Interview with Deborah Hart – Stage Fright & Performance Anxiety

17th May 2020, I interviewed Deborah Hart. Deborah is a counsellor for musicians. She was also a musician herself, playing the French horn. We had a discussion about all things stage fright and performance anxiety. You can watch the YouTube video above and the key questions and Deborah’s answers are laid out below.

Let’s start by telling us a little bit about yourself and a little about your background.

So currently I’m an unemployed professional musician because there are not any performances.. probably at least until 2021 before we start. Before we shut down, I was playing French horn in Shrek in Melbourne which was so much fun and did have some work coming up in the later in the year. I was meant to be playing French horn with the Victorian Opera. I was meant to be going to West Australian Symphony Orchestra.. They were my bookings, coming up but I’m pretty sure nothing is going to go ahead in the next year.. but.. I’ve been doing a little counselling.. just general counselling. People stuck in isolation, some couples and some families struggling with the circumstances, so I guess it’s great for you to be able to share that with people when you’re experiencing it firsthand as well.

When you’re not working with your music and you’re not working with your counselling, who is Deborah Hart?

I’ve got a beautiful family.. I’ve got a husband and two daughters, 21 and 19 and I like to walk.. I like to watch crime shows in Scandanavian.. I read a lot.. I try to read a lot of therapy books, research on performance anxiety.. I knit.. I vacuum.. I scrub the walls and stuff like that.

In your musical journey, what led you to start playing the French Horn?

Well in a high school, I was already playing the cornet and the trumpet. I started playing the cornet in a brass band when I was 10 years old and before that I really wanted.. I don’t know, I remember sort of begging my mother for piano lessons but it wasn’t a part of our culture our family to have music lessons, so when the band advertised the new members and it was free and it was literally at the end of the street. My parents were okay with that so I joined the band and I just loved being in the band. I loved the sense of community.. I love that the music was challenging but not too challenging that I didn’t really have to practice my at the time. You just turn up and you learn together and you learn as a group and then you go out and do concerts and competitions and just that lovely sense of community that I didn’t really have anywhere else.

My parents weren’t churchgoers. We didn’t have a big family so being in the band was as my home was my spiritual home and when I got to high school it was a public girls school in the western suburbs of Sydney. There wasn’t much music happening but in year 8 so the second year of high school, we had this wonderful woman turn up.. An American woman named Debbie and she played the French horn and I remember I didn’t actually change to French Horn until I was about 16 and started learning from her and she was a great music teacher. She got me into lot of public education music programs that don’t seem to exist in Victoria. There’s a much greater Victorian New South Wales public music education system music camps. I used to collect the Opera House a couple of times a year and then I thought I’d become a music teacher but I was encouraged to pursue professional Horn playing by my teacher in about the second year at uni.. and she first got really angry with me and said why don’t you practice what why aren’t you doing any of this practice but I’m telling you to do and and I said oh you know I don’t know and he said you know that you quite you know if you practiced you could become a professional.. No, I think he said what do you want to do with your life and I said I’d really love to be a professional musician but you know I’m not good enough and he said of course you’re good enough.. You know just one of those little moments in your life you just go, “oh okay”, well that’s what I wanted to do but I didn’t think I’d be good enough.

When you had that sense of community and you had all that ability where did your stage fright come from?

Well way back when I was 10 years old I remember going in my first competition and I remember standing there, thinking I was going to fall over, because my knees were just shaking so much.. So the physical symptoms, but also was the quality of my playing. It basically disappeared. All the things that I practiced.. All the ability that I had in the practice room just disappeared. It wasn’t really an issue.. I think I did pretty well actually most of my teenage years because of being in the band. You’re doing a lot of solo playing. You go into competitions.. You’re playing and performing all the time and even at the Conservatorium.. So I went to the Sydney Conservatorium.. Even there, you’re performing all the time and it’s not really an issue and took for me, at least until started to do professional auditions and actually that same horn teacher, he encouraged me to do these auditions and sort of assumed that I would get one get one of the jobs. I would walk in and just completely fall apart.. Yes, I would know my fingers would fumble.. my, there was I, I couldn’t play the right notes. I would get lost.. I would just look like a deer in headlights and again the quality of my playing was not.. I can see myself in this screen, so my quality of playing was at one level, and then I’d go into audition and it was under the screen tear.. Embarrassing and you know that’s the problem – is that not only did you play badly, but you feel so ashamed that you played badly and that’s when it sort of starts to snowball.. It’s the memory of the shame and then the anticipation of another audition, which in the end the anticipation is worse and the shame is worse.

