Hi. My name is Melissa and I have performance anxiety.

I have been performing since I was 5. I have sung, danced, acted and made speeches. 

I have very distinct memories of failure, of a mother so ashamed of my failure that she’d force me to rehearse over and over, to deride and threaten me if I failed.

Other failures where based on over confidence of my skills. The inability to sing a song, by myself, in front of a very large crowd because I froze and forgot the words. This happened as recently as college. That was a wonderful experience.

Now, I can’t even bring myself to play the ukulele without a songbook because I am so afraid of forgetting or blanking on chords or lyrics.

I literally envy people who can just pluck a song from memory and play it. I can usually do that with singing but not so much with anything else.

And the funny thing is I like performing.

I just can’t seem to get past the fear and anxiety that I will fail...because I have failed some many times before.