Is your soul feeling world weary?

The events of the world, and our country, have been on my mind and heart lately. Yours too? Yes, I’m not surprised. We artists and creative people often feel the pain in the world deeply.

It can feel wrong to continue on with our creative pursuits, as if ignoring the world around us. Perhaps feeling guilt and grief that we have the privilege to immerse ourselves in art, while other people are just trying to survive.

I don’t have the solution for this, other than to talk about it and acknowledge it. Words are my friend, and processing always helps me. Perhaps you too.

At the same time that I get weighed down by the world, I feel like my mission in life is to help people with the inner blocks to being an artist, and if I ignore that calling for too long, that hurts too. Not doing my work, and perhaps getting stuck in depression, doesn’t actually help anyone.

The hurts in the world are very, very big. They have always been so. The difference now is we have technology and social media to make these hurts more widely known.

I have loved-hurt hearing the stories of real people and their experiences. Not the news casting it in their way. Not politicians spinning. Not the memes of social media. But real people talking about living life in brown and black skin. About getting pulled over, arrested, car towed, food spoiled, cell phone removed, lack of contact with family, threats, violence, murder, fear so ingrained that the hair-trigger is pulled. It’s painful to know the truth of these experiences.

These stories from all corners are powerful. But if we don’t have the capacity to really hear the stories, what happens? Vitriol. Blame. Accusations. Assumptions.

Hurts need airing and hearing. South Africa's leaders knew this and put it in action through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If you cannot hold space for your own griefs and pains in your life, then either you will get stuck indepression, overwhelm, avoidance (this is my tendency), or the path of blame, disbelief, shame, when hearing stories of systemic racism, sexism, violence and unrest around the world.

So this is my suggestion for you – practice making space for the griefs and hurts you experience. Rejected from something you auditioned for and really wanted? Hold space for your hurt, without pushing it away, logicking it to death, rationalizing, or blaming. Had a bad performance experience? Hold space for your pain. No one signing up for your studio lessons? Be with the sadness. No one is buying art from your Etsy shop? Sit with the sorrow.

(Simply sitting with our sorrow can be a massive undertaking. Here's one way I like to do this - Get Curious. As a way to remove the judgment from my feelings, I ask as many questions as I can of the particular feeling. For example - Sadness. Where are you located in my body? What do you feel like? Where is the center of the sadness? Is intensely focused, or spread thickly, or ribboned in waves? Does it move? Are there secondary locations? What words come to mind with this feeling? What does it want me to know? Can I touch it and sit still with it for 5 seconds? 30 seconds? A minute?)

(And some griefs and feelings are so powerful that it is helpful to find an ally and support for touching them. A trusted and wise friend, a professional therapist, a pastor. You get the idea.)

Two things will happen when you do this – the intensity of the pain you experience will lessen when you can truly sit with it as it is. And then, as you develop your capacity over time to hold your own grief, you will develop more capacity to be with others in their grief. Just be with them. Simply and deeply hear the truth of their experience.

(A third benefit is that healing your griefs will help you be more resilient in your creative endeavors. Releasing energy from the hurt frees up energy to devote to your work.)

This doesn't solve the worlds problems. I recognize that I am writing from the vantage point of white privilege. But saying something and doing something is better than sticking your head in the sand.
The capacity to listen and really hear the stories, even from people we strongly disagree with, can bring healing on a personal level.

Along these lines, I want your story and reactions. Taking about race can be challenging, but I'm committed to trying, even if I say something wrong. So please let me know how I can do it better. 

Now please excuse me while I sip some wine while sitting with my sorrow. 

With love,
Marta

Your greatest strength? Liability? Or both?

Sometimes our greatest strengths can also be our most tender liabilities. In this video, I talk about how hiding underneath my desire for connection and relationship with people was also so much concern about what people think about me. This tender, vulnerable part of me spiraled out of control so that I couldn't function while practicing or performing, fearing that I would mess up, fearing that my colleagues would think badly of me, fearing I would need to find a new career. 

What is one of your greatest strengths? Is there a flip side to this strength? What is the root fear of the flip side? Understanding and healing the weakness will help you live in your strength in a balanced way.

