2024-03-30 00:58:09
As a mother, she thinks about the fear of death differently today than she did before. However, the singer Mine has not yet overcome her fear of spiders.
There is war in Ukraine and the Middle East, climate change is breathing down our necks and we read news on the Internet full of hatred, malice and discrimination. All of this creates fear. Prominent personalities answer in the series “What are you afraid of…?” the question of the most terrible of all feelings, looking for causes and ways to deal with it.
Personal experiences and growing older have changed Mine’s relationship with fear in many ways. There is only one thing where she has not yet been able to overcome her fear.
Mine: musician and singer
“When I see a spider, I immediately get a pulse, my body reacts, I often scream. I have a phobia of spiders, which limits my life. This really annoys me because this fear has controlled me since I was a child : I slept on the floor in the hallway because there was a spider in the bedroom. I’m not going to Australia because I might be exposed to fear there all the time.
To person
Jasmin Stocker, born in Stuttgart in 1986, studied jazz singing in Mainz and “Producing and Composing” at the Popakademie Baden-Württemberg. She started her career as a singer at the age of 26 under the name Mine. Her music contains jazz, hip-hop, folk and electronic elements. Mine has been accompanied on stage by an orchestra several times. The singer has now released seven albums. She released her latest album “Baum” in February 2024 and will go on tour with it from April 2024.
“Fear is the worst feeling”
Fear is the worst feeling, worse than pain. I had anxiety disorders as a teenager, but didn’t know they were anxiety disorders. People didn’t go to therapy back then. I had so much anxiety and nightmares that I sometimes didn’t sleep properly for weeks. This has completely taken over my life. I was terrified of death and the idea that life would simply end, that nothing would be left of me.
“Self-hatred often played a role”
But sometimes I don’t have a sense of my limits. I work a lot and always have something to do at home with the children. Just lying on the sofa is no longer possible. But I have to recognize my limits. Because when everything becomes too much for me, depression sets in. I still have doubts and times when I’m not kind to myself. Then suddenly nothing works anymore. These phases have always had a trigger; self-hatred often played a role. When I was in my early 20s, I met someone who wasn’t good for me. It was hard to realize that I was stuck in a toxic relationship. I had to learn to value myself again.
“That sounds selfish”
I used to be afraid of getting older too. But the older I get, the more I see it as part of me. I love myself more now. When I was young I thought everything about myself was ugly, now I think everything about me is beautiful. Looking at myself proves that getting older doesn’t matter at all.
But illness, you can’t control it and that scares me. There was a lot of illness in my family. I’ve often imagined what it would be like to be sick and find your body just deteriorating. I thought, ‘Luckily it’s not me.’ That sounds bad and selfish.
I’m also afraid that I’ll hurt someone with my words. This has happened to me a few times. I want to be a good Ally (editor’s note: someone who stands up for discriminated against groups), but I grew up in a society with homophobic, transphobic and racist thought structures. It is a process to recognize and change these structures. As a person in the public eye, I have a role model function – and I’m afraid of messing up.”