Native English Conversation: Facing Your Fears with Bree (Into The Story Podcast)

Hello, and welcome to the English Like a Native Podcast, the listening

resource for intermediate to advanced-level English learners.

My name is Anna, and today I have a very special guest.

I would like to introduce to you the lovely Bree, the host of Into

the Story, a fantastic podcast that you should all be listening to.

Hi Bree, how are you?

I'm wonderful.

How are you, Anna?

I'm very well, thank you.

Now, Bree, I love your podcast, but can you tell our listeners

who haven't discovered it yet what your podcast is all about?

Yes, absolutely.

So, Into the Story is a podcast also for intermediate to advanced

learners that want to improve their English listening to true stories.

So, we interview all sorts of interesting and fascinating people from all over

the world, and they tell a true story.

And then we turn that into a little class and listening experience.

And yeah, you came on the podcast.

I did.

And you told a beautiful, beautiful story.

I was just amazed the whole time you were telling it.

And that's Into the Story.

Fantastic.

What's been your, like highlights of the podcast?

Do you have any standout stories that were told on your podcast?

Yes.

So, for me, the story that perhaps impacted me the most, because it

is very inspiring and big is the first Canadian to summit Everest.

So, he tells the story, and also since becoming the first Canadian to

summit Everest, he became a speaker.

So, he just has this presence, I think he's also a shaman, like he's very

spiritual, and there's a moment in his story where he talks about, they lost

a bunch of the climbers and they're at Camp Four, so they're very high up

there and he has to get out of the tent.

It's minus, I think it's minus 50.

Like it's something insanely cold and he has to go out of the

tent and look for these climbers.

And every time I go in for my swim, so the water is a bit cold, I think of him.

I'm like, if he can like go out of his tent so early and minus 50, I can

go into this water, this cold water.

So yeah, that's probably, that's a highlight, but every story is amazing

and not all of them are extraordinary.

Some of them are very ordinary, but they're all very beautiful.

Fantastic.

Thank you for sharing that with us.

So, today's podcast, I thought we'd talk about fear as a topic because

fear is something that everyone experiences and whereas in the past

fear was something that was there to protect us, it now actually in

most cases has become a barrier, an obstacle that people have to overcome.

And particularly when we're talking about language learning, fear really

plays a big part in people's progression.

It kind of stops people from progressing.

So, I thought we'd talk about fear today.

To start with, there are a couple of words and terms that come into the topic

of fear that sometimes can be confused.

So, the three terms I'm thinking of, firstly are anxiety, anxiety, to

be anxious, and then the word fear itself, and then the word phobia.

So, these three words are kind of bandied about when talking about

fears, but is there a difference, Bree?

Yeah, I think definitely there's a difference.

I think nowadays, anxiety is a word we're used to hearing.

We talk a lot about this concept of anxiety.

And I think of it more as like a longer state of fear.

You know, you're kind of feeling that feeling in your heart.

Maybe some people talk about it in their stomach of almost discomfort,

almost butterflies, you know.

We have this talk about butterflies where it just feels kind of strange.

And it can feel stressful.

It can feel uncomfortable.

And I don't think anxiety is very good for us.

What do you think?

Yeah, it's something that we can live with long-term, isn't it?

It's a low-level fear that we can function with.

So, we just go through our day feeling anxious, worried about something,

or in some cases not worried about anything in particular, but still

having this sense of anxiety.

When I feel anxious, I have the thing you talked about with that feeling

in the tummy, like butterflies in the stomach or that feeling

of a turning over of the stomach.

I always sense that it's like adrenaline running through my veins

and this kind of buzzing, shaky feeling that I just can't shake.

There's another phrase to shake the feeling.

So I have a shaky feeling that I just can't shake, I can't get rid of.

What kinds of things would make someone feel anxious?

Well, when I think of anxiety in my life these days I'm a mother of two boys,

and they can cause anxiety sometimes.

Yes.

You know, me and my husband have quite a liberal approach to parenting.

We like to let them do as much as they can do and experiment with their bodies,

but sometimes when you're at the park and you're watching a two year old climb

up a ladder and then hang with one hand.

This is a feeling maybe of anxiety, kind of that fear that something could

be happening or the anxiety about, am I doing things well or not well?

Also anxiety with work.

When you have projects that you have to finish, it's kind of this constant, like

you just said, a buzzing kind of feeling of adrenaline and cortisol in your body.

And you feel unsettled.

You don't feel relaxed.

You don't have a feeling of well-being.

And for me, when I have this feeling, I use yoga and meditation.

That's the only thing that calms me down.

To kind of just come back to the present moment and think, okay, what happened in

the past is not in the present moment.

It's not, shouldn't be feared.