In your emotional life, this means tending to the vulnerable parts of yourself, not pushing those vulnerabilities away, but hearing the concerns and pains and fears, making space. Once those fears have been heard and they have settled, then it's easier to reconnect to our intentions and dreams. 

In performing, this helps you find grounding, confidence, connection to your collaborators, and joy in the moment.

In daily life, this helps you stay focused on your goals and dreams.

Overcoming Performance Anxiety: Internal Family Systems

Big feelings. Conflicting feelings. Arguing in my head. Telling myself I shouldn't feel that way (especially about performance anxiety!). 

There's a solution to this way of being: all of it is welcome. Identifying each voice and feeling, hearing it fully, and showing it love and compassion allows the arguing and big feelings to settle and calm. 

This is the process of Internal Family Systems coaching and therapy. In my journey to heal performance anxiety, IFS has become my core process and a way of life that I apply everyday - in music making, to parenting, and in all my relationships.

There are three main ideas in IFS. First, we are made up of Parts and a Self. Parts are simply the voices in our head, or the various emotions and reactions. You know how you might have a voice that yells at you to practice more, and then another voice that resists and wants to watch TV all day? Those can be considered Parts of You, but not the whole You.

Self energy is the core of who you are. Some people might consider it the soul. Or the very essence of you. Self remains unchanged from the wounds and the burdens you carry. Self energy can witness the parts and bring healing to them.

Second – all Parts are trying to help. That voice that yells at you to practice? It perhaps is mean and nasty and says things you would never say to anyone else. Notice that it is actually trying to help. It knows your goals of being a better musician and wants to get you there. Other voices or desires come into play – practicing is hard, working on imperfections sucks and makes you feel like sh@#, so other parts want to avoid the hard work. Those parts are trying to help too! They don’t want you to feel bad about yourself! Inner conflict is the result.

While all Parts are trying to help, the kicker is that not all parts are helpful.

The third principle of IFS is All Parts Are Welcome. Because all Parts are trying to help, we want to honor and respect their efforts. And just like people, what Parts really need is to be seen and heard. Simply being with them in their feelings releases pressure over time.

Of all the tools I’ve explored, IFS has had the biggest and longest lasting effect on my performing, and coaching other musicians. I’m learning to be more in the moment as the voices are heard, addressed, and then they can relax and step back. I notice more frequently the emotions simmering in my body, and make space for them, rather than fight them. Nerves for performing still happen sometimes, but now I talk to them, understand why they are there, and am able to roll with it, rather than the nerves controlling me.

How you can apply:

The first step is always identifying the voices in your head. When you catch yourself in an internal battle, ask yourself, what individual voices are arguing right now? Who are they? See if you can separate the desires into different parts or persons or categories. Notice that these voices are not you, but only one part of you.

The act of identifying the voices goes a long way to releasing the intensity and pressure inside. My coach, Melissa Sandfort has a great exercise located here on her website.

This may feel silly and imaginary for a while. You may have resistance. That’s all very normal.

Any kind of transformational work takes time and patience. Of course, doing this work with a professional makes it so much more manageable, and sometimes downright fun. Can you tell that I highly recommend this process? Best wishes on your journey.

Overcoming Performance Anxiety: improv classes

“I can’t do this anymore,” I said to my husband.

After 2.75 hours of sweating, flip-flopping stomach, racing heart, sweating palms, shaking legs, I was ready to be done. But our instructor had just enthusiastically said, “we have time for one more exercise!!!” 

Like that was good news.

This was our first night of improv class at IO Chicago.

My husband had done a year of improv classes at Second City before we met and always said I would really dig it. After the appearance of crazy performance anxiety 6 months earlier, I knew I needed a safe space to work on my fear without worry about totally falling apart on stage and getting fired. Improv seemed like a great choice. Until we got there that night.

I finished out class that night, and returned for many more, making it through 10 months of weekly classes. That translated into 10 months of weekly terror, sweating, butterflies in my stomach, racing heart, etc.

That also translated into 10 months of weekly opportunity to practice new skills, to let fear out from under my armor, to experiment, and ultimately to learn that I could survive, that I could even thrive while in fear. That fear was not the end, it was just a feeling. 

One tidbit I learned from the Bulletproof Musician is that the physical activation of performance anxiety is actually the same as physical activation of excitement. It’s what we label it that determines if we feel positive or negative. Every single class I would tell myself over and over, “I am excited, I am excited.”

