Performance Anxiety

Posted on 11:05 am

Performance anxiety and nerves come in varying degrees. They can range from a mild feeling of anticipation to a debilitating fear. Some nerves can be helpful, providing stamina and excitement for the performer. However, performance anxiety can often be crippling as it sucks the joy out of playing, and can cause the performer to be physically unable to execute the desired task at hand.

I have had performance anxiety ever since I was a kid. I didn’t even like practicing when my parents could hear me because I was worried about messing up. My brother and I used to arrange to practice at the same time, which felt much “safer” to me. When a performance or audition came around my performance anxiety often took control of me and rendered me unable to play even close to my potential.

Students often tell me, especially my adult students, that they are nervous to play for me in their lessons. I understand this as well as I often felt that pang of adrenaline as I strove desperately to show my teacher that I had accomplished the task I had been asked to work on the previous week.

Many people with mild performance anxiety claim that their nerves help them perform even better, and that after they get going in a performance the nerves go away and leave behind an adrenaline rush that propels them through their program.

This is great, and I wish I could say this can be everyone’s experience if they just learn how to control their nerves. However, I don’t think this is the case for those of us who I would describe as having severe and often debilitating performance anxiety. I’m won’t tell you “it gets better each time you do it” or “just give it time, it will go away” or “stop worrying, you just need to let the music happen”. I would like to share some of the practical advice I’ve found helpful on how to manage performance anxiety so that we can learn to play with the nerves that are bound to be there.

Learning to play with performance anxiety starts in your practicing. We need to learn how to differentiate between practicing to learn the music and practicing to perform. Learn the music first, then set up ways to practice overcoming the nerves that you know are going to occur. For those with extreme anxiety, this has to be done with every new piece you learn.

1) One good way to do this is to make yourself nervous in situations that don’t matter, so that by the time you get to the performance that does matter, you have confidence that you CAN play, even if you feel nervous. Here are some options:
a) Play for people who make you nervous. Family, friends, your teacher, neighbors, a Sunday School class, the babysitter, the cat or dog, whoever! Most people are happy to help you out and are often blessed to hear you play. If you don’t have the opportunity to do this (or are too nervous to even ask someone to come listen to you, like me) then you can use the following methods, and perhaps work up to using this first suggestion.
b) Just think about having an audience. Just pretending there is someone there (I usually visualize someone specific that I know or want to impress) will make me nervous. Use your power of imagination to visualize yourself in the room where you will perform. Who will be there? What will it feel like? What will be going on in your head? What do you want to be going through your head? Practice the mental and physical aspects of your performance through your imagination until you are comfortable with what will happen. Or, practice in a variety of different situations, so that no matter what happens during your performance, you have prepared!
c) Tape record yourself. I get nervous just playing for a tape recorder. This option has the added benefit that you can listen back to what you played. Sometimes what you think you sound like is not what you actually sound like at all! When we take lessons we have the advantage of someone “screening” our playing and telling us what our playing sounds like at a distance. Since being out of school I find playing for a tape recorder is one of the best ways for me to judge my playing as someone else would hear it. It helps me know what to better work on and the more I work and rerecord the more I’m working out my nerves.
d) Whatever it is that makes you most nervous, practice this FIRST; Perhaps it’s starting a certain piece, or the first piece you will have to play, the hardest piece, etc. Play whatever is most difficult, or of concern to you with no warm up and pretend you have to get it right the first time. Usually if I can do this I will feel pretty confident that I can do it when I go to perform it. Nerves can often take on a very similar feeling to not being warmed up. When you’re not warmed up your muscles are often tight and won’t move and nothing feels “normal”. Capitalize on this! If you know physically and mentally how to “make” your body perform difficult things when it is not warmed up, you will have a better chance of being able to “make” it perform when you are up in front of an audience.

2) The last point in section one relates to this next section. Really know the ins and outs of HOW you need to execute a piece of music. There are two important reasons for this:
a) I find that often times the things I mess up on are the things that in my practice time come naturally to me, or are things I have struggled with, but haven’t actually mastered. I find that really analyzing what my hands need to do to make the notes sound clean, to make the dynamics happen, to make the rhythm accurate, etc. helps me master the music. We can’t practice on auto pilot and expect to play well when we are nervous. We need to know our music and how to play it better than anyone who has ever played it before. We want to avoid the “holding on for dear life” feeling during difficult passages. We want to approach these passages with the mindset and ability that comes from conquering those difficult notes.
b) Another important reason to really know how to execute your music is that it will get your brain back on track during a performance when all of a sudden you have a brain freeze and the notes on the page look like gibberish!! This is when your muscle memory (honed by point (a) above) needs to kick in for you to keep going, but you want to be able to regain control of your brain as soon as possible. Having something to latch on to helps bring your brain back to rational thinking and in the meantime helps you execute the music. It’s like a defibrillator for musicians! It also gives you something to think about other than how horrible things are sounding. This is very important because if you continue to think about how awful things are, they’re probably just going to get worse!

