help with extreme fear of playing

[etcetra]

I am sure some of you know my background already but I am jazz pianist  and I stopped performing altogether from tendinitis 8 months ago.. I wanted to take some time of to rebuild a more healthy injury free technique. I've focus a lot of relaxations while i am playing and I made a lot of improvement since then. Playing the piano no longer was painful, and i felt like i was finally on my way to a healthier way of playing the instrument.

So i decided to go 'sit in' at one of my friend's performances. They were kind enough to let me play couple of songs with them. All then sudden i had this uncotrollable tension, everything felt stiff, i felt like everything i learned in that 8 month completely went out of the window, i was playing just like i was when i was struggling with tendinitis... and 30 minutes of playing nearly crippled my hand.. for the first time in 8 month i felt this sharp pain in my hands ..and that tension and pain was still there even hours after the playing.

I realized that the problem is no longer technical or lack of preparation. I know this is a difficult issue to really find answer to, but what can someone actually do? seems like its a turning point in my life, i have this thing i need to face and overcome, and if i can't, i may have to give up playing.. and its not just piano playing, i know that whatever fear i have, i will come up some where no matter what proffession, and I will spend my life no being able to realize what i can really do. I just dont know how i can move on from this, this fear, this thing that cripples me every time i play

I appreciate anything you guys can tell me. thanks

[danny elfboy]

Can you provide a video of yourself: standing, sitting, walking and playing both slow and fast pieces?

I might analyze your motions, symmetry, posture, thightness and other faulty body uses and maybe suggest alternative body uses to avoid tendonitis. Tendonitis at the piano doesn't have only to do with excessive tension in the arm muscles but also with shortening of the neck muscles, tightness in the shoulder blade area, head jutted forward and more.

[etcetra]

Danny Elfboy,

Thanks, I will try to do that once i get some kind of equipment to record myself on a video.  I've been meaning to write you back about your last post, but posture seems like such a tricky thing.  I  often find myself  tense somewhere in my body without noticing.. sometimes the tension is my shoulders, sometimes i notice that my legs are tense for some reason, i would.  I guess the problem is that i dont know how to play relaxed, I dont know what that's supposed to feel like.. anyways thanks for your input.

[keypeg]

Etcetera, I seem to remember that there was a time when you played with liberty and you were at ease.  Then you went to college (?) and the tension and insecurity set in.  Now you have trained for 8 months and you got rid of the tension until this last incident.   Do I have these things correct?

If those things are correct, then you have "ease" and "non tension" programmed into your body as your earliest memory - it's there somewhere.  You would also have the tension programmed in there, as you found out.

You * can * play without tension, because you have been doing so recently.  I'm wondering if something like this happened: When you played among those people maybe you got tense like in the college days.  Or maybe you were less attentive.  Your body slipped into the old habits, and that was familiar ground so it fed into itself.

I have a crazy thought from there.  Since you have been playing tension-free, get back into that and do that for a couple of days, memorize what that feels like and how you were doing it.  Then put yourself into a stressful situation in your imagination but briefly.  Play, imagining that it's stressful but also that your body will remember the recent tension-free time.  Hold on to that as much as possible but stop if tension sets in.  Up the ante by having  a friend come over as your symbolic stress inducer (let him in on how he's helping you) and try to play 10 minutes in front of him stress-free.  Over days or weeks increase that --- sort of like reprogramming yourself.

If you are capable of falling into old stress-habits, that then become bodily habits, maybe you need to learn how to come out of them as soon as they start.  You have a memory in your system of stressfulness, and non-stressfulness.  How can you move from one to the other?  If you know that you can get out of it and back into your new normal stress-free playing, then that in itself reduces stress ... because the worry of it happening and you becoming helpless is a stressful worry.

This is a gut feeling idea and might be totally wrong but I'll dare to write it anyway.

