When I was younger, I was quite shy and self-conscious and struggled to express myself in social situations.

As a result, my mum was always on the lookout for activities that I could participate in that would push me out of my comfort zone and help me develop confidence socially.

So when I was in Year 11, she encouraged me to audition for the school play.

The prospect of getting involved in the school play made me quite nervous because, up until that point, my track record in drama hadn’t exactly been great.

My confidence had been dented by an incident that had occurred several years earlier during my primary school nativity when I was playing the part of a sheep.

Compared to the other parts in the nativity, the role of the sheep was relatively straightforward.

I only had one very simple line to deliver.

However, when my moment of glory arrived, the pressure of the audience staring at me caused me to panic and I slipped completely out of character and messed up my lines.

Following this, the teachers no longer trusted me to be able to handle the role of the sheep and, as a result, I was cast as the back-end of the donkey when nativity rolled around the following year.

The role of the donkey’s arse was a non-speaking part, which meant that I didn’t have to worry about messing my lines up, although I did find it hard to get fully immersed in my character and the overall narrative arc of the play.

As a result of my experiences in my school nativities, I didn’t have a lot of confidence when I went to audition for the play in Year 11.

The play that year was Oklahoma which was set in the Southern States of America and I was cast in the role of a generic milk maid.

Like the part of the sheep, the role of the milk maid was pretty simple and only involved saying two or three lines of scene setting dialogue.

However, during rehearsals, the teacher gathered us all around her and told us that, in order to give the audience the most immersive viewing experience possible, we would have to put on our best accents.

This was slightly problematic due to the fact that I couldn’t do a Southern American accent, or any accent at all for that matter. In fact, the only accent that I could do was a stronger version of the accent that I already had.

As a result, our school’s production of Oklahoma featured eight Southern American Maids and then me, the extremely Liverpudlian one.

Btw if you’re not sure what a Liverpool accent sounds like in the middle of *Oklahoma*, imagine that Cilla Black has been transported back in time and is presenting an episode of Blind Date in 19^th century America.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the audience laughed at me when I delivered my lines, something which I interpreted as an affirmation of my inherent comedic talent as opposed to a reaction to my dubious ‘American’ accent.

Following this ‘success’, I decided that I actually quite liked acting so, the following year, I auditioned for the school production of MacBeth and was cast as a witch.

Whilst this was an upgrade from my previous role as a milkmaid, it was still a relatively minor part.

However, at this point, I was beginning to develop a little more confidence in myself and was sick of playing a background characters.

I became convinced that the only reason that I that I wasn’t getting to play starring role was because I was being forced to play two-dimensional supporting characters that didn’t allow me to explore the full range of emotional expression that I was capable of.

I thought that if I fleshed out the character of Witch 2, I would be able to form a better emotional connection with her character and really show off what I could do.

Unfortunately, my teacher didn’t seem as onboard with my attempt to diversify the roles of the witches, especially when it started to interfere with the performances of the other students.

I was never cast in another school play again and my acting career has never quite recovered since!

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Halloween is supposed to be the scariest day of the year.

However, I find it strangely calming.

I think this is because everyday life tends freak me out on a regular basis and, at least at Halloween, I have legitimate reason to feel this way.

Creatures such as ghosts, vampires, werewolves and witches are specifically designed to induce a sense of fear and anxiety and it is acceptable to be afraid of them.

It is less acceptable to be afraid of receiving a phone call from an unknown user ID.

To celebrate Halloween, here are four everyday things that scare me more than any ghost, vampire, werewolf or witch ever could.

1. Finances

As a fully-grown adult, I am expected to manage my own finances which is unfortunate really because I understand money about as well as I understand supernatural forces.

Just to clarify, I’d probably have a better chance of banishing an evil spirit from my house than I would completing a tax return form.

Fortunately, I have come up with some techniques to help me wrap my mind around my finances.

Unfortunately, these techniques aren’t very effective.

My current tactic for dealing with my student debt is pretending that it doesn’t exist which is extremely counter-productive.

Because it does exist.

And it’s going to be haunting me for years…

2. Public Speaking

Sometimes, the fact that I am scared of public speaking makes me feel like a bit of a wimp.

People are scared of vampires, zombies and other Halloween creatures because they are legitimately dangerous – they either want to drink your blood, eat your brains or cause you some other form of significant bodily harm.

The only scary thing about public speaking is the collective judgement of others.

Unfortunately, the idea of being negatively judged by multiple people causes me to experience a paralysing fear that can be equated to the abject horror that Frodo Baggins felt when looking into the eye of Sauron.

People often tell me that the way to conquer my fear of public speaking is to approach the situation with a positive attitude and visualise success.

However, whenever I try these visualisation techniques, I just end up unearthing the ghosts of all the previous times that I messed up on stage.

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3. Dating

Modern dating is terrifying, predominantly because it is so confusing.

Technological advancements mean that a lot of communication isn’t done face to face.

As a result, when you first start dating someone, most of your time is spent desperately trying to figure out what the other person is thinking.

Unfortunately, no two people think in exactly the same way and therefore trying to understand what another person is thinking through the context of your own thought processes is impossible.

For a lot of people, communicating with a potential partner is a bit like receiving messages from another dimension.

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Sometimes, you don’t get anything back at all.

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4. The Future

The future is scary because it is a complete unknown.

We can attempt to exert some level of control over the future by planning ahead but, for the most part, it is impossible to predict what is going to happen.

Some people find this exciting.

I find it absolutely terrifying.

I do not currently have a very strong sense of identity.

In fact, Halloween is pretty much the only time of year when I actually have a solid idea of who I am.

Therefore, when somebody asks me who I am going to be in the future, my brain suffers a system malfunction and completely shuts down and I have to find a way to actively remove myself from the conversation.

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Whenever I can manage to haul myself out of my own narcissistic, self-absorbed, millennial mind bubble for a few minutes, I also get scared about the future of mankind and the planet.

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There is no need to invest in a horror movie when you can get the same effect by simply turning on the TV.

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I honestly don’t know how we all get out of bed in the morning…

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