What's going to come in the future will come, but right now, everything's okay.

And reminding myself rationally that everything's okay.

What about you?

What do you think?

What causes anxiety for you?

I'm the same, as a mother, I suffer from anxiety related to my children.

I do this terrible thing of going to bed and lying there in the moment.

I take a long time to go to sleep, usually about 20 to 30

minutes of just lying there.

And I tend to fall into catastrophising.

So, to catastrophise you know, think about terrible things that could possibly happen

and how I would act in that scenario.

And it usually is about my children.

So, it will be walking my children down the road and a child runs out in front of

a car or being on the top of a cliff and my child falling down off the cliff edge

and not knowing what I do at that moment.

You know, these horrendous things that could possibly happen to my kids.

And, I do that pretty much every night.

So, I have this constant anxiety about something bad happening to

them, in terms of my child's safety.

It gets easier, but separation anxiety is definitely something I struggle with.

I think most children struggle with it when they're younger,

separating from their parents.

But I think parents can struggle with it too, especially when you have your first

baby, the first time you let them go into the arms of somebody else, even if you

know and love and trust the other person, you still think something bad will happen

because I'm not going to be with my child.

So things like that.

Yeah, I can relate to everything that you just said.

I don't tend to catastrophise, but just yesterday, so, I take my kids

swimming on Mondays, and it's like a high anxiety moment because there's

the two-year-old, the five-year-old, they're jumping in the water.

So, I'm very alert, like I'm very aware, like holding one, got the arm or leg of

the other one, and at the end we were playing on kind of like the stairs.

So, both of them touch the bottom of the pool.

But I turned around for literally three to five seconds to start

putting on my shoes to leave the pool.

And I look back down and at this moment my anxiety turned to fear.

Like the moment of the adrenaline spiking into your throat or your eyes,

I don't know, it just, it has this 'hoh' feeling where it just flashes up.

I look down and I see the two-year-old totally under the water.

Like, you know when a baby gets scared and they just open their arms?

If you've ever had a little baby, you know.

Eyes fully open like this.

He had just slipped and fallen.

And maybe he was under the water for one second, two

seconds, but it was total fear.

It took me a moment to be like, "what's happening?"

and I just took him out and grabbed him.

But It's kind of that feeling of alertness, anxiety, then switch to

fear, but it's adaptive, isn't it?

It helps us.

Yeah.

It's there for a reason.

Your story reminds me of sitting in a rocking chair in my

conservatory with the doors shut.

It was a cold but sunny day and my two children were out in the garden playing

and we had this big, very deep pond.

And they know not to play close to the pond, but they were kind of slightly

out of sight and I was just sitting and as I got into my rocking chair with

my cup of tea, I thought to myself,

"If something happens and I have to jump up now, coming out of this rocking

chair is going to be quite difficult."

And I had that thought so I'm watching, but they kind of just

disappear behind, like a building that we have in the garden.

And then I hear this huge splash and I hear my older son screaming, in a way that

just makes you know something's wrong.

You can tell by the tone of a child's voice that something is seriously up.

So, I just knew instantly Caspian, my youngest son, who was two at

the time, had fallen into the pond.

And so, I put my tea down because I'd already envisaged it.

I'd already catastrophised about this.

So, I knew the first thing I had to do was put down the scalding

hot tea and then try and launch myself out of this rocking chair.

Now I had socks on and it's a hard floor, tiled floor.

And you know, when you see the cartoons, when someone's trying to run

and their legs are just slipping and their legs are just going around for

about three seconds, that was me just trying to run so fast that my legs

were just going around and around in circles and I was making no progress.

I wasn't moving.

And then I fell.

And I slipped and fell flat down on the floor, got up again, ran out, grabbed

my child and pulled him out of the pond.

And he was fine.

He was a bit shocked and had a few scrapes and bruises, but he was fine.

I think that fear is there to make you act quickly.

It sends the blood, the adrenaline to the places where it needs to be.

It makes your brain fire quickly.

It makes you super strong, makes your limbs work.

And so fear is useful on those occasions, isn't it?

Yeah, it definitely is.

And fear is one of these emotions that has roots very, very deep, deep, deep

in our evolutionary psychology and physiology from the days that we were,

you know, hunting in a forest and had to run away from bears or lions, and

you can kind of feel it because when you do have that fear, you, or when

you respond in fear, you're extra fast.

I mean, if you can get grip on the floor when you're trying to run,

but you are very quick and strong.

But of course, it can be a problem if it turns into a phobia.

Or if you're dealing with prolonged anxiety, it's just this

constant state of discomfort, which we know isn't good for us.

Yeah.

Our body isn't meant to take this kind of stress hormones

long-term, it's not built for that.

