When My Anxiety Wrote My Set and It Flopped Hard
Here’s the thing nobody wants to say out loud: I tried to write a stand-up set about anxiety. Specifically, the part where the voices whisper “You’re not enough” while you’re trying to do a 5-minute set about not being enough. I thought, “Hey, this is my lane! I’ll be vulnerable, relatable, maybe even helpful.” I know, I know—classic Sheila move: assuming my trauma is a comedy goldmine.
I spent weeks crafting jokes about how my anxiety makes me rehearse punchlines in the shower, only to forget them on stage. I even practiced in front of my cat. The night of the show, I was buzzing. “This is it,” I told myself. “I’ll show them the real me.” Then I stepped on stage. The mic felt like a lead weight. My palms were slick. The first line? “So, my anxiety told me I wasn’t ready to be here tonight…” and then… silence. Not the good kind of silence. The “did she just say ‘anxiety’?” silence. I stumbled, mumbled, and the room stayed cold. I even forgot the punchline about the cat. I think I said, “He judges me less than my inner critic.” Which, honestly, was true. But the audience didn’t laugh. They just… waited for me to finish.
After the show, I hid in the green room for 20 minutes, eating cold nachos like a sad, defeated raccoon. My manager said, “You were great, Sheila.” I wanted to scream, “No, I wasn’t! I was a walking anxiety attack!” The worst part? The voices weren’t wrong. They’d been screaming, “You’ll bomb! You’ll look stupid!” and I’d ignored them because I was too busy trying to “fix” my pain with a joke. Turns out, sometimes the voices are just… right. Not because I’m a failure, but because my brain is wired to protect itself by assuming the worst. I thought I was being brave. I was just being reckless.
Anyway, that’s my trauma response: trying to out-joke my anxiety, only to get out-joked by it. The real lesson? I don’t need to perform my healing. I just need to sit with the discomfort, even when it’s boring. And maybe stop writing sets about anxiety while I’m still drowning in it. One step at a time. Or, you know, one bad set at a time.
— Sheila Bishop, laughing so I don't cry
— Roger Jackson, finally at peace with the man in the mirror