Stage Fright... extreme condition

Stage fright can be, for some, a truly debilitating condition. Sometimes knowing that your thinking stinks is not enough to conquer it.

To illustrate extreme stage fright conditions, here is a story from my sister Pam's experience. Many thanks to my sister for getting this unpleasant memory down from the shelf for us:

"If someone would ask me to sing that day I would have no problem so long as I kept my mind busy till then. But, if as usual they scheduled it in advance, I would gradually get to the point the day or two before that I became incapacitated and would sadly have to cancel. I say, "sadly", because it got to be very depressing.

When I was a young girl scheduled to sing in church, I'd get very sick like with the flu (with fever, no less) and remember even sneaking into a robe room to lie down on the floor, I was so weak. I didn't want to admit to anyone I was sick because they'd think it was an excuse and that I was scared. (LOL) But the diarrhea and heart palpitations/anxiety stopped me in my tracks. Fact is, I was terrified. But I loved to sing! I really, really loved to sing. I needed to sing. So, I learned that if I just would go on a fast for two or three days before the event, I'd have no problem with the diarrhea. Problem solved...NOT!"

My body still found a way out of the singing arrangements: LARYNGITIS! Complete laryngitis. Not a squeak to be heard. Actually once I did squeak. It was a muscle spasm of my diaphragm. Happened during rehearsal but since it was uncontrollable, I feared I'd do it again. These disorders persisted into my adult life even after having children. I tried a few different vocal teachers to no avail. I got books. I got older. Eventually, I was diagnosed with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Panic Attacks (anxiety disorder) along with chronic allergies. Lots of doctors and alternative health folks and biofeedback lessons...results: I no longer sing. I'm 54 years old now and am past the desire to do any singing, thank goodness. But sometimes I wonder what life might have been like if...

...and yet...I wouldn't be who I am if I'd been able to sing all my life. I've developed in other ways to compensate for my love of music. Still, there are times that surprise me when tears well up in response to a set of unusual harmonies or a phrase or just an instrumental flow...

There is a book written by a minister who was in a terrible wreck in which he lost both legs and an arm. He describes that having died and passing through heaven's gates made of undulating, pearlescent, opaque organic matter, there was music. Individual pieces of music, alive and coming from every direction; not in harmony per se, yet indescribably beautiful together. Do some of us sense the impossibility of attaining that in human form. Is that it? Or are we just terrified of each other?

Hopefully, Judy, you'll be able to help some brave souls to keep trying because we shouldn't fear sharing warmth from our deepest quarters even if those quarters aren't perfect."

I have personally known people who try to anesthetize stage fright with substance abuse. Besides the health issues that come from this approach, there is also this: If the cocaine, alcohol or other substance momentarily does cause anxiety to abate and courage to artificially (and many times arrogantly) increase, you become terrified to sing, play or write WITHOUT the drink or drug. Then you, my friend, are most horribly hooked on a merry-go-round that will steal your life. Don't know about you, but even my own voice- as important as it is to me- is not worth that.

As you see, self medicating can backfire. I asked James Hubbard, M.D., M.P.H. ( publisher of My Family Doctor Magazine) for a professional medical approach to this issue. He says:

"The prescription medicine most commonly used is a beta-blocker such as propranolol. It peaks within a few hours and slows the heart rate down along with decreasing a tremor. Also the SSRI antidepressants such ac paxil have been approved for "social anxiety" of which stage fright is a type. Theses are usually tolerated well in most healthy adults but, as in all medications, there are potential side effects that your doctor should go over with you."

Donn Marshall, Associate Director for Counseling Services at the University of Puget Sound, agrees -quoting an email in his blogpost on extreme stage fright:

"...the use of beta-blockers provided the much-needed relief. Plus, he wrote that with more stage experience, increased acceptance of his level of skill, and by allowing his playing to become more fun he has not needed to use beta-blockers in years. A real success story!"

Power, Path & Performance associate teacher Kayla Morrison had such huge issues with stage fright they came with symptoms like vascular knots in her neck and vocal cords that were partially paralyzed. Oh yeah. Amazing what fear can do. She healed, and says that talking it out, not keeping it to herself, was a big part of the solution to overwhelming fear.