And so, it does have detrimental effects as well as effects on our

diet because we can't eat in the same way when we're stressed and anxious.

Mm-hmm.

And our sleep, which we all also know is so important.

But what is a phobia?

So a phobia is like, it's usually focused on one thing, isn't it?

Yeah.

A phobia.

I, myself, I don't think that I have any phobias, but my understanding of the

word phobia is like a very, very intense fear, and usually irrational, and just

like a very strong aversion to something.

Do you have any phobias?

I don't, but I did.

So, I had a couple of the typical phobias.

I used to have a severe phobia of needles.

And so, whenever I had to have an injection, or blood

taken, I would be freaking out.

I'd get clammy palms, I'd be shaking, I'd feel sick.

And the thing that changed it for me was a psychological switch.

I remember seeing a documentary about a guy with leukemia.

He was only early twenties.

When you are in need of blood when you need a blood donation

or a bone marrow donation.

It has to come obviously from your blood type.

And this guy was like, look, I need more people to come forward and donate

blood to see if we can find a bone marrow donor for me cause I need a bone

marrow donation or I'm going to die.

And they were out on the street and trying to get people to donate blood saying,

"could you just do a little blood test?

Would you think of donating blood?

Can you help?"

And people were saying "no" because they were scared of needles.

Hmm.

These people could potentially save this man's life, but they're scared of

needles, so they're not going to do it.

And that made me think how silly my fear of needles was when you can think of,

like, the pros of me donating blood.

How many people I could help if I donated blood?

And actually, I have a slightly more rare blood type.

I'm a B positive, which is about 15 per cent of the population.

I'm also a B positive.

Are you?

We have so much in common!

We do!

It's crazy!

So I think our blood type is about 15 per cent and we help

people with sickle cell anaemia.

And so I started taking myself to donate blood and they're quite big

needles they use for the blood donation.

And from that point on I'm now okay with needles.

I don't like them.

I don't think anyone does, but I'm okay.

Now, the other phobias are things like, fear of heights, fear of deep water.

So, I started climbing, I started scuba diving and dealt with those.

It sounds like you do like exposure therapy where you like go to

the thing that makes you afraid and you do it often and okay.

The silliest fear I've ever had was a phobia of wet tea bags, used tea bags.

And this all comes from, I'm a tea drinker, I'm British, I love a cup of tea.

I was going to say, Anna, this is like, this has got to be the most British

thing I've ever heard in my life!

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, I had a bad dream one night that I was chewing on a wet teabag.

And even just saying that makes me feel a little bit queasy.

But I have this dream and sometimes in my dream, I don't know if you

have this, I feel like I sense using other senses, so I feel like

I can smell and taste in my dreams.

Wow, I don't have that.

And I, it's very odd.

I went through this period of having these bad dreams where there were

things that had very strong tastes and smells like petrol and things, and I

was ingesting them and it really gave me an aversion to certain things.

So, I don't like being in a petrol station because of the smell, because I

had a bad dream about drinking petrol.

It's very odd.

But yeah, I dreamt about chewing on a wet teabag and it made me feel

really nauseous when I woke up.

And then the next time I saw a wet teabag, I was like,

"Oh my goodness me, get that out of my sight.

I can't look at it."

Every time I'd see it, it would make me feel sick to the point

where my mouth was watering.

And this went on for months and months and months.

I just couldn't look at or handle wet teabags.

Other people had to make me tea and take the tea bag out of my cup.

Sometimes when you go to hotels or cafes, they would serve your tea, and

we have tea with milk here, so you can't see the teabag in the cup because of

the milk, but usually, the teabag is strained and taken out quite quickly.

But sometimes they serve it to you in hotels and cafes with the

teabag still in so you can have it at the strength you like.

And if you ever go to take a sip of tea with a teabag still in there and you get

it up against your lips if you are afraid of wet teabags, it's the worst thing.

It's the worst.

It's the worst thing ever.

The way I got over that was when I first moved to London, I was taking any job

going cause I just needed the money.

And I was working for an agency where they'd send you to different

places doing like hosting work, waitressing work, welcoming work.

And I did one where I was a tea lady in like a solicitor's firm and I had to make

these huge vats of tea and then take away the old ones and empty them and there'd

be like 10 teabags in the bottom and...

This is crazy!

...I'd have to empty them and take them out of the sink and I

just had to deal with my issue.

I'm okay now, but if anyone still, my partner sometimes teases me and

puts a wet teabag close to my face.

I'm just like, just don't, just don't, just keep it away from me.

I would definitely...

I mean, I wouldn't classify it maybe as a phobia, but it is a bit irrational.

Yeah.

I describe it as an irrational fear.

But for me, I think I have one thing that I don't like, and maybe this is common.

