Performing Artists

Danielle Sum Photography

For me, understanding performance anxiety was a gateway into a whole new experience of making music. I'm glad to say that it can get better. I've been performing professionally in Edmonton now for two years and have been enjoying it more than I ever had before putting in the time to actually try to resolve the panic attacks and mental and physical symptoms. Back in Toronto, I remember the last pro gig I did was Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante with a group of phenomenal musicians. The rehearsals were a blast, driving out to the gig with the rest of the soloists was joyful...it was a wonderful environment and I had no nerves until the show. During the show itself, I had a panic attack that lasted the entire duration of the piece. It did not let up once. I somehow played fine, as many of us who experience this do, but it was a battle to not throw up, to not pass out, to not scream, to not shake so hard that I couldn't breathe...it was a battle to just remain alive. That's just one example. My performance anxiety has been a companion to varying degrees through my life, the full on panic attacks seemed the likely progression of that as I continued to push through it all. That being said, now that I have training in mental health and physical manifestations of chronic stress and trauma, I have come to understand that the symptoms I most often hear described by friends, colleagues, students and members of workshops are symtoms that verge closer to trauma responses than anxiety.  At the very least, the potential exists for chronic stress and trauma. 

I feel that it is very valuable that performers understand what they are experiencing is indeed difficult, and extremely so. For one thing, while we are not necessarily athlethes (I feel it could be argued that we are), we do not have the support that athletes do. We don't have mental skills coaches, we don't have a medical team attending to our body's complaints, we don't have nutritionists, we don't have resources. Thankfully this is starting to change, but I cannot stress enough how important it is that this does change. The creation of art is a vulnerable and powerful aspect of our society. Yet so many of the individuals whom we revere to create this art are devastated inside. They have experience the depths of despair and the lack of support while still being expected to deliver high quality entertainment and relief from the pains of the day to day human experience. There is a culture of perfection within the arts communities, no matter how hard we try. Above that expectation of perfection, there are also power hierarchies. When you are a student, are not necessarily treated with respect. If you are a woman, a trans person, a person of colour, someone with a disability and you are in the classical music world, there is still marginzalization, abuse of power and discrimination. There are very real, very frightening barriers present for most people who are trying to come up through whatever arts industry they are pursuing. 

Something that I often speak and write about is the question of why is performance anxiety the way that it is, and why do the symptoms manifest with such severity? I then look into my own story and the stories of others, and while they're always vastly different, a through line is this: when someone feels that they are going to be ostracized from their group, they are no longer just fighting perfectionism, they are fighting for what they perceive to be their life. Being accepted by a group and physically safe, these are conversation I have in counselling sessions with people who've experienced abusive relationships. Living in a group where you are not necessarily going to be respected means you must fight for your place, and add onto that the conversation of how will you make a living, you need me to approve of you so that you will be able to put food on the table, you have to take it, and you must be desirable...It's not a stretch to me that many individuals feel extreme levels of pressure. Of course each artist comes with their own personal biases of why they want to make high quality art, fears with perfectionism, something to prove, etc. But that throughline of fear does standout to me. Especially given the fact that we all start music young. We are children, we are vulnerable, we are susceptible to abuse of power because we do not know any better than to just listen to the teacher and assume that they know what is best for us. Growing up in music is a journey of figuring out how to be your own individual again, and how to be the artist you can be. So many teachers try so hard, and a lot of this is not their fault, but it is complicated. Children are complicated. The relationship teachers have with their student is inherently complicated and needs ethical considerations - considerations that are not very often taught to musicians who become teachers. 

Considering these aspects, as well as the simple fact that we are all human, prone to error, especially when for example your key to gaining respect and acceptance into a group is narrowed down to how well you can create a sound by blowing air through a tube...I believe it is understandable why performers perceive high enough stakes for their body to feel like its life is on the line and respond with such severity. 

So what can we do? The answer is a lot. Our nervous system is adaptable and resilient, and it is also fond of patterns. If it couples a stimulus with a fear response, it will do that again. So long as the nervous system sees its response as helpful for survival, it will always follow that pattern. The human body is not one ot take risks. It seeks to solve the puzzle of how do I survive, not how do I feel peaceful. By that I mean that our nervous system will always seek to determine if there is a threat to it before it will rationalize reasons why everything is okay. This is an automatic process. That being said, we are a fairly highly evolved species and if we work at it, we can negotiate with our autonomic nervous system to teach it a new association, or at the very least to teach it that the stimulus does not need to equate to death. For example, say when someone walks out onstage and there is a crowd, their anxiety picks up, whereas when tehy walk out onto the same stage for rehearsal, they feel nothing. The stimulus that is seeing a crowd is automatically met by the nervous system with its usual flood of adrenaline and cortisol and the activation of all the sympathetic nervous system's usual goodies (shaking, tunnel vision, digestive shut down or purging, shaking, inability to focus, etc). If however we intervene and flood the system with stimulus that activated the parasympathetic nervous system, the branch that is typically responsible for regulating the body (I say typically because it does have many other functions) and we calm the body in the presence of that stimulus enough times, our nervous system may realize two things. One, I didn't actually die, nothing bad is happening to me. Two, if this isn't going to kill me, I don't need to fire all systems go. This is when we start to get some agency back and develop a new habitual response. 

This work can be done in a multitude of ways, and it will be unique to each artist. ​Below I've listed a few things that have helped me in the past, taken from somatic therapy, mindfulness, and all the performance anxiety coaching I've received along the way.

If this is something you're struggling with and you'd like to chat more about it, let's book a consultation to see what we can figure out for your own unique experience. You can visit this link to get some tips and tricks I've used to help ease my own performance anxiety on my website.