PSYCHOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Cognitive behavioural therapy is a combination of two forms of psychotherapy: cognitive therapy and behavioural therapy. CBT tackles behaviour as well as the negative thoughts that allow the problems to thrive. It has proved to be a successful combination: scientific research has shown CBT to be an effective treatment for anxiety and mood disorders.

Cognitive therapy assumes the influence of thinking on one’s frame of mind and actions.

Behavioural therapy mainly seeks to change one’s behaviour in order to quell anxiety. Those with stage fright often exhibit forms of evasive behaviour (inventing an excuse to get out of a performance) as well as delaying tactics (not getting around to practicing), playing it safe (by studying only easy pieces) and control behaviour (obsessive practicing).

Everyone sees him- or herself, those around him, and the world in a certain way. When this leads to long-term, set patterns of feeling, thinking and acting, we can refer to it as a schema or ‘emotional button’. For instance, from the schema Severe Norms/Hypercritical, you might feel that everything must always be improved upon and that others must meet the high norms you sets for yourself. This can lead to chronic dissatisfaction over one’s own achievements and the idea that others regularly fall short of your own standards, which in turn leads to further irritation.

Most people have more than one emotional button that can occasionally play up simultaneously. Many schemas originate in (early) childhood, in contact with others.

Schema therapy is suitable for people who have difficulty dealing with their emotional buttons for an extended period of time and consequently find this problem having a negative impact on relationships, work or studies, or see that certain issues keep cropping up at regular intervals.

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a method of treatment for those with disorders relating to a psychotrauma. These disorders can be linked to anxiety, depression, reliving the trauma, anger, sleep disorders, evasive behaviour, grief and insecurity.

EMDR aims to help the sufferer in processing the experience, so that one can think back on it without eliciting extreme distress.

EMDR is also useful with stage fright if a particular experience in the past has contributed to the current anxiety issues.

EMDR has undergone thorough scientific examination and is now regarded as a first-choice treatment for  post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

(Attention-focused cognitive therapy))

What do you during mindfulness? You focus your attention and develop an open and accepting stance in regard to thoughts, feelings and bodily responses. You learn mindfulness through various exercises. These exercises teach you to focus and maintain your attention on, for example, your breathing, your body as a whole, sounds or thoughts.

What don’t you do during mindfulness? You don’t respond on automatic pilot, you don’t give in and you are not passive. The goal of mindfulness is not relaxation.

Mindfulness has nothing to do with Oriental religion or mysticism. You can leave your shoes on, and there won’t be any burning of incense. You can simply see mindfulness as a practical training in dealing with feelings and habits. It is an attitude, a skill, that can be learned.

For musicians

Musicians with stage fright can benefit greatly from mindfulness exercises. You do not have to perform or achieve, and will not be judged. The only requirement is regular and frequent practice, but that’s something we are already accustomed to.

At the same time, musicians have a hard time accepting that things, at any given moment, simply are the way they are. Musicians always want to improve or change something in their playing. And judgmentalness has become practically second nature. Mindfulness is about recognizing what you experience, and not about doing something well. Musicians are usually ‘doers’. Mindfulness teaches one, in fact, to ‘be’ rather than to ‘do’.

Certain behavioural patterns, which cause us to react by automatic pilot, are very recognizable traits among musicians. Take perfectionism: you aren’t allowed to make a single mistake, you place high demands on yourself and on others, and think in terms of disaster: what all can go wrong on stage.

But we have learned to react to anxiety in particular by resisting it internally. This is an automatic response. Instead of saying ‘this has to stop now’, mindfulness says ‘let it be’.

The presence of negative thoughts and feelings on stage is not the problem, but rather our struggle to resist and repel these thoughts and feelings!

Scientifically effective method

We all know that accepting one’s experiences is healthier than suppressing or avoiding them. This can create a different mindset in regard to our thoughts.

Mindfulness is also known to be able effect a demonstrable reduction in heartbeat, breathing and brain activity. By doing something with our full attention, we process information differently. By not being judgemental and by not reacting impulsively, one increases the acceptance of one’s own difficulties.

The mechanism of mindfulness continues to be researched, but it is already clear that mindfulness can be an excellent addition to the existing methods of treatment for depression, generalized anxiety disorders, obsessive disorders, panic, social phobias, pain, fatigue and burnout.