. Step 2 is all about becoming aware of the energy inside us. In Step 4, we will construct new physical routines for stepping into law-focused exchanges with command.
Exercise #3
Grab that journal or the notes app on your phone and start cataloguing your individual physical responses to performance-driven events. Do this when you are anticipating a future event, when you are actually in a present one, and when reflecting as close-in-time as possible afterward. Observe and track the chronology of your physical shifts. Pause and take note—in slow motion. If you watched a frame-by-frame videotape of yourself exercising, say jumping rope, you might sense your heart rate increasing, a bead of sweat trickling down your cheek, your breath becoming labored. Stop, take a breath, feel the pound of each heartbeat. Notice your chest rise and fall with each inhalation and exhalation of air. Feel the sweat drip from your chin. Experience both subtle and obvious changes in your body and record each one, as if someone is snapping photographs of each new physical response the instant it appears.
Now, assess exactly how and when each of your physical responses abate. What aspect of your body returns to “normal” first? Next? Last? How long does it take to return to a relaxed state? Does one response take longer than others to subside? Finally, which physical symptoms annoy or bother you the most? The least? Why?