The big takeaways from improv class? I can function while in fear. And even have fun at times! Inviting fear into my body, letting it take up space, letting it do its thing and not repress it, then it stopped the internal fighting, and which resulted in taking the pressure off. That allowed other emotions to be part of the process too – excitement, joy, curiosity.

If you suffer from nerves, finding a safe, practice performance space for experimenting can do wonders in overcoming fear. Finding a friend or colleague to support you through these experiments makes it even better - you can discuss, dissect, analyze, feel, cry, share better with a comrade who gets it.

Here are some suggestions of places and situations you could use:

• Practice Performance sessions

• A small group of friends in your home, practice room, work space

• Church

• Toastmasters

• Acting class

• Music lessons

Give yourself permission to play around with the feelings, be curious about your body’s response to the situation, take the pressure off by having low expectations for yourself. You might crash and burn sometimes - I certainly did in my improv classes!

Finding the right place to practice while in fear also gives you the space to reconnect with the joy of performance, the love of your art that brought you to this career in the first place.

This is 3rd in a series about my experience in overcoming performance anxiety. If you wish to read about Part 1 (the start of my anxiety) and Part 2 (Beyond Practicing). Coming up next week, coaching with a specialist in Internal Family Systems.

Overcoming Performance Anxiety: 'Beyond Practicing' and the Centering Exercise

In my last newsletter I wrote about how it came to pass several years ago that I had a whole new bundle of performance anxiety. This week is Part 2 of my story of overcoming performance anxiety.

I am a regular reader and fan of Noa Kageyama’s blog at the Bulletproof Musician. As a specialist in performance anxiety, as someone who dealt with it himself, who went to Julliard and other top schools and then went on to become a psychologist, I thought his program might be a good place to start.

I signed up for his online class Beyond Practicing and dove into learning all about performance anxiety. He covers everything from what happens physically when we’re nervous to effective practice techniques to training our brains and bodies to perform optimally under pressure.

I don’t want to tell you all I learned in Beyond Practicing, because, first of all, that wouldn’t be fair to Dr. Kageyama. Second, that would be a really long post. So in short, what I want to offer is one gem that saved my performing career.

Centering

I don’t remember all the details of the first concert I played after practicing with Centering. What I do remember is that there were a handful of challenging songs that triggered all my cascading anxiety symptoms – elevated heart rate, drop in the pit of my stomach, mad crazy flip-flopping butterflies, über distracted brain that was more concerned about my stomach antics than the notes on the page, and worry about what everyone would think of me when I failed miserably.

The amazing thing about that first performance – I nailed all the music that I had targeted with Centering. I was elated, to say the least.

The Centering Exercise is designed to harness and redirect the excess energy generated by nerves (or build and amplify energy if you happen to be a person who gets really tired as a symptom of nerves). With steps to help me focus the energy and steps to help me engage the right brain and stay in the moment, I was back to functioning while performing.

How you can apply:
Read through Dr. Kageyama’s explanation of Centering and apply it to your practice and performance.

A few tips.

As Dr. Kageyama says, practicing Centering for 10-15 minutes each practice session makes this skill most useful and easily applied under pressure. Don’t try to cram learning it into one day, or only use it at the performance. Just as you need to train your body to learn the music, you need to train your brain to respond the way you want it to prior to performance.

Make it your own. The Centering exercise as presented by Dr Kagayama is the classic version that has worked in high pressure situations for over 40 years. But once you learn the concepts and the feeling, you can simplify and combine steps.

I found the step on releasing tension to be quite challenging, and focusing on gratitude did the job even better for me. I choose something to be intensely grateful for in the performance – collaborators, specific musical phrases, venue, audience. I let that feeling of gratitude grow and expand, and that melts my muscles much more effectively than commanding my body to relax.

I worked on learning to Center for quite a few weeks. One night, I had a vivid dream that I was playing basketball, professionally of course (for those of you who don’t know me personally – I am 5’ 2”, and can hardly dribble a ball). The clock was down to the final seconds, I had the ball, and it was my chance to win the game. I looked out to the crowd, and knew I had to decide where to put my mental energy. I could focus on the fans and the team around me and their hopes and dreams. Or I could take a risk, put my mental blinders on, shut all of that out, and completely direct all of my attention on my hands, on the ball, and on the basket.

