What can we really learn about stage fright from the research?
Have you tried performing over and over again to somehow slay the stage fright dragon?
Doesn’t work, does it? The results speak for themselves.
We’ve heard that advice though, haven’t we?
“Yeah sure,” we think, and we’re right.
Sure, if we’re an up and coming performer who practices for hours a day for years, understands advanced practice techniques, has an amazing growth mindset and teacher, learns lots of music for contextual interference over weeks, plays in orchestras, ensembles or bands, on and on, we would get better and better and more and more confident starting at a young age.
Is that the type of person who gave us this advice?
That is not us, so that advice may not apply to us.
That is not most people, including many aspiring performers who may someday be a pro, from the bedroom rock guitarist to university music majors.
A truly magical part of the art of teaching is figuring out how to offer solutions to everyone, not just someone, and there is a lot of noise out there.
So, we turn to the research, and there are actually some intriguing answers if we know how to find them. We should be careful who we choose to be our guide.
A lot of the noise out there is the dressing up of science in phony hyperbole for marketing purposes,. One researcher calls this, neuromyth (Hardiman, 2011).
We can use plenty, a plethora, a titanic amount, an amazing supercalifragilistimazingwonderbunk of accurate hyperbole, IF the application of the science TO US can back it up.
Let’s see if we can clear anything up about that small sliver of advice – just keep performing and it will get better – it is powerful to know.
Here is an excerpt from a supplement to my little practicing book, Cracking The Talent Code, called Stage Fright; What it is and what can be done about it.
5
Exposure Therapy?
This idea is something that comes up frequently and can be a sore topic. I, like a lot of people, was told to just, “keep performing and it will get easier.” I, like many others, just kept doing it over years and it did not get much better. I would walk off stage disappointed and then get back to work, practicing like crazy, hoping that next time it would be better. It wasn’t.
In most common practice, exposure therapy in these terms involves whatever difficult music on which we are working—music that is at the edge, or even beyond, our current abilities—and then going on stage to perform it. This progression, or pacing, of exposure therapy is called “flooding,” which the APA describes as , “using the exposure fear hierarchy to begin exposure with the most difficult tasks.” (2021)
This particular application of exposure therapy is a great example of how we get advice like “just keep performing,” take it, and then declare it does not work. Let’s take a closer look.
The APA does say that “exposure therapy has been scientifically demonstrated to be a helpful treatment or treatment component for a range of problems,” including social anxiety disorders. (Ibid)
So, a qualified professional could make a diagnosis of social anxiety disorder with a performance-only specifier and suggest one of several therapies, with exposure therapy being one of them. Assuming we haven’t been guided by qualified professionals, where did we get our advice from in terms of managing stage fright? More importantly, did we do any background research to see how these tactics might work? I know I didn’t for the years I tried it.
It turns out there are several types of exposure therapy with different pacing. One frequently used pacing for social anxiety disorders is “graded exposure.” According to the APA, this particular pacing involves constructing “an exposure fear hierarchy, in which feared objects, activities, or situations are ranked according to difficulty.” (Ibid) In simpler terms, that means the exposure begins with mildly difficult exposures that increasingly move toward more difficult ones.
I’ve never heard anyone talk about use of this incremental pacing for stage fright, yet it is recommended by the APA, and based on what I know about learning, it would likely work. As I describe it, think about who would actually try this technique. Not anyone I know (and the good news is that there is a much better way).
6
Graded Exposure for Stage Fright
Pick a short piece of music or three that are several levels below our current ability. If you are a formally trained musician, then maybe pick some études that are taught to late beginner students or things that you can almost sight read. If you are a popular musician, then select a basic 12 bar blues, Louie Louie, or the chords of a simple folk song. Spend some time genuinely working up those pieces to sound consistently good. Make sure the whole performance you are going to do lasts no more than three to five minutes (you can do less if that time frame sounds uncomfortable).
Once you’ve gotten comfortable with that performance, go to an open mic, a studio class or lesson, a guitar or clarinet society meeting, or any other pressure type performance situation where you would perform your more difficult music in front of others and give the best performance you can. Give this performance in as many places and to as many different audiences as you can. Then work up some new material that is at the same difficulty level and go through this process again.
The idea is the music will be so easy that you will perform pretty competently even though you are nervous. Previous success will create confidence in future success, and each successive new program you present will get easier to perform. Once you have built that confidence, you can move on to pieces that are slightly higher in difficulty levels and longer in length.
Who among us would do this? Even if we wanted to try it, would our pride allow us to do so, or would we feel the need to keep trying to perform more substantial music? If the honest answer is that we would be embarrassed playing like this in front of people, then what other things like foolish pride might get in our way without our conscious knowledge? This speaks to mindset (Dweck, 2007) an important part of the learning picture.
Interestingly our education system is supposed to be grounded in graded exposure. We start students with little pieces and have them perform those little pieces in lessons and showcases. Those students who are taught, or figure out, how learning really works will take these easier steps seriously and master them, which helps them give confident performances along the way. Most of us, however, “play and pray” in much of our practice and hope everything will be okay by the time we get on stage. At the earlier levels of training, this approach can, at least, get us by. But by the time we decide to deal with stage fright in any serious way, we are usually years into this hole.
In any case I know of nobody who has seriously tried any other exposure therapy than flooding. No wonder we are so frustrated!
There is a much better way. Change the way we practice in ways the science shows us, but nobody seems to know how to teach that properly or comprehensively.
Gregg
American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA.
American Psychiatric Association (2021, Nov. 30). What Is Exposure Therapy? https://www.apa.org/ptsd-guideline/patients-and-families/exposure-therapy.
Dweck, C. Mindset. (2007). New York, NY: Random House.
Hardiman, H., Rinne, L., Gregory, E., & Yarmolinskaya, J. (2011). Neuroethics, Neuroeducation, and Classroom Teaching: Where the Brain Sciences Meet Pedagogy. Neuroethics, 5(2), 135-143.
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