Anxiety management for musicians
If you've taken a class or private lessons from me, you know that amidst the meaty conversations about technique and theory...
I also tend to get a little "touchy-feely" or "self-helpy" compared to many other music teachers. This is especially true when it comes to talking about anxiety and self-consciousness.
Why do I emphasize this topic so much in my teaching?
Well, for one thing--it comes up for the majority of my private students, but I hardly ever hear other music teachers address it meaningfully.
(Especially not instrumental teachers. I suspect a lot of singers, and especially singer/actors, do get more help from their teachers in this area.)
For another: anxiety is a topic I can speak to quite a bit, as it's been a huge hurdle for me in my own music career. I have been formally diagnosed at various times with Panic Disorder, PTSD, and OCD, and have also struggled a ton with social anxiety.
It hasn't stopped me from building a career as a sideplayer for other musicians... where more often than not my job is to improvise and/or memorize huge quantities of material, in a short time, in high-pressure stage and recording situations.
But anxiety hasn't exactly made things easier, either!!
So I know how that no matter how much we want to conquer the anxiety by just getting better at music, that's not how it works.
As long as your system is in fight, flight, or freeze mode, it is REALLY difficult to focus on musical technique, creativity and connection.
How anxiety affects your musicianship
If your nervous system is freaking out, and your mind is jumping around all over the place, you're not going to play your best. You're just not.
You won't be able to access all of the technique and skill you've developed. You're not going to feel creative. And you're not going to be comfortable collaborating with others.
You're also less likely to do the non-playing social things that open up the most exciting possibilities to play with other musicians. (AKA "networking," if that word doesn't gross you out.)
I've put a LOT of effort into finding ways around these obstacles, as a matter of practical survival. Being a reliable, skillful musical collaborator is how I put food on the table, after all!
I also know how unhelpful and hurtful it is to be told by non-anxiety-sufferers to "just be more confident" or that it's "all in your head."
So while I'm not a trained or licensed therapist by any means, it's crucial to me to make space for my students to "go there" in lessons and classes...
...rather than implicitly suggesting that music time and personal growth time should (or could!) be completely separate.
That's not true, and we all know it. Including the (increasingly rare) people among you who don't officially suffer from diagnosed anxiety or other mental health disorders. Everyone deals with problematic anxiety from time to time.
What to actually, practically do about it
I, like the majority of you, know that it's impossible "just be more confident" without practical strategies for navigating the ways trauma and other challenges present themselves in the moment, when you're out on the edge of your comfort zone.
Of course: high-quality psychotherapy, along with somatic and energy healing modalities, are important long-term strategies for real healing.
But in the meantime, let me share a few simple ideas that you can use in the moment when you're freaking out in a musical situation.
Your two priorities when anxiety is clawing at you
All of the strategies below fall into one of two categories:
#1: Things that get you back into your body. (This is the most important!)
#2: Things that help you redirect your thoughts. (This is important, but impossible without #1.)
Priority #1: Get back into your body.
Maybe you have a trauma-related tendency to dissociate completely under stress. Or maybe you just have a very active mind, one that likes to skitter away from the present moment into analysis, planning, and worrying.
(Or maybe you're like me, and it's both. Double the fun!)
Either way, if you're not in your body, it's really hard to stay calm and have fun.
It's also really hard to engage all of the musical technique you've worked so hard to build in the practice room.
Here are a couple of my favorite strategies for getting back into your body while you're playing:
Feel the connection of your feet with the ground below you.
Feel your feet in your shoes and socks.
Feel your shoes and socks on your feet.
If you like visualization, you can imagine roots growing from your feet into the ground below.
If you're into energy stuff, you can feel red or rich brown light coming up from the core of the earth into the soles of your feet.
Inhale, and feel your breath travel down the inside of your spine.
This is an energy technique I learned from shamanic practitioner Joanna Schmidt. Obviously what your breath is really doing is traveling down into your lungs, not literally down your spine...