I woke up without completing my shot. But I remembered that feeling of complete focus on my job, and shutting out all distractions. It's a feeling of dropping deep into my body and letting go of the voices in my head, the shoulds, the worries, the nerves. Now when I Center, I connect to that feeling, and I don’t need to walk myself through all the steps. I go for the feeling.

So find what works for you. And then practice in advance. As you use Centering in your music, you will find at first that other things will fall apart. The first few times through may actually be disastrous in other ways. That’s normal and to be expected.

Let me know if you give this a try. I’m happy to answer any questions or hear about your experiences!

Coming up next week, Part 3 of my story of overcoming performance anxiety, and my year of improv classes.

Overcoming Performance Anxiety: My Story

Panic.

Sweaty hands. Elevated heart rate. Shallow breaths.

Drop in the pit of my stomach, like tipping over the apex of a roller coaster.

Terror that I am incapable and everyone will soon witness it.

Head spinning about all the possible things that could and can and will go wrong.

And it will all end in public humiliation.

Several years ago I experienced several months of escalating and spiraling performance anxiety. In my previous years of training and performing as a pianist and collaborator I never really suffered from nerves, not like this. Of course, I got nervous, but the nerves never overwhelmed me. I always knew I would come out the other side. Oh, I had some bad performances and auditions, but it wasn’t like this new level of nerves.

What led to these escalating nerves was taking a class with my doctor on Mind-Body Syndrome. Basically, this syndrome is where people have real physical pain that is directly connected to emotions. I had shoulder pain for years and years, and it was only getting worse. Even though I had been in therapy on and off, and knew intuitively that my shoulder pain was somehow connected to emotions, I was unable to resolve it.

My doctor (John Stracks at Northwestern Center for Integrative Medicine) happens to be a specialist in this area and offers regular classes on the topic (let me know if you’d like his contact info, his class is marvelous, he is marvelous, and I found it life-changing). In his class, I quickly realized that I had a whole lotta emotions hiding underneath my ‘armor’ of tight and painful shoulders.

Once this became clear to me, I embarked upon a mission to heal my shoulder pain by feeling everything! Let it all out and I’ll overcome this shoulder pain and life will be great!

I was dismayed to find that the underlying anxiety was more than I could handle, and only seemed to increase exponentially as time passed.

I had two subbing performances during these months that involved some pretty technically challenging music. I became alarmed at how strong my nerves were in the first sub situation. The second nearly did me in and I became afraid that performance anxiety was my new normal. I went home after this second episode, and told my husband that I was going to quit being a musician. I started contemplating what else I could do in life, but getting paid to eat didn’t seem very realistic.

I did not enjoy performing with these new feelings.

Duh. Performance anxiety is the worst. Locked inside of you are all your good feelings for the music, the desire to be in the moment, to move people, to communicate, to be in flow. The good feelings are hidden behind an impenetrable fortress of anxiety. 

I felt stuck – I could go back to my old ways of shutting down emotion, and keep performing, and sorta feel in control, but have major shoulder pain. Or, I could keep digging and unearthing and discover where it would lead me, even though it might ruin performing for me forever.

When I would tell people about this new anxiety I received interesting responses. Some people would listen, with empathy and support, but not really have any answers or suggestions. Or maybe they had the right idea – don’t fight it, the more you resist the stronger it gets. Others would give unhelpful advice – just practice more. Or say things like, “You’ll be fine. You always play well.”

Really, no comments or advice helped the stark terror I would feel when contemplating being onstage. Because people’s comments are just words. And words are related to thinking and performance anxiety is an overwhelming feeling. Thoughts and logic simply cannot compete with the body’s instinct for safety. Or how completely out of control I felt when in performance. Because of this I drastically limited my playing for several months while trying to figure out a course of action.

The subsequent posts in this series are about the three major resources I used to heal my performance anxiety and the takeaway from each one that you can apply to your own performing lives.

1. Beyond Practicing, an online class targeting performance anxiety (from the Bulletproof Musician)
2. Improv classes at IO Chicago
3. Therapy, with Melissa Sandfort, a life coach who specializes in Internal Family Systems.

Stay tuned until next week, for the first tool, from Beyond Practicing.