Carly Simon and Barbara Streisand both have managed to conquer extreme stage fright and get back to the stage as a joyful experience. As for my sister Pam, she is singing, too. Last Christmas I sat at her grand piano playing Christmas tunes. She sat with me and then began to ... SING... inviting everyone else to come join us. Soon her daughter's boyfriend, a photojournalist, began FILMING us, and we all had a ball... including my sister! She says she can "do it in the moment... just not if there is scheduling involved", giving the brain too much time to build anxiety.

There is an old (Chinese??) proverb that goes "A bird doesn't sing to be heard, it sings because it has a song". Perhaps that is what my sister now does, and perhaps I need to add other motivations for singing: "To express your heart with music, feel your own song, find the joy of joining with other voices". Performance doesn't have to be scheduled to be powerfully successful!

More thoughts on stage fright:

The very act of singing can help in the healing of stage fright. Sound vibrations cause physical and biochemical changes in the brain. Just the music itself (humming, singing in nonsense syllables or languages you don't understand, etc) can have power to heal.

Encourage, but don't MAKE people, especially children, sing! Making children perform can lead to deep seated stage fright. Just let them know their voices are important to you and to others, and then them sing as they feel the authentic urge to do so, of course given the appropriate opportunity. Also, teach them to listen and to affirm others' voices. This will help them believe in the importance and validity of their own voices.

We should indeed "FEEL" something - Numbness does not communicate. Butterflies just add to the excitement of performance. But when the butterflies turn into battering rams, we need to talk to someone and find help.

Keep vocal ability in perspective. There is an old man in our little Presbyterian congregation who is a recovering alchoholic. Every year, with fear and trembling, he sings a solo as his gift of gratitude to God for his healing. Technically, he has one of the worst voices I've ever heard. But when he sings, there are tears in the eyes of most everyone, including me, at the beauty of his communication. His performance is wildly successful, and we can't wait til next year when he does it again!

For yet another great post on stage fright, see singer/songwriter Christine Kane's blog.

Your comments are always welcome - if you want to comment publicly and add to the conversation, be sure to click the title, go to my blog on the web and find the comment link below this post, or just email me your permission along with your comment and I will do that for you.

Stage Fright - Changing stinking thinking

One huge and most usual form of stage fright comes from stinking thinking. The good news is, we can change that.

Some synonyms for performance are:

• A public presentation
• A show
• An accomplishment
  
• A rendering of material
  

I'm particularly fond of the last one... because the word "render" means to "give". This is the core that will lead to successful performance. Simply render (give) the message (communicate!).

I believe with all my heart that the biggest contribution to stinking thinking in performance is the subtle and not-so-subtle messages we get (and deeply accept as true) from society and most definitely from the music business.

Some examples of rotten messages:

• You better be better than everyone else, or you are a loser.
  
• You are being compared to everyone else, and you probably won't measure up.
• You better get everything right, and you better look right, and you better move right, and you better be perfect. The audience is judging you. If you aren't perfect, they will think you suck.
  
• If you suck at performance, you will or should die because you are worthless. (American Idol/Gladiator, etc!)
  
• You are a failure unless you win the part/award/contest.
• It's all about the high notes. It's all about the long notes. It's all about the vocal licks. It's all about the strong notes. It's all about YOU!
  

Here is the truth in two words: SO NOT! What do any of the above things have to do with rendering (giving) a message? Not a thing. And if you believe any of those things, you will have stage fright to one degree or other. Why?

The voice runs on instinct. We must train ourselves to instinctively use correct technique, that's true, but in practical application, we perform instinctively, based on habitual thinking and on actions of the automatic nervous system. Change your thinking and you can change the automatic nervous system response. Let's ask some questions:

Q. Why do we have voices?

A. To communicate messages TO someone. Period.

Q. To whom can we direct our communication?

A.

• To the one heart of the audience physically present in your venue,
• To people-not-physically present (those who will in future hear the cd)
• To fictional people (but you must make them real for yourself to do this)
  
• to the living camera eye,
  
• to a character we're talking to in a play,
  
• to our own hearts (but to truly communicate to ourselves effectively, we must mentally send our voices outside ourselves so that our ears hear as if from someone else).

Q. To whom should we not direct our voices?

A.

• To more than one person at time (writer Michael Clark once told me that if you sing like you're singing to thousands, you can't really move anyone; sing like you're singing to one person, you can move thousands.
• To someone you can't make real for yourself.
• To no one in particular. This is completely unfocused and is NOT communication. It's thinking about communicating, but it's not the act of doing so.
  