3) Feel like you could play the music in your sleep. I need to feel so comfortable with a piece of music that when I play it I’m not worried about anything. This comes from repeating things I know I can play so it almost feels useless to practice it anymore because I’m so comfortable with it. This is not mindless repetition. I’m constantly analyzing things, reminding myself of what I need to be thinking about, and trying to figure out if there is something I can do to make the passages feel even easier to play. Eventually these thoughts come more naturally, as do the techniques I am employing to make the music happen more easily. Now of course we’re probably not going to master everything. There are some things that will always cause us to a heightened awareness as we approach them because they are so hard, BUT my goal is to minimize these things. If I have put in the work, and I know I know the music, I can tell my brain to calm down because it knows what it’s doing. My brain will only respond though when it actually believes it knows what it’s doing. There are no shortcuts. You either know it or you don’t. This is where section 2 above comes in handy.

4) Know that you’re never going to feel as comfortable performing as when you practice at home. I had a teacher tell me once, “your goal is just to raise the percentage accuracy of your performance, not to achieve a 100%”. This was good to hear for a perfectionist like me! If you’re currently performing at 50% of what you know you can do don’t try to jump to 100%, just work on getting to 65 or 70%. I’m never going to perform at 100% and I know that. Knowing that helps me lower my expectations of myself to something reasonable to attain. I will always be disappointed if I’m aiming for an unattainable goal. When I can make a realistic goal for myself then I am more likely to improve because I will feel more positive for at least doing better, instead of beating myself up for sounding so lousy! If you can teach yourself not to expect yourself to perform like how you practice it will take some of the pressure off. Raising your overall playing level helps with this too. If you are currently stuck at playing at 75% of your actually ability, then practice to raise your actual ability level and 75% will sound a whole lot better too!

I hope some of these tips are helpful to you, and I hope that those of you who suffer from extreme performance anxiety as I do will take heart that you are not alone. Sometimes just being understood about what you are going through up on stage from someone who has been there is help enough. As a bonus I hope you can learn from what has helped me so that you can help yourself!

Emily Williams is the creator of Strategic Strings: An Online Course for Violin and Viola Teachers

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4 responses to “Performance Anxiety”

  1. Liz says:

    Hi, Emily,

    I am commenting a while after the fact, but I really loved these tips — very practical and useful for managing anxiety about a performance.

    What do you think, though, about *practice* anxiety? I don’t know what else to call it, but my daughter, who is 9 and a beginning-level violin student, has this problem. Every time she makes a mistake, whether it’s at home or in front of her teacher, she completely loses it. She gets so angry at herself she cannot continue the piece. She’ll stomp around, leave the room, start crying, the works.

    As you can imagine, this has had a terrible impact on her ability to progress. Although she probably should be, she’s not done with Suzuki book one yet,and it’s not because the music is beyond her, it’s because she is freaking out at the learning process. Her teacher and I are both running out of ideas.

    It’s a shame, because I get the sense that she genuinely likes playing violin, but she seems to have a deep-rooted feeling that she MUST play perfectly every time, even when she is just beginning to learn a piece. Sorry this is so long, but I’m really wondering if there is any solution for this.

  2. Emily says:

    Hi Liz,

    Thanks for reading and commenting! I have several questions as well as comments/suggestions that may be helpful for you.

    I’m glad to hear that your daughter still likes the violin and am glad that you are searching for a solution now. It sounds as though your daughter is very perfectionistic. Is this the case in general or only with playing the violin?

    You didn’t mention any learning disorders or ADD, ADHD issues, but I thought I would ask as these are important things to know when looking to see why she may get frustrated so easily.

    How is practicing structured at home? Is your teacher giving you and your daughter specific practice techniques, tasks, exercises, etc. to address the individual problems she encounters when playing a song? Or, does she play through from the beginning, get upset when she makes a mistake, tries again, encounters the same difficulty, tries again…etc., never really focusing on the problem by itself and just hoping that if she does it again it will be better? When practice time is used more as a time to “run through” a song, and real practice techniques are seldom if ever utilized this could lead to immense frustration and the idea that “I SHOULD be able to play this”. Instead it is beneficial to go into the practice time knowing what the issues are, having a specific mode of attack that will address the issues, focus only on the problem spot(s) (should only be a measure or less at a time), and then have a system for seeing how much progress was made. Only then should she run through the song. When the expectation is changed in her mind from “I should be able to do this” or, “let’s see if I can do it this time” to “I know I can’t do this, but that’s ok because I’m going to do ________ which will help me to overcome my inability” this may be all that’s needed to at least begin to calm down the extreme emotions she’s feeling at not being able to accomplish what she expects of herself.