[etcetra]

Keypeg,

Yes you are mostly correct about my background.. except to say that there were few moments in my college life where I was able to play freely.  I remember in particular this coffee shop gig i did with my friends.. I felt very safe playing with them, and I am still surprised how fluid i sounded in that gig.

And I definitely went into this panic mode when i started playing last night.  It was strange i was not able to focus at all .. it's like i was in a panic mode. I've been working a lot on playing even with the metrenome and all that went out of the window, it was strange i felt like i was under a spell as if i was a completeley different piano player

I will try the things you mentioned, i agree, a lot of it is about retraining myself, and remembering what playing is supposed to feel like... thanks.

[keypeg]

Etcetera,
Would it make sense if I suggested that what happened is a good thing?  You see, you have experienced ease when you were young, and then trouble that you couldn't get out of during your college days.  And during the last eight months you found a way out of trouble and back into ease - right?  Before that you were not in control of such things.  When you knew ease in pre-college days, it just "happened" without your deciding "ah, I will have ease", and you also did not choose the "trouble".  But in the last eight months you did something deliberately that got you to lose that tension. That gives you a handle.

So last night you experienced the contrast between the two worlds, and you'll never have to scared of it happening, because it already did.  Now you get to start having control over the situation so that you can deliberately create "ease" when the "trouble" wants to kick in.  That's a control you never had before - hence it was a good thing.

It seems that the physical tension comes from whatever negative feelings that happened in the college scenario: whether it was pressure, criticism, feeling less adequate or whatever.  So that's one of your handles - replace with positive feelings, opposing images or whatever.

But the physical tension is also a reality.  If you can "unhook" the physical habits from stressful situations, with stressful situations being the *learned* trigger, and replace it with relaxed physical habits .... two handles?

[lostinidlewonder]

When you perform just remember you are not doing a 20 thousand seat audience in a stadium, with TV cameras all watching you. The people are not there to pick at your mistakes, the people wont even care if you stop playing because you can't carry on.  If any of them do that is pretty shallow and useless. None of them pay to listen to you so you shouldn't feel bad about a sub optimal performance.

The thing is that probably less than 5% of the population can say they study a musical instrument and consider sticking with it for the rest of their life. Of that a small percentage ever think about performing. Those who listen to a performance should enjoy it no matter what standard. If you haven't paid for the tickets to see the performance you really should have ZERO expectations. So in reality you have nothing to prove, you are not being examined or marked for your performance, your life will not change drastically with your performance no matter how good or bad you play. In the end we just kick ourselves and say, come on why can't I wake up and see that what I am doing is supposed to be fun! Often it is a deep rooted psychological reason for it. High family expectations, high stress jobs, when you feel you are supposed to win win win. Submit to that fact that we are human and imperfect and not object that we can chisel into an image of what we consider perfection.

[danny elfboy]

But the physical tension is also a reality.  If you can "unhook" the physical habits from stressful situations, with stressful situations being the *learned* trigger, and replace it with relaxed physical habits .... two handles?

The problem is that it becomes a reversed vicious cycle.
We learn to use tension and wrong posture as a flawed response to fearfull, stressfull or overwhelming situation. Eventually the situations pass but we conserve the tension and the posture. At this point are the tension and posture themselves creating new situations. For example crippling posture and extreme tension can cause anxiety, panick attacks, phobias, self-consciousness, shiness, inhibition out of the blue and not viceversa anymore. At that point if you attempt to heal the feelings you fail and they come up again but if you cure the tension and posture the feelings go away.

[keypeg]

Danny, I suggest a two-prong attack, alternating between feeling-situation, and physical ease vs. tension.  There is an association where one triggers they other in either direction.  You can actually use that association in reverse to your advantage.  I have done so when I was in trouble.  It does not mean not addressing the physical - but addressing either.

I am also noting that Etcetera used to play with ease and without tension, and it was a psychological situation at college that caused his playing to deteriorate.  It means that his system already knows how to play tension-free, and there is an associative habit that teaches or triggers the tension.  This is why I suggested the two-prong idea that I did.