Q. What messages can we communicate?

A. Happiness, relief, humor, pain, anger, sadness, hope, warning, love, an understanding, a request to be understood, a story, specific information, whatever the lyric is really about.

Q. Where are the hardest places to authentically communicate?

A. In auditions. Why? Because it's the most artificial circumstance to be communicating. They, after all, really ARE judging you. You must consciously choose people, either present or not, real or fictional, to deliver the message to, and mentally ignore and block "judging" as motivation for your delivery. Read the comment on my last post from "Leigh Ann" for some great suggestions.

Q. If we accept the communication of messages as the primary conscious motivation to perform, how does it change things?

• We will assume a different posture and body language, which will affect your breath and the openness of your throat.
• Our automatic nervous system's flight-or-fight response will be calmed, once again affecting breath and throat.
  
• Our self-consciousness will dissolve quickly into other-consciousness
• "Stage fright" will turn into "stage presence".
  

In the matter of winning awards and contests, getting parts, even in the act of moving an audience, all you can do is all you can do... and that is always enough! If you have joy in the actual act of performance, you have succeeded in doing your job. Believing this truth will set you free.
I agree with writer and retired CEO Adrian Savage, who says in his brilliant post "What Is Performance":

Finding satisfaction and purpose in the action itself is far better than fixating on an outcome that lies mostly in the hands of chance. If doing something well increases the odds on success, that’s a pleasant bonus... Winning is rarely as important as we assume, but if winning is all that counts, as in war, remember Napoleon. When someone asked him what kind of people he looked for to be generals, he replied: “Lucky ones.”

What's your experience with stinking thinking, or with changing it? To comment on this post, click on the title which will take you to my blog on the web. Then click the comment link below this post.

Next post we'll talk about severe forms of stage fright based more physical issues such as biochemical imbalances in the brain. (Getting a doctor's input for this one!)

Stage Fright - What is it?

I get a lot of people needing help with stage fright. So here is the first of my new series of posts on the subject.

First, let's define the problem. What is stage fright? Wikipedia says it's ..."an anxiety, fear or phobia related to performing in front of an audience or camera. " That's the most simplified definition I could find. There are levels of this problem, from mild anxiety (butterflies - actually can be a great thing) to incapacitating conditions that causes show cancellations and stop careers in their tracks.

It's not limited to newbies. Veteran performers are sometimes plagued with it. Carley Simon once passed out in the middle of a concert. George Jones famously anesthetized his with alcohol. Barbara Streisand forgot the lyrics to a song once and then dealt with incapacitating stage fright for three decades.

Fortunately, such severe cases are not the norm. I believe that the sooner one deals with a stage fright issue, the less likely will be the length and severity of the problem.

So... I intend to explore both my own and others' views and strategies to deal with performance anxiety, and try to shed some light on it for all of us.

I am not prone to stage fright. This doesn't mean I'm strong or special, because I have other issues such as no-sense-of-direction which means I can't get around the block without a map, a friend navigator and/or a gps system! Three times I really did have stage fright were the first times I sang on the Grand Old Opry and stood on that ancient circle of wood, the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and Farm Aid, where they forgot to introduce me and I had to introduce myself in front of thousands of people. When I played these places again, I didn't experience near the anxiety as the first time.
So... here are the first three remedies I will offer that can help defeat stage fright:

• Don't tell anyone you're nervous unless you know they won't play into it with you. If some well-meaning clueless person asks if you are nervous, (like RIGHT BEFORE YOU GO ONSTAGE, ARGHH!!), dismiss them as quickly and kindly as possible and later, tell them never to ask you that again! And certainly, don't do it to anyone else. Now you know.
• 
  
• Play as much and in front of as diverse audiences as possible. As vocal coach Jennifer Rutherford says "perform whenever and wherever you can." This can include friends, your pets, your mirror! The more you do it, the more natural it feels to your automatic nervous system. And don't fear the second time will be as hard.
• 
  
• Deal with stage fright as soon as you know you have it. It's like depression... don't ignore chronic conditions; they may grow out of control.
  

Please chime in with your comments. I'd like to know as I write these posts:

• Where have you had the worst case(s) of stage fright? What were the circumstances?
• What has worked for you that you could share?
• What has NOT worked for you?
• What are you afraid of - dig down and be specific - that you think brings on your performance anxiety?
  

Next post... how stinking thinking can cause stage fright, and how you can change the pattern.