One of Taylor Swift’s greatest fears seems at odds with her public image. The singer and songwriter has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls that come along with teenage stardom.
She has never gotten in trouble with the law unlike a number of her peers, but this hasn’t stopped her from worrying about it. Swift said one of her most pressing fears was getting arrested.
Taylor Swift had major fears about arrest
Swift said she has always been a rule follower, perhaps in part because she had a major fear of getting in trouble. She said she waited until she was 21 years old to even have a sip of alcohol. She felt too certain she’d get in trouble if she drank while underage.
“I didn’t really care to know what I was missing, and I knew it was illegal, and that my luck would be that I’d get caught,” she told Rolling Stone. “And then you think about all the moms and little girls who would have thought less of me.”
While she wasn’t doing anything that could get her in trouble, it didn’t stop her from worrying about it.
“I have a lot of anxieties that end in me being put into a police car,” she said. “I am so, like, rules, and not getting into accidents.”
The anxiety even plagued her in dreams. She said one of her most recurring nightmares involved her being arrested for something she didn’t do.
“I keep trying to tell them that I didn’t do anything,” she said, “and they won’t listen, or my voice doesn’t work.”
Swift said her other nightmares involved a steadily growing pile of clothes that she couldn’t clean up.
Taylor Swift said her fears and anxieties involved a loss of control
Swift believed her fear of arrest stemmed from a desire for control.
“I think I have a big fear of things spiraling out of control,” she said. “Out of control and dangerous and reckless and thoughtless scares me, because people get hurt.”
She did not necessarily think this was a bad thing. She just didn’t want a loss of control to hurt the people around her.
“When you say ‘control freak’ and ‘OCD’ and ‘organized,’ that suggests someone who’s cold in nature, and I’m just not,” she said. “Like, I’m really open when it comes to letting people in. But I just like my house to be neat, and I don’t like to make big messes that would hurt people. . . . I don’t want to let people down, or let myself down, or have a lot of people that I know I wronged.”
She said she did not go to therapy
While Swift had a great deal of worries, she said she didn’t go to therapy.
“I just feel very sane,” she said simply.
In 2019, she noted the same thing. She added that she spoke to her mother when she felt she needed to talk things through with someone.
“I’ve never been to therapy,” she told Rolling Stone. “I talk to my mom a lot, because my mom is the one who’s seen everything. God, it takes so long to download somebody on the last 29 years of my life, and my mom has seen it all. She knows exactly where I’m coming from. And we talk endlessly. There were times when I used to have really, really, really bad days where we would just be on the phone for hours and hours and hours. I’d write something that I wanted to say, and instead of posting it, I’d just read it to her.”