How did you move to the point of working with people to help them to manage stage fright for themselves?

That’s a very long road becaus that’s almost a 30-year road journey. I suppose even 25 years ago 25 or 30 years ago, I was already thinking I was already looking into the research about what’s helpful to musicians and there were a couple of books around. There was a little bit.. tiny bit of research about it. There was some helpful stuff, I mean basically practicing so if you practice and you’re especially in classical music.. that you can play what you need to play almost automatically so it almost is a conditioned response that it just comes out so you’ve listened in to the music, you’ve practiced it a lot, you’re very fluid with it even before I started doing this work. It’s called exposure therapy so you basically are exposing yourself to the situation. You do it in steps, so you run up and down some steps to get your heart racing and then play the piece for instance so you’re getting familiar. That was before I discovered Act For Music, so that was really helpful just having those skills before I discovered his stuff.

“.. you don’t control your thoughts.. it’s not your fault that you have these negative thoughts and to me, that was the light bulb moment.”

About 10 years ago I went to a psychologist because of general mental, ill-health. I was in a job that I wasn’t happy with and this, the work situation, it was not very healthy. I felt I was really struggling with a PTSD or depression or anxiety and I went to see this psychologist and at the time I had been working really hard at practicing and auditioning and trying to get out of that job. Basically trying to get another job and so I’ve been working really hard what I thought mentally on processes that were around at the time and one of the first things she said to me in the session was that you don’t control your thoughts or you can’t or it’s not your fault that you have these negative thoughts and to me that was that was the light bulb moment. I immediately thought this would be helpful to musicians to know that it’s not their fault then when you when you walk towards something that you care about and that you love this stuff happens inside of you. The thoughts, the sensations, the urges, the behaviours.. That it’s not your fault that that this happens.. That’s so powerful.

I gradually got mentally better, so I took three years off playing and then with the purpose of trying to see if ACT could be used with music performance, I start applying again and then I did some auditions. I worked professor again and then I became a counsellor.. and here we are.

Would you be able to take us through you would do generally with your clients through Act For Music?

There’s three parts to the process, aware, allow and act, so being aware first off is aware of what your mind is doing, what your body is doing, how you’re playing, how you’re sounding, so just building a skill of paying attention. Also another part of that aware, is aware of who you want to be.. How do you want to play.. how do you want to sound and how does music serve your life. What is it about music that will serve your greater purpose. The second part is allow. Allowing is a realising what is under your control and sorting out. For me, it was allowing a dry mouth or allowing shaking or allowing the urge to run off stage and not do it.. Allowing all the thoughts.. I’m not good enough.. I can’t do this.. everybody’s watching me and criticising me. Building a willingness that this discomfort comes with the territory.

My supervisor, his favourite phrase is this is the ticket that you buy to becoming a musician.. This is the cost.. this is the price of being a musician. It is these feelings, these thoughts, these urges. The third part is the acting. It’s because at acceptance and commitment therapy is a behavioural therapy so it’s asking you to behave as if you were the person that you want to be. If I want to be a great colleague to the people I work with, how would a colleague behave? Well, a colleague would be brave and because I’m thinking about when I’m playing first horn in a horn section, how would a colleague, that I admire.. how would they behave? how would they perform? Would they back off from playing that particular phrase loudly and without conviction. There’s a really helpful part of the acting part it’s it’s actually a really good word ‘acting’ because you’re almost acting as the person that you want to be and a really helpful part of the acting part is how can I offer my music to other people? What am I trying to communicate? what am I trying to give people?.. rather than ordering about me and me being fabulous and me getting the job and me being perfect. So that is ACT in a nutshell.

How would you recommend that people struggling with stage fright, start to go about working through the issue?

I’ve actually run a two-week mindfulness course a couple of weeks ago and that’s the first step so building mindfulness skills, in order to serve music.. not so that you’d be more peaceful, or that you have some sort of transcendent experience, but to build the mental skills to be able to turn your attention away from what is screaming at you. I think that’s a part of the acceptance and as we move towards this performance your, body starts screaming at you to run because especially if you’ve experienced performance anxiety before you perceive the stage as dangerous, your body memory that you can’t get rid of will perceive the situation as dangerous and your body is talking to your body and your brain is trying to look after you so that’s the first part – noticing.

before noticing the urges, noticing the distracting symptoms that are telling you to get out of there or this is dangerous and that takes practice that I mean I I did lay miserable for six months when I started practicing this stuff. I did eight shows a week and it’s really difficult to practice this stuff because even though cognitively I knew how it worked, my body just (hadn’t caught up).

