Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great

Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great focuses heavily on Sheila’s fears and how they affect her interactions with the world and the people close to her. Childhood fears aren’t uncommon, but excessive fear can become a phobia if the child experiences it for a prolonged duration, sometimes as briefly as six months (“Phobias in Children.” Nationwide Children’s Hospital, 1 July 2021). Phobias are classified as a type of anxiety disorder because they can restrict a person’s functioning and daily activities. Sheila’s key fears—dogs and swimming—seem to have been present for at least six months, and they clearly impede her participation in life. Sheila finds fear in many situations, and her determination to take control of those situations (often to the point of angering or alienating other people) is her way of coping.

When met with frightening or threatening stimuli, humans tend to exhibit one of four recognized responses: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. “Fight” refers to combative behavior, “flight” refers to running away or avoiding a frightening situation, “freeze” refers to involuntary immobility, and “fawn” refers to submissive behavior undertaken to avoid conflict. While different stimuli can trigger different responses, personality often comes into play, and different parts of the brain and nervous system get involved in each of the responses. Sheila’s responses tend to be fight and flight. Most often, she tries to avoid the things that frighten her: She flees from the elevator when she sees Turtle coming, and she tries to flee from the Tarrytown house when she learns about Jennifer. However, at the Tarrytown pool when she cannot escape, Sheila turns to fight, becoming combative with her swimming instructor, Marty, who only wants to help her. She calls him names, insults his intelligence, and refuses to put her face in the water.

Fortunately for Sheila, Marty recognizes the fear behind her anger and helps her redirect that energy toward learning how to swim. Once someone genuinely and consistently works with Sheila, reassuring her and guiding her through voluntary exposure to her fear in a safe environment, she begins the process of overcoming that fear. Marty allows Sheila to decide when she’s ready to submerge her face in the water. In contrast, Mr. and Mrs. Tubman deliberately bring Sheila into proximity with one of her biggest phobias, dogs, without even informing her beforehand. In a clinical context, such a “treatment” would be considered neither effective nor ethical, despite the good intentions. Nevertheless, Sheila does experience some relief from her fear of dogs by the end of the novel; this signals some reduction in her generalized fearfulness, even while her fear of embarrassment (and the loss of friendship that goes with it) remains firmly intact.