JAVS Spring 2020

Health & Wellness Strategies for Handling Performance Anxiety Jessica King

Click, click, click. No carpet? Really? Click, click, click… This room is dead...you’ll have to be LOUD . Berlioz is first. Breathe. Close your eyes. Breathe. Bow to the string. Start vibrato. Breathe and draw the bow YOUR LEG IS SHAKING! SHAKING! HELLO, YOUR LEG IS SHAKING!!!

brains misconstrue these modern-day pressure situations as matters of life and death and catalyze the production of cortisol. Cortisol is a hormone that affects our ability to think and retrieve memory. Both cortisol and the corticotropin-releasing hormone increase anticipatory anxiety and suppress the production of testosterone. In the absence of testosterone, approach-based behavior declines, and our attention focuses on the negative aspects of a situation, leading to suboptimal performance, a.k.a “choking.” Indeed, most performers’ biggest fear is choking. We can only attribute failure to choking, however, if we have previously established that we are capable of successfully and consistently performing the task at hand. In our case, public music performance. Three factors impact performance: These factors function as a system; a change in one prompts a change in the others. To perform under pressure, you need to be able to regulate physical arousal, think clearly, and execute the task at hand. A major step towards commanding these factors is understanding the difference between working memory and procedural memory. Working memory is located in the prefrontal cortex and assists in tasks reliant on deliberate thinking. Located in the cerebellum, procedural memory is responsible for coordinating the motor activation needed to perform complex actions and aids in executing these actions effortlessly and automatically in pressure moments. Unfortunately, these are the very same actions linked to early human’s survival. Working and procedural memory are correlated in numerous complex tasks, including playing an instrument, which is first learned 1. Physical Arousal 2. Thoughts 3. Behavior

THANK YOU.

Click...click...click…

We’ve all had moments similar to this. In fact, this is just a small snapshot of a recent major orchestra audition of mine—the first one I’d undertaken in over two years. While performance anxiety has always crept up in my solo performances and auditions, this time was different. Never had I experienced shaking, one of the most common complaints I’ve heard from peers and colleagues. Thankfully, rather than send me spiraling down into the rabbit hole of despair, this recent development inspired me to reflect with clarity, insight, and inquiry for myself and my fellow performance anxiety sufferers. Performance anxiety creeps up in high pressure situations, whether it be auditions, juries, competitions, or general performances. Performance anxiety affects us in three ways: physically, mentally, and emotionally. In turn, high pressure situations share three common attributes that pique anxiety and cause us to underperform under pressure: 1. The outcome is important to you. 2. The outcome is uncertain. 3. You feel that you are responsible for, and are being judged on, the outcome. For prehistoric peoples, these moments were correlated to survival; of course, today, in most high-pressure situations our literal survival is not at risk. Still, our

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 36, No. 1, Spring 2020

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