I know my sister has it.

It's the drain of a pool.

Okay.

Right, okay.

So, when I go to the pool, I will avoid the lane where I'll

have to swim over the drain.

Oh, is that because you're worried about it sucking you in?

I don't really know.

Have you seen the movie 'It'?

Yes.

Ahh I hated that moment!

Okay, I think it comes from there.

So scary.

Yeah.

I think it comes from there.

Like I would never go and like touch a drain, but maybe that's normal.

Like, does anyone want to touch a drain?

I don't know.

I don't know.

Isn't that crazy?

So 'It' scarred me as a child.

Okay.

Yeah.

It scarred me.

Yeah.

Like I was afraid of letting the water out of the bath.

Really?

That sound of it going down.

I was like, oh, that was terrifying.

Yeah.

Isn't it funny how a film, one story can have such a deep impact,

long-lasting impact on you?

That's also, I mean that is the power of stories.

I know that you are a very gifted storyteller and you're a

trained storyteller and actress.

And I love stories obviously, the podcast.

Yeah.

But stories, they can mark our brains.

We actually, when we're listening to a story that we're really into, that

we're really feeling the emotions, it's just that, that, our brains use what's

called mirror neurons and we're mirroring the emotion happening in the story.

So, if it's something scary, we can get so into a story that we

actually feel that we're there.

And then that almost, it marks us, you know, when I think about that

clown from 'It', I feel that fear.

Like I feel that feeling of total terror.

Yeah.

Anyways.

Yeah.

We don't watch horror films anymore.

My partner is just completely against horror films.

He's like, I don't want to feel scared.

There's enough going on in my life to worry about.

I don't want to feel scared about something that's not necessary.

So, for the time that we've been together, which is a long time now,

we haven't watched a horror film.

And now I'm almost at the point where I'm scared to watch a horror film

because it's been so long and I'd probably have to watch it on my own.

So yeah, we don't do horror films.

I used to love them when I was younger, until like 18, but now I

can't watch them like I can't, I feel the same way, like why would I want

to expose myself to feeling afraid when I have enough stress in my daily

life, but I just don't enjoy them.

Maybe it's something that comes with age, I'm not sure.

Yeah, it's funny because when I was younger, I always wanted to watch

something that either made me laugh out loud, cry, or feel scared.

It's like this need to feel something, to feel a connection

with the story that I was watching.

Okay, so a few other words that I would use when talking about fear, on the

flip side of fear would be resilience.

So, building up that resilience, which is the capacity to recover or

to deal with these difficult times.

The resilience is like being tough, isn't it?

Yeah.

I think of it like that, being tough, being able to deal with fear.

Like a nice phrase is to be thick-skinned, which we use.

That's a good one.

It's like your skin is so thick, nothing can pierce it.

So, you can deal with hardship and attack.

I think when you work online, you certainly have to build up a level of

resilience because you're putting yourself out there to be criticised and to be

judged by complete strangers who have the ability to just say whatever they want.

Initially, I found that quite hurtful and difficult, because

I was, I felt quite vulnerable.

And that's it.

That's another word that we'd use a lot around this subject is

vulnerability, to be vulnerable, which is that feeling of exposure.

Did you ever feel vulnerable when you first came on online

and into the public forum?

Yes, I mean absolutely.

I am not a thick-skinned person.

I'm certainly more thick-skinned.

I'm more resilient now than I than I first was.

I remember before I came online but I was just working, me and my husband

have an academy and we opened it first as a physical brick-and-mortar space.

It was an actual academy and I remember this feeling of wanting everyone to be

happy and wanting to give their best.

A woman came in, she was a mother, and I had initially told her that

we had a class for her two sons.

I remember very well.

She had thick, short, curly, black hair.

Very black.

And she came in and I had to tell her, actually we don't have

a class in the end, we couldn't put together a group, whatever.

She really yelled at me.

Really, really, really yelled at me.

And I felt so vulnerable and so attacked, that actually to

this day, I have an aversion.

I do not like curly, dark-haired women.

They make me afraid, yes.

I think they're going to be mean, and it's just this crazy thing.

But no, I'm definitely someone who, I like podcasting,

because it feels less exposure.

I'm not one to feel very comfortable being out on social media and YouTube.

I am doing it a little bit more now, but it can be, feel scary to have

you know, yourself out there for people to say whatever they wish.

But I think the way that I kind of deal with it now is just not really reading

anything, not really looking at things.

But I know for you because the story that you told on my podcast

is about singing, you describe this moment at one point where you felt

like maybe your voice wasn't great.

And then someone told you something that confirmed that.

And isn't that kind of funny that a lot of us are very afraid of using

our voices, specifically singing?