...but the image is really helpful. Especially if you're having trouble feeling your body from the inside, rather than imagining how others are seeing you from the outside.
Also: as a teacher I notice that most people forget to breathe while playing. Especially beginners, or anyone playing something that is really hard for them.
Your body needs air to feel safe and perform well. 💚
Priority #2: Redirect your thoughts.
If you're an anxiety sufferer, it can be easy to hate on your mind for causing you so much grief. But of course, it's also a powerful ally. You just need to assign it a new, more helpful job.
Don't just let it run the show with thoughts about how everyone in the audience hates you, or how terrible you are at jamming (or whatever it's trying to tell you).
Spend some time when you're not actively freaking out to come up with some better feeling thoughts. I like to collect these as they come up, and put them in the reminders app on my phone. Once a week or so the notifications pop up and help me remember to practice the affirmations. The repetition makes me more likely to remember the affirmations when I need them.
Here are a couple of my current favorites:
"Anxiety is just unalchemized enthusiasm."
This one comes from Kasia Urbaniak's amazing book Unbound. It helps me remember that while, yes, anxiety is uncomfortable and repressing it is impossible (and makes everything worse)...
...anxiety is also a neon flashing sign, pointing toward something enticing.
If I'm willing to feel into what the anxiety is telling me I want, I can redirect the anxiety energy into courage to go after that thing.
For example, a train of thought like: "The other musicians in this jam are completely out of my league; they're just being nice to me by letting me play with them, and I'm not even playing very well right now"...
...might be alchemized into: "This is so cool that I am getting an up-close experience of all this amazing musicianship! I am learning so much by watching and listening to how these musicians are interacting with me and with each other."
How much better does that thought feel?! Now all that mental energy you were squandering on self-consciousness is freed up for observation, learning, and your own creativity.
Bonus: you'll probably play WAY better, and be WAY more likely to get a second invitation to jam with these folks.
And if not? You still had a much more fun jam than if you'd been stuck in self-consciousness!
"The people I meet are probably nervous meeting me."
I don't remember where I got this one, but if you suffer from social anxiety, you might love it as much as I do.
I find it super helpful for snapping out of self-consciousness and into a bigger-picture view of a social interaction. Collaborative music-making, for example. You might even find this helps you in a private lesson, if you notice feeling scared to play for your teacher.
The irony of social anxiety is that it is profoundly egotistical! Anything we can do to depersonalize (i.e. not overidentify with) the experience of the anxiety is going to help us feel more confident and connected to others.
"I am so uncomfortable and awkward" feels bad and is an easy place to get stuck. "Hmm, seems like awkwardness is present in this interaction" allows us to collaborate with the other person to move through the discomfort.
And hey, how about this?: "This other person and I are both curious how to relate well to one another, because neither of us knows the other enough to do more than guess right now." Now it's not even a negative--so there's nothing to judge yourself or anything else about.
Curiosity is way more pleasant and creative than awkwardness!
Whatever you do, don't give up on yourself if anxiety is an obstacle for you.
Many musicians, especially those who started as adults, assume that stage fright or social anxiety is a sign that they're not cut out to go after their deepest musical desires.
Of course, we can also think of plenty of examples of famous musicians whose anxiety coping mechanisms ultimately destroyed them--through drugs, alcohol, or suicide, for example...
...or through even more subtle forms of self-sabotage, like overspending into bankruptcy, or handing over too much power to someone who didn't have their best interests at heart.
It does. not. have. to. be like that!
Remember--curiosity is almost always the best way out.
If anxiety is a challenge for you--
(and for whom is it not in this day and age, really?!)--
I invite you to get super curious about what you really want to experience with music.
Get curious about any ways you're holding yourself back from pursuing it because it sounds scary, or hard, or overwhelming.
You can also get curious about music as a path of healing, in itself.
You know by know that being a musician runs you smack into all your "stuff."
Consistently leaning into your edge as a learning, collaborating, creating musician will help you through that stuff, too.
I'm rooting for you. 💚
