Recently we were talking with a patient who is a professional musician. He’s been working on controlling his anxiety, both through medication and through talk therapy, and he was commenting on progress he has recently made. He described a concert where he had started out with a “little” anxiety, but as it went on, he commented: “It’s funny though, because I’ve been performing since I was 15, and there’s this sort of thing that happens [during a performance] where it’s like the audience isn’t really there.
“I’m just remembering when I did a concert a year and a half ago when I let myself get really distracted by what people were doing and you know noises in the room and my mind was out there. Whereas this time… it was like my mind seemed to be very much in the music.
“And this may seem like a complete change of subject, but I was driving over the San Mateo Bridge yesterday [over the San Francisco Bay] and I thought ‘this used to really scare me. What changed?’ And I reflected: ‘well, I used to think about the water. You know, I used to imagine falling down into the water’ but now when I drive over the bridge I’m just watching the road.
“And it’s entirely similar to what happens during a concert. Am I thinking about the audience or am I thinking about the music? I found this state where I was just enjoying the vibration of the piano under my fingers. And I found this in practice, just enjoying the experience and the sound of the instrument”.
Before a concert, his experience was similar. There’s so much that needs to be done to prepare: “Where are we going to put the bass? How are we going to hook up everything? The photographer’s here and he wants me to check his cameras and sort of give him some instruction and, you know, it’s just one thing after another. So there isn’t a lot of time to think ahead and be anxious until like right before the concert and then I just go to get dressed and there’s this sort of tunnel vision when everything is about getting ready. There’s some anxiety in it, but I think it also comes under control from learning that the way around the anxiety is to be prepared”.
Next, he described another concert where some of the musicians came unprepared, and they had to do a lot of practicing right before the concert:
“You know, it’s just a matter of people and environments and preparation and I thought it went fairly well and got a lot of good reaction from the audience. So I didn’t really tear myself up about it, I just thought, well, okay, stuff to do differently next time. I mean my note for the future is to beware of situations where people aren’t going to be able to prepare.”
Anxiety management is multi-faceted, but experience shows that the tools are there. What you pay attention to, what you prepare for, what you care about, what you just put down as a learning experience, it all helps to smooth out the anxiety in different contexts and situations.