Teenager Uses Fear Melters® to Cope with Anxiety Before a Competition
A friend of ours sent us this inspiring story about her daughter using Fear Melters® to calm her anxiety and bring herself more fully into her body before a competition:
Today was my teenage daughter’s first skating competition of the season. She has a new solo that she’s only been working on since early October.
After her practice last night she told me that something weird had happened on the ice. She said she couldn’t really feel her hands and legs, she felt really tired and like she couldn’t do anything. She said she still skated her solo 3 times and everything seemed fine but she didn’t know why she couldn’t feel her body, so she left practice early. She asked me if I thought something was medically wrong with her and what she should do. I told her it was probably anxiety which makes total sense the day before a competition. We have already talked a lot about the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. I told her that not being able to feel your hands and feet and being so tired you can’t move sounded like a faint response. I told her that we had learned Fear Melters® to counteract the fear response. I started making the motion before I said anything and she said, “Scoops!”… I asked if I had shown her this before and she said maybe. We talked about things you can scoop: your love of skating, your desire to do your best, the support of your coach and your parents who love you, the earth’s energy, whatever feels meaningful to you.
This morning on the way to the competition she told me, “you know I could do scoops before my music starts when I’m on the ice. I think the motion wouldn’t look out of place.” I said, “if you think it might help, why not?”
So she did her scoops for herself just before her music started. She skated beautifully. She was thrilled with her performance. And most of all, she is learning to take care of herself and her fears and anxiety by asking for help and trying things out.