[etcetra]

keypeg & danny

Thanks.. its hard to say whether the physical posture is the cause of mental tension or vice versa, its like saying whether the chick or the egg came first.. I want to work on both but I think i am going to take couple days away from the piano until I am ready to play again.

The main problem i had in college was that I had a teacher who overemphasized finger strengthening exercise.. on top of that I was playing in a jazz ensemble.. I was playing on this poor upright,  and I was told to play louder all the time.. The band played really loud and it was just impossible to match the volume of the trumpet or drums.  I was litearally encouraged to bang on the piano and that was not enough.

Looking back it was a horrible experience, I realized since then that pianos are ALWAYS miced on a jazz performance.   And I was not ready to play that loud in the first place.  those expereince seems to be affecting my playing still, as if somehow i am conditioned to play like that even now.

[danny elfboy]

Looking back it was a horrible experience, I realized since then that pianos are ALWAYS miced on a jazz performance.   And I was not ready to play that loud in the first place.  those expereince seems to be affecting my playing still, as if somehow i am conditioned to play like that even now.

You just took a new habit.
It take 21 days for a new habit to form and replace the old one.
That means that if you're not used to have breakfast and force yourself to have breakfast for about 21 days it will become automatic. Viceversa if you used to have breakfast but skip it for about 21 days skipping it becomes automatic and you might also develop nause at the thought of eating first thing in the morning.

The first about body use is first of all remember or reminding the body of what good use is and then just do it. It is of no use to do a stretch and an exercise to improve posture and then walk away with the same wrong posture or with tension. It doesn't make sense to exercise and stretch and then have poor body use the rest of the day. The point about exercise is that it shouldn't be something you do when stopping all the rest and before going back to what you were doing, but something intrinsic in every activity you do . Whatever action you do when supported by good body use becomes an exercise in itself. Doing crunches is useless if you spend 15 minutes in the gym doing them then you sit up sluching and go back home with your hips tilted back and your stomach expanded. Learning how to position the abdominal fascia on the other hand allow whatever action including sitting, walking, going upstaits, sweeping, cooking to become an abdominal exercise to keep you stable and symmetrical.

[rc]

IMO, most of the time it's the mental tension that comes first.  A simple thing that helps me (sometimes) is to take a moment when I sit at the bench, just to orient myself, get myself mentally prepared.

My experience with rock drummers was always difficult, they were alway FAR too loud...  Drowned out everything else -> pushing every other instruments volume up -> creating high stage volume that bleeds into everything that IS mic'd = mushy uncontrollable mix.  I have a good friend who's been a sound guy for a while, and he tells me that his boss has become comfortable over the years with yelling "TURN IT %*$! DOWN", and sometimes will just turn off the drum mic because there's no point in mixing it.

In all the years, I've only heard one local drummer who had good control of his dynamics and was able to fade into the background for verses and other peoples solos.  I've always assumed jazz drummers might be different, but I suppose it could be a problem common across the board.  Most seem to just accept that drums are loud, but damnit, consider the poor audience that gets hearing fatigue after 10 minutes!  Besides that I care too much for my own hearing to put up with that ever again.

I don't mind a bit of skin-bashing, but not all the time!

(/rant)

...I also think it's probably old habits creeping back in.  A short break is probably a good idea, wouldn't want to get injured again.  But knowing to look out for it, I think after a couple more sessions you could have a handle on it.  Your determination makes me confident of it

[etcetra]

RC,

I think the biggest problem with drummers is that they usually don't listen to everyone else.. a lot of them are oblivious to the fact that they are playing loud... it's tough because you feel like you have to match their sound & overplay and it can definitely be a source of tension.  On the other hand when you have a good drummer, you realize you can do miracles with dynamics.  Drummers can do so much with texture.  I think what really helped me on that one gig was that I trusted the people i played with, I just wish i could have the same kind of trust and confidence no matter who i am playing with.