My Amygdala Thinks Zoom Is a Hostile Environment

The Librarian, the Gremlin, and the Zoom Call

“Would you be willing to share in an upcoming meeting?”

Sure. Of course. Happy to.

My nervous system: absolutely not.

It’s amazing how a group of friendly authors on a Zoom call can briefly feel like I’ve been called to testify before Congress. No subpoenas. No hostile cross-examination. Just coffee mugs, decent lighting, and someone’s cat stepping across the keyboard like it owns equity in the platform.

And yet.

There’s a part of my brain that hears “share” and quietly reaches for the emergency exit.

This would be mildly entertaining if it weren’t rooted in something very real.

Years ago, stress shut my voice down.

Not in a poetic “I’ve lost my voice” way. In a literal, neurologist-involved, Botox-in-the-throat way. I was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia — a neurological voice disorder that can flare under stress. Which is deeply inconvenient when your job involves speaking to clients without sounding like you’re negotiating through a kazoo.

The injections were… an experience. There’s something about having a needle in your vocal cords that really clarifies your life choices. Meetings became endurance events. I could feel my throat tighten in real time, like the librarian in my head slammed the filing cabinet shut and left an overcaffeinated middle-management gremlin in shoulder pads running the switchboard.

That would be my amygdala. It does not believe in calm.

It wasn’t dramatic. It was physiological. Which somehow makes it more convincing.

I left that career. There was a long stretch of recalibrating. Eventually I started therapy. DBT. Some EMDR. The work is ongoing, because nervous systems don’t operate on an iOS update schedule. You don’t wake up one morning with a cheerful notification that says, “Congratulations! Threat detection has been downgraded.”

Things improved. A lot.

My voice stabilized. The panic softened. I pivoted into writing full time — a profession that generously allows me to speak in paragraphs without anyone interrupting me or asking for a Q3 breakdown.

And still.

A casual “Would you be willing to share?” can light up the same circuitry like it’s been waiting in a dusty drawer next to a Lisa Frank folder and an unpaid Blockbuster late fee.

I write about systems. About AI. About optimization and unintended consequences. I can hold entire fictional worlds in my head without blinking.

But a screen share button?

Apparently that’s where my internal firmware thinks we’re back in a conference room fighting for oxygen.

I used to believe the goal was to eliminate the reaction. To become the breezy version of myself who says “Absolutely!” and means it all the way down to her mitochondria.

Turns out some parts of us run older architecture.

They were built for a different season. They don’t care that this is a friendly call. They don’t care that no one is grading me. They just hear “performance” and the librarian slams the cabinet shut again, leaving the gremlin in charge.

So instead of trying to rip out the wiring, I asked a smaller question: What would “well” look like?

Not transcendent. Not career-defining. Just well.

For me, it looks like this: Share the thing. Then stop.

Not overexplain. Not sprint through it. Definitely not open every tab in my brain like we’re doing a live demo.

Just complete the thought.

If my voice wobbles, it wobbles. If my heart rate spikes, it spikes. That’s information. Not prophecy.

The body keeps logs. It remembers seasons when speaking carried real stakes. It remembers needles and tension and pushing sound through resistance.

That doesn’t mean it gets to run the meeting.

I’m not deleting the old code. I’m just learning to notice when the librarian reaches for the keys and maybe — gently — take them back from the gremlin.

Therapy, for me, isn’t a finish line. It’s maintenance. It’s learning how to function even when some ancient alarm system is humming in the background like a dial-up modem trying to connect.

So I’ll share next meeting. I’ll say what I came to say.

And when I’m done, I’ll let the silence sit there without trying to rescue it.

If my brain wants to draft an internal memo afterward, that’s fine. I just don’t have to sign it.

I’m guessing I’m not the only one running 1998-era threat detection software in a 2026 world. If you’ve got a stern librarian and a gremlin arguing over the switchboard in your brain, welcome to the club.

We meet on Zoom. Screen share optional.