My Journey with Anxiety

Since it's summer I decided to try and get back into practicing regularly with the hopes of being able to put together a recital in early fall (we'll see if that works out or not). It's not uncommon for me to ebb and flow and try to get into a new practice routine only to have it fall apart pretty easily. I then end up in some sort of shame spiral because I've yet again failed to prove myself a "real musician."

Earlier this week I had a realization while practicing that it has been seven years - SEVEN. YEARS. - since I was practicing and playing regularly and at a fairly respectable level.  No wonder why it's been so hard to get back into the swing of things! I was under a lot of stress during the end of my time in grad school (around 2011-2012) and that was the beginning of some significant anxiety for me. I left West Virginia after finishing grad school in 2012 and moved to south Florida, where I've had some significant dry spells.

During my last year in graduate school, I had a pretty humiliating experience with a playing a chamber recital for a pianist friend. The repertoire was the Prokofiev flute sonata and Saint-Saens' Tarantelle for flute, clarinet, and piano. By this time I was already struggling with stress and it was beginning to have a negative effect on my playing. After a several rehearsals on the Prokofiev and a couple coachings with the pianists' teacher, she told me that her teacher had decided that another flutists should play the Prokofiev. No one had indicated to me that there were significant issues with my playing. The pianist hadn't voiced any concerns to me directly (I don't know that it would have served anyone well if she had; it likely would have had the unintentional consequence of looking tacky on her part), her teacher hadn't said anything to me, and my own professor hadn't said anything either. I should add here that maybe they did, maybe someone did try to tell me that I was not up to snuff. If they did though, I never got the message.

This was the start of significant issues for me. My self esteem dropped, my playing continued to suffer. This manifested in two significant ways: long phrases were impossible (even "normal" length phrases were very difficult), and playing anything in the second octave (especially C/B/A's). Once I had moved to south Florida, my anxiety eventually got so bad that some days I couldn't even produce a sound. I remember once having to literally tell myself that everything was okay and I was fine just holding the flute down by my side.  Keep in mind that I had just finished my MM in flute performance and I had given my final degree recital only a year before. This was the tipping point for me.

In either 2013 or 2014 I started going to therapy for anxiety. I was teaching very part-time at a university and thankfully was able to sign up for therapy for very cheap. Going to therapy really helped provide me with tools to manage my thoughts and stress levels, and I was able to get back to playing although I still struggle with performance anxiety.

It's been a long time coming, but I am feeling more comfortable and confident about myself and my playing. I still have times of worry, but they are usually shorter and I have ways to handle the situation.

"It's All Relative"

Last night I brought a non-musician friend along to a wind quintet concert. As I sat listening to the creative harmonies and tonal colors, the weaving melodic lines, I couldn't help but wonder: What does this mean (if anything) to my friend?

Did they have any idea what was going on? Was it a string of pretty, albeit meaningless, sounds, or did were they able to connect to anything they heard?

This certainly isn't meant to imply that persons who may not have extensive exposure to classical - or should I say non-popular - music are ignorant, but I wondered how relate-able classical music is to the average layperson.

How can we classical or formally-trained musicians show others that classical music isn't a stodgy thing? The innocent comment of my friend has been bugging me: "I know I'm not cultured about this stuff but..."

I don't like that people feel that they have to be 'cultured', 'intelligent enough', and 'classy' enough  to enjoy classical music. I like the work that Classical Revolution (classicalrevolution.org) has been doing to bring the classical into the vernacular.

Goals vs. Ultimatums

A big challenge that I've faced recently has been dealing with 'goals' I'd set for myself:

- I want to graduate in December...
- I want to change my embouchure/manner of playing...
- I want to play an hours worth of very tough repertoire on two friends' DMA recitals...
- I want to pay off significant portions of student loans...
- I want to eat right and exercise more...

Each of these 'goals' were always followed by an 'Or else!':

- I want to graduate in December...Or else I'm a failure who can't complete anything!
- I want to change my embouchure/manner of playing... Or else I won't be able to (see next line)
- I want to play an hours worth of very tough repertoire on two friends' DMA recitals... Or else I'll fail them and embarass myself!
- I want to pay off significant portions of student loans... Or I'll be forever enslaved by my debt!
- I want to eat right and exercise more... Or I'll be gross and out of shape forever!

Seeing it laid out like this, I see how ridiculous this really is! While some of these situations are basically true, first of all they wouldn't be permanent, and second of all, they aren't really quite that dramatic!

The obvious solution is to reassess those goals. But that indicates failure, right? Wrong! These goals aren't set in stone! Certainly, you can't avoid playing a recital you agreed to months ago, and of course not paying back loans is a bad idea as well, but why not just adjust the goals to suit your current capacities? Why can't I just decide to make payments that fit my current fiscal situation? Why not just make minor diet adjustments? Why not accept my playing as it is and then see where I'm able to take it?

Thanks to a mix of epiphanies and near-breakdowns, I've finally been coming to terms with where I really am in life. It may not be where I wanted to be or thought I would be at this point in my life, but that's oka