Why do you think that is that we feel so exposed to sing or use our voice

in front of people, public speaking, for example, or singing specifically?

Go ahead, sorry.

With singing specifically, there's a science behind it.

When we cry, our larynx tilts forward into what we call the cry position.

In tilting forward, it stretches our vocal folds.

So, when our vocal folds are stretched, they sound like this.

So, when people cry, it's because their larynx is tilting and stretching.

And so when we cry, we tend to talk like this, and that's the same position

that you are in for the majority of singing, what we call legit singing.

So, when we sing, we sing like this, and that's the same as when we cry.

Okay.

So, that tilt is the same position.

I've often been in a room when I'm teaching singing or when I'm with

other singers in a very like exposed class and they have to get up and

sing something they feel uncomfortable with and they're not used to singing.

You see people cry, they get up and they really work on this tilt

position and they just start crying.

And if you ask them why they're crying, they'll say, I don't know.

And the thing is, if you smile, you tell your body in some

way, I'm smiling, I'm happy.

That's why people are told, even if you don't feel happy, smile because

you're telling your brain, "we're happy, let's release happy hormones".

And it's the same for tilting your larynx.

You tilt your larynx and you start to feel sad, you tell your

brain, oh, we're, we're crying.

We're upset.

We're crying.

Let's send tears.

Let's send all those things that we normally send for crying.

And feeling vulnerable perhaps, aswell.

And feeling vulnerable.

So, we feel in the same position as we would if we were crying.

And so, that's a part of it is that putting your voice into that tilt

position, which we wouldn't normally do.

It's like people feel afraid to actually, adults not children,

feel afraid to scream and shout.

I know this because of being with actors who are generally quite confident

people willing to try anything and doing scream workshops and people

being scared to actually scream.

It's because it's normally something we do when we're in a very

heightened, frightening situation.

So, being asked to scream just randomly is quite a big thing to ask someone to do.

It's like, well, I'm not in that mode.

I'm not fearful at the moment.

And also I think, you know, just raising your voice, singing out loud, you're

both putting yourself out to be judged because we all love to listen to a singer.

So we're being judged, but also you're just making yourself heard.

It's making yourself big.

Yeah, mm-hmm.

And for many people that doesn't come naturally.

Most of us just want to fit in.

Yeah, to fit in, to be safe.

And all of these things come back, I think, to fear, really,

of this evolutionary kind of mechanism of wanting to be safe

in our cave, away from the bears.

This thing that you said about screaming or raising your

voice, I have this in yoga.

This feeling as well of when you do the 'ohm', at first it was very hard because

it's kind of like raising your voice and singing and it has to be very consistent.

Yeah.

And never...

So you're talking about when they ask you to make a constant 'ohm'.

'Ohm' and then dragging it out all the way until the end.

And you can kind of get the feeling for other people in the classroom,

the kind of type of person they are.

I mean, some people like really 'ohm' and wow, they're really full and

present in their body and they're comfortable in their space and other

people who can't make that sound.

And it's kind of hard to raise your voice up over others and say, this is my voice.

This is who I am.

You feel very exposed.

Mm-hmm, you reminded me of being a child and I'd go to church and people would

be singing in church, you know, that the organ would start up and you get some

people going, "de dee da dee da do".

Was that you?

I did it.

I've always enjoyed choral singing.

Often I wouldn't know the tune, you know, 'cause they have all

these, I dunno, hymns and things that some people know very well.

I didn't.

So, I'd just be kind of singing along, hoping to get the right tune.

But you would always have the people at the front singing

really loudly and going for it.

And you're like, wow.

And then you had to have the timid people who were just moving their lips and

there's nothing coming out of their mouth.

And you're like, hang on a minute, are you singing?

Or are you miming?

Exactly.

But that brings me to think of another word that's quite interesting.

It's the word to overcome, to overcome something.

The reason I think this is interesting is to overcome something

is to succeed in dealing with it.

So, if you have a fear or a phobia and you face it, you confront it.

So, you go and deal with it.

Then you have overcome that fear.

You've literally jumped over it.

You've overcome that hurdle.

But then there's another phrase to be overcome by an emotional,

to be overcome by something.

And that's different.

That's almost to have to surrender to something.

So, you could say I was overcome with anxiety or I was overcome with joy.

So, it's usually to do with emotions, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's a common collocation, to be overcome with joy.

Yeah.

That you, exactly like you said, you surrender to it.

Yeah.

It's like a wave of emotion and you just go, I'm not going to fight this.

I'm just going to let it just take me.

It's just so overwhelming.

I can't deal with it.

I'm overcome with it.

But you overcome your problems, but emotions can overcome you.

Well, I have a thing that I've been trying to overcome, and

it's actually a wave, literally.