    You mentioned that your daughter is working in Suzuki book 1. Is she also learning the Suzuki method (meaning that her teacher is Suzuki certified and only teaches according to this method, which would include group classes as well as individual lessons)? or is it a quasi-Suzuki method (meaning that her teacher is Suzuki certified, but structures lesson to be more a mixture of Suzuki and traditional teaching)? or are you just using the Suzuki books? I personally am of the last category, but there are good teachers in the other two as well. My concern about the Suzuki method (perhaps you’ve read my post on this) is that most students coming out of it have very poor abilities to read music and rhythms, and understand their violin in general. This is what I have personally experienced and what I have experienced as a teacher, teaching students who have come out of the method. The reason I ask, is that your daughter may be experiencing frustration because she has a gap in her learning in one or more of these areas. I understand you may not know what to look for when it comes to assessing this, or your teachers’s method of teaching, but if you think this could be a factor I would be happy to talk more with you about it.

    Another thought I had was that perhaps your daughter would benefit from a more personalized approach where she takes on more responsibility. What I mean is, instead of you or her teacher pointing out her mistakes what if you were to give that role to her? She obviously is seeing her mistakes, but I’m thinking that she doesn’t feel empowered to fix them. If you asked her to brainstorm and come up with some ways of fixing the problem and then do that with her to see if they work do you think she would respond positively to that? When a student knows they have the tools to fix their problems they often get less frustrated at themselves.

    In general it seems that the mental expectation of “I have to play perfectly” needs to be addressed at some level. Have you talked with her about where she might be feeling pressure from? I suspect that foremost she is putting this expectation on herself, but perhaps she is also feeling it from an outside source. It sounds as though you and her teacher are trying very hard to NOT to give her this impression. However, for one reason or another she may be feeling it. She also may be feeling pressure from someone else in the family, her friends, her peers, another teacher, etc. You could also try talking with her about what she is feeling and thinking when she messes up. Perhaps she is looking to be understood mentally and emotionally. As someone who has this need I know I get highly frustrated when this need is not met. Your daughter would not know at this age that that is what is making her frustrated, but perhaps seeking to ask her about her thoughts and feelings, asking her to explain them, to act them out, to draw about them, etc. and then for you to be able to express appreciation and acceptance of whatever she shares might make a big difference in the intensity of emotion. You might want to try this exercise out of practice time, and then during practice time take a “time out” when she starts to get emotional and try it again. Opening up might take awhile for her if she isn’t used to it, but if you keep showing her that you can be trustworthy with her feelings and not judgmental she will most likely eventually respond positively.

    How does your daughter like her teacher? Does she look forward to her lessons? Do you feel the teacher is a good teacher for your daughter? Do you feel the teacher has a good balance between making lessons enjoyable, but also being serious and task oriented? Do you feel your teacher is a “gifted teacher”? Have you every tried taking her to another teacher to see if she responds differently? It sounds as though your teacher is very involved with trying to do the best for your daughter, and I don’t usually recommend changing teachers unless I know that I different teacher would definitely be better, so I’m not necessarily advocating for you to switch teachers, but there is always the possibility that that would be a good idea. I wouldn’t know without knowing your teacher. Just something I thought I would throw out there.

    I’ll start with those ideas – I hope at least one of them is helpful! Please feel free to respond to my questions if you are interested in more dialog on the matter. I am happy to discuss further!

    Thanks again for your comment and good luck with your daughter!

  3. therese says:

    Hello Emily,

    I am an adult student. I do practice about an hour most days. My kids are grown and I have the time now to concentrate on other things. The big problem is anxiety during lessons. I go from feeling pretty good following practice, to playing on every string but the right one when at a lesson. This just doesn’t seem to be getting any better. I have been with the same teacher for a year now. I have also practiced with another instructor and it was the same thing. I’m thinking I must have quite the tension in my right arm. I’m getting quite discouraged and wish I could find a way to relax and focus during lessons. It’s odd to think I didn’t have this degree of anxiety when I was a nurse in the ICU :)

  4. Emily says:

    Hi Therese,

    Thanks for commenting! I totally understand your struggles with anxiety during your lessons. I struggled with this too as a student. I hope that some of the ideas in my post are things you feel might help. Remember to praise yourself at the end of every lesson for the things that you WERE able to do well (even if not at 100%). Concentrating on your progress will help you feel less discouraged.

    Also, have you tried talking with your teacher about your anxiety? Sometimes just naming the problem out loud and owning it is really helpful! It’s kind of like if you put two different shoes on in the morning and went to work and then spent your whole day wondering and worrying that people thought you were an idiot. If you were able to just tell everyone candidly, “hey, look, I put two different shoes on this morning!” you could laugh about it and it takes the edge off of what otherwise can be an uncomfortable situation. Maybe just taking a few minutes to tell your teacher “hey, I’m REALLY nervous about playing for you. I can do really well in my practicing, but when I get here everything just goes wrong!”. Your teacher might be able to relate, to help you relax or to just simply recognize where you’re at. That can make a big difference in your anxiety level.

    I wish you the best and hope that you can find what works for you so that you can play with more ease and feel encouraged rather than discouraged. Let me know how things go!

    Emily

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