Right.

It's, yes, I have a fear of surfing.

Ah.

Now, it's not like something I would describe as a fear.

When I think about surfing, I would love to be able to do it better and

more often, but when I get to the space of surfing, my body takes over.

You know, my amygdala, that animal brain back here, it takes over and I

don't get as much blood to my frontal cortex, which is more about planning

and thinking and rational thought.

Now, just a little bit of context.

My husband is a surfer.

It's his love, his joy, his passion.

Something that he cannot live without.

That's why we live in Spain on the coast and not in central Canada because

he would just die if I took him there.

And when I met him, I had gone surfing a few times back home in

Canada and also in Portugal, and it's something I really loved.

I love swimming.

I'm a very strong swimmer.

I love being in the sea, in the ocean.

It just seemed like something we could do together, you know, when

you first meet someone, in love, and you picture your future together.

We would surf, and we'd be together, and the reality was different because

something happened that I can't describe is that I just got really scared.

And I tried a lot.

So, for the first seven years of our relationship together, before we had

kids, I would really try to keep up with him, to keep at the same pace.

Now, he's like a very good surfer and I'm not a good surfer, but I

can get on a board and take a wave.

And, we would go on small waves here in the Mediterranean.

We would go to big waves in Indonesia.

One of the biggest waves that I went on was in Similu, which is

off of the north coast of Sumatra.

And, I would kind of do what you did, this exposure type therapy, like going

a little bit each time, but not pushing myself to the point where I got afraid.

And then at a certain point I kind of just was overcome by the fear and I

just stopped and I haven't been back in the water since my second was born.

And now when I think about it, my husband will say,

"Oh, today's the perfect day for you.

Like, let's go to the beach all together and you go and I'll stay with the kids."

And I'm like,

"No, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't want, like, don't even ask me."

Like the feeling of being able to go and then not doing it, even though I

know I want to do it makes me angry.

So, I just avoid it altogether.

Total avoidance.

So, that's really sad.

I feel really sad for you that you've lost that ability to face that.

Do you think that if your partner was able to say,

"Hey, let's go out together."

If someone else was looking after the kids, do you think that would

be an opportunity that you take if you weren't going out on your own?

Yes, probably.

Because I'm more comfortable.

It would be a way to start again.

Because when you're surfing, there's a lot of variables.

There's...

Sharks.

There are no sharks here, but just thinking about the waves here, you know,

in the Mediterranean, the waves are small, usually, unless there's a huge storm.

But there's a lot of surfers.

So, the few waves that are here, there's a lot of surfers.

So, there's that element of worrying about, maybe it's something

similar to this thing of singing.

Like, I don't want to get in the way of real surfers doing their thing, you know?

The idea of having your board and going under, duck diving under waves, the

feeling of losing control of my board and it hitting me or hitting someone else.

But if I went with my husband, he could maybe like, help me, you know,

like push me into the wave, like do things that he did when I was a total

beginner and I could kind of start again.

I don't know.

I think that would maybe be an option.

Maybe that's a good idea to go with some friends and they can watch the kids.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or maybe switch to paddle boarding or something that maybe is better suited.

Yeah.

No, I do paddle boarding all the time, but yeah.

Yeah, I think as we get older and I think when you become a parent,

there definitely is this like level of caution that's introduced

that maybe you didn't have before.

I'm much more cautious now than I ever have been, and maybe a little bit more

fearful of things there than I would have been before having children.

I think you just become more aware of your own mortality once you have kids.

Definitely.

I remember when my first was born that was strangely an overcoming

feeling of my own mortality.

But almost a relief in the sense that I felt at that point, I still feel like,

okay, now I don't have to worry so much about my mortality because I don't matter.

I want him to be okay, you know?

Yeah.

What you said reminds me of my sister.

I have two sisters.

I'm the youngest, but the middle one, she's the bravest person I know.

She is like fearless.

All sorts of crazy things.

She has twins and she drove, well, this is only like very brave if

you're a parent, but she drove her two five-year-old twins in a van, with a

trailer, from Calgary, Canada, down to St.

Louis, where she lives.

That's like 30 hours.

Oh, my goodness me.

With twins!

Anyways, skydiving, doing all sorts of things, but she told a story on the

podcast, where she does deep sea diving, and totally, not prepared, like she was

a diver, but she didn't check her second oxygen tank, she, all sorts of things.

She runs out of oxygen, it's a huge problem.

In any case, at the end, I say like, so Andrea, what's the moral of the story?

She's like,

"Well, now that I'm a parent, I'm more cautious."

And that really is what it took for her to become more cautious and not

so brave in terms of doing scary, fearful things was to have children.

But now that she's a parent, she does these things like drive 30

hours with her five-year-olds.

She does like brave mom things.

I'm often inspired by other parents who are just seemingly coping, doing

things that I think are too difficult.

It's like, well, if you can do it, then I can do it.

Yeah, that's definitely something that one of my fears would be that

I couldn't handle my own children.

So, I always try to do things that feel difficult and, you know, taking

them to the pool alone, or just, you know, things that I feel are

difficult to show that I can handle them, you know, I can deal with it.

And not being so afraid of what other people think, because often

when we're out there, I look like chaotic and crazy and I'd be like,

well, that's just the way it is.

That's my life right now.

And there are children and I'm just, you know, making sure that they're alive.

That's my standard at the current time.

Yeah, I was in the pool not long ago and I often struggle with my two

boys, similar age to yours, and I often struggle if I'm alone with them.

I'm very mild-mannered and I like things to be very minimal and

controlled and my children are loud and they are just like whirlwinds and

so, they are completely opposite to me and how I like to live my life.

So, they really test me all the time.

And I struggle like, you know, you talk about taking them swimming and I

know how hard it is to take two young children swimming when you're on your

own and the coping, the logistics of everything and keeping them alive.

And then I was sitting in the little hot tub at the end of our swimming

pool and this lady gets in and then her children all start piling in

and she had three sets of twins.

And she's on her own.

She's got six kids.

I don't know if she's alone in life, but she was on her own in the pool and they

probably ranged from about 12 down to six.

And so, six children.

And I just looked at them all and she seemed so relaxed and

I was like, this is amazing.

I would love to have a huge family.

It's not on the cards for us, but I would love to have a big family like that.

And I thought, but it must be a nightmare for her.

And then I saw her in the changing rooms, just kind of standing guard while she was

organising them to all have the showers, get their clothes, get dried, get dressed.

And she was, you know, completely organised, completely cool and calm.

And all the children were like,

"Mummy, mummy, mummy, mummy, this, that, this, that."

And I was in my head going, I couldn't cope with all this noise.

Towels there, clothes are there, showers there, wash your hair, dry your feet,

put your shoes on, you know, she just had it all in hand and I thought, I cannot

complain about struggling with my two kids when she is managing fine with six.

It's just mental, inspirational, but mental.

You mentioned quite a few times about Canada.

That's where you're from, but you're living in Spain.

So, talk to me about this transition.

Moving over to Spain.

How was that for you?

Well, I can say that when I moved here, which is a long time ago now, it was

13 years ago, I was completely and utterly naive, which is, I think, the

best way to go into most adventures.

Yeah.

Because if you're not a little bit naive, then a lot of us wouldn't do things

because we think I'm safe here in my cave.

I don't want to go and go out there and be exposed and put myself into

uncomfortable, fearful positions.

But in fact, that's what happened.

So, I was travelling around Europe doing what lots of North Americans

like to do after university, put on our backpacks and travel around and

see the world and discover ourselves.

So, that's what I did.

And at the end of my trip, I thought, I would love to spend a year in Spain.

I loved Barcelona, so I'll just go back there.

And I'd have always wanted to learn Spanish and, you know, I thought of

it like, just like a little detail, like, oh, I can just, I'll do, I'll

pay for a course and I'll learn Spanish in three months and that'll be that.

And then I'll get a job and I'll just live my life and drink café and,

you know, do what Spanish people do.

So, I got here and I got to my first class, my Spanish class,

and I was like the worst student.

I was terrible.

I didn't know how to learn another language.

Right.

Which is really common with us monolinguals, which is most

of the English-speaking world.

You know, Canada, the US, the UK, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand.

We tend to only speak English, which is probably has a lot of reasons,

but it's because a lot of other people speak English, so we're never

forced to learn another language.

So, I didn't even know how to get my mind around language learning,

like what's a verb, what's a noun, what are we talking about?

And it was at that point that I also had for the first time, like this

meta-linguistic awareness of like, what it means to be myself in another language and

what it means to speak another language, how other people are going to perceive me.

When we only ever operate in our own native language, we're used to

just being able to show who we are.

Without there being like a language barrier, right?

So, we don't have to worry that people aren't going to see who we really are.

And that was the biggest fear for me.

When I started learning and started speaking Spanish, say going to a

party, and my language skills allowed me to say what I had for lunch that

day, whereas I was like, no, but I'm actually like a normal person.

Like, I don't want you to think I'm not intelligent, you know,

not like I'm a genius, but I just want you to see me really.

Like the difference between being like a 3D version of yourself...

Exactly!

...and a 2D version of yourself.

And unfortunately, that can happen when there's a language barrier

and you just don't see the person.

You don't see who they really are because they can't communicate it with you.

And then I can say that a fear that I had for a very, very long time, and it's so

silly, maybe it's even in the realm of phobia was making phone calls in Spanish.

Right.

And it was like the fear that I would call and we would have a problem, you

know, something in the communication.

When you're in person, you've got your hands, you can point, you can,

you know, there's a lot of oral agility skills that you can do.

You can kind of explain it this way or explain it that way, but when you can't

see the person, when you're just using your voice, feels very scary and it was

terrifying for me and still, I will, very ashamed to say this, but if it's me and

my husband, and we have to call the school or call, I don't know, somewhere, call the

phone company to renegotiate something, I'll try to make him do it for me.

And he's like,

"No, no, no, no, no, you're not, this, no, no, no, you speak perfect Spanish.

You're not going to make me make your phone calls for you."

Can't get out of it.

You can't get out of it.

You can't get out of it.

But yeah, it was very difficult, but it gets better with time.

And little by little, speaking more and more, practising more and more

is, I can say, as my experience as a language learner and also someone who

has taught lots and lots of students over 10 years, the only way to get

better at speaking and listening.

And a lot of us have a fear of it.

A lot.

I can say probably 95 per cent of students are the ones who hold in instead of

just like, whatever, I'll just say it.

The only way to get over it is doing it.

The only way, you know.

And starting with passive.

So, listening, listening to podcasts, watching movies, starting with that

skill and then speaking more and just looking for opportunities is the only

way to get over that fear and just get more comfortable and face it.

And it's the only way to cope.

So, yeah.

So, that's like exposure therapy.

We've talked about that.

That's kind of like, yeah, exposure therapy.

I think we both have that thing of if I'm afraid of something,

then I need to go out and do it.

Go and face it.

Confront it.

Face it.

Exactly.

Confronting your fears.

They won't get easier if you just avoid them.

No, we, lots of people online talk about the importance

of students making mistakes.

So you'll tend to see videos and shorts of people saying like,

you've got to make mistakes.

Don't avoid mistakes.

Mistakes are how you learn, how you grow.

And the same goes for being vulnerable.

Like you say, you've just got to go out there and do it.

My children, and you probably have the same, watching them develop

their language is so fascinating as a language teacher, seeing how

like little inhibition they have.

They're not nervous or scared.

Even when I correct them a thousand times.

So, like my son, my eldest son, who's five is struggling with irregular verbs.

So, he will say, oh, what does he say?

Go-ed.

I go-ed.

Yeah.

When I go-ed to school.

And so, I'll correct him when I went to, when I went to, and so I'm always,

I'm not saying what you've said is wrong, but I always just repeat

and give him the correct version.

And then he'll repeat again or when I went to school.

But he struggles with that a lot, but he's never embarrassed or he doesn't

feel ashamed when I correct him.

He doesn't shy away from saying anything.

It's just this, okay, well, you know, you got the message and you've corrected

me and I've taken the correction.

I might forget it.

I might remember it.

Who knows, but I'm just going to keep speaking.

And it's that just lack of care works really well for him.

And for, you know, everyone learning a language.

I think we all learn how to walk.

We just keep, even if we're wobbly and we're falling over, we just keep doing it.

And eventually, we can all walk.

Obviously able-bodied and with no issues, we all learn to walk.

And it's the same with speaking.

You just have to keep going.

And doing it.

Right?

Exactly.

You have to, and yeah, kids, like you said, are amazing models to look

at that they don't, it's funny, like people, and myself included, are

very fearful of being corrected or saying the wrong thing, you know?

Something as silly in Spanish is using the wrong ending, like

the masculine or feminine, like mixing something like that up.

It's very easy to happen, but when it happens, you feel embarrassed.

Maybe now I wouldn't because I'm just used to making mistakes.

But I think the best thing you can do as a language learner, and perhaps

a human, from my humble opinion, is getting comfortable making mistakes.

Yeah.

And I think that's a fantastic place to end this discussion today.

Wonderful.

So face your fears and just enjoy being in your own skin.

Be courageous, and overcome those things that are holding you back, especially

if it's having an impact on your life, like not being able to enjoy surfing

with your partner and your family.

That's definitely something to tackle and overcome.

I'm going to get out there and do that.

Find someone to watch my kids and I'm going to get back on that wave.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

Bree, it's been an absolute joy having you here.

So, thank you for accepting my invitation.

Where can my listeners find you?

I think the best place is wherever you listen to podcasts.

Just search for Into the Story and probably a good place to

start is listening to your story.

I think that's something that they'd really enjoy.

And then from there they can find more about Into the Story.

Fantastic.

I will put a link to your podcast into the show notes.

So, for my listeners just head there to find a direct link.

So thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thanks.

And to my listeners, take very good care and goodbye.

Bye.