To answer your question this is this is how it works but it’s not easy and it takes a lot of practice, that we build the skill of noticing the urges and choosing our behaviour.

How has your approach changed things you started working in the counselling capacity?

You approach things differently now. When you go and play music you’re feeling.. well I’ve gotten the fear out and what I found is a really helpful process that is now a whole world of therapy on its own. It’s called compassion and even over the last 10 years as I’ve started to do this work, developing my own compassion for myself. I think I was very hard on myself.. very.. I set high standards for myself that weren’t particularly healthy and would beat myself up when I wasn’t perfect.. Even when I started doing the therapy. It’s a normal response.. This voice is also trying to protect you. It’s trying to say “watch out. You’ve got to be good”.. so developing this internal kindness. When you notice you’re speaking it to yourself like that, to be able to respond to yourself with genuine kindness that it’s okay, you’re doing your best and even in that moment where you’re about to play, something and you terrified that you’re going to screw it up if you can develop.. If you can bring that voice into that moment. I experienced that a couple of years ago I was on tour in China with West Australian Symphony Orchestra and I had just met this wonderful woman. She was playing second horn to me and she’s a very kind person and I’d never worked with her before so I hadn’t really experienced what it was like to work with her. I had some little solos. There’s a big concert in China and she said to me, “you’ve got this” and that’s my voice. When I’m struggling and when I think I’m going to screw something up. There’s a lot of science around anxiety and compassion and the anxiety.. the agitation and the distress and the soothing capacity of kindness and if you can give if you can notice your anxiety and soothe it it actually lowers your anxiety. If you can develop that kind voice in yourself, it’s actually quite magical.. not easy, but quite magical.

Why do you think that some people struggle more with performance anxiety than others?

I think the work that I’ve done in the last couple of years has been interesting for me because I am a musician as well as a counsellor, so I when I work with clients, they sometimes play in the sessions and, while I try to switch off my musician brain it’s really hard not to notice so when people have expectations of what they want their music to be or what they want to get from their performance. I’ve noticed a lot of people are out of touch with either expectations of professional music or out of touch with whether they’re ticking the boxes that they need to take. What I’ve noticed is a huge gap, especially in professional music.. an understanding of what’s expected of a professional musician in terms of accuracy, intonation, the right notes in the right place. A lot of people don’t seem to know what the expectations are.

If you have someone who is a performer at the moment and they feel like and they feel like they are one of these people, where can they go to set their expectations right?

No doubt it’s in our classical music tradition.. That’s the job of their teacher but I’m wondering if people can hear it.. I don’t really know what the answer is.. One thing is is that they can record themselves and this is something else that people that I’ve noticed in my work is a real resistance to recording themselves and with listening back and we have these devices now that I didn’t have and I would have died to have the ability to. I had a a tape deck with a cassette in it that I could (record myself with) so I suppose relatively I was lucky or I recommend that you could record yourself with but you’ve got these wonderful high quality devices that you can just put on your music stand and press record and watch yourself and also educate yourself especially in classical music to what is a good musician. What does it sound like? What the difference between me and then these people who are successful, if that’s what you care about. If you want to tick those boxes and get that job being able to go ‘oh okay, they played black like this and when I play it it sounds like this’ and being able to articulate and you just zoom in and and describe the differences. People really struggle with that.

Where’s the line between looking at what other people are doing and comparison-itis?

I would ask and it’s a very common metaphor we use.. It’s not the thing it’s your relationship to the thing so comparison.. Why are you comparing people? Why are you comparing yourself with that person? Is it to get information and are you holding that information lightly and gently or am I am I using that information to beat myself up with? so you know that person has this, so they’re playing that scale and you can hear every note beautifully.. You know every note is ‘that sounds really lovely when they do that’ maybe that’s what I want to do too and you can start with the awareness. Start walking in that direction but not beating yourself up with ‘I will never get there, they are so much better than me.. I’m a piece of crap’. It’s how you hold that information and how you use the information and I suppose the question is why are you comparing yourself with somebody else? what’s your intention? Is it to beat yourself up? is to is it to make yourself feel bad? Is it in order to learn something? To see what you can learn and see if it will help you move towards what you care about?

Do you think it’s in our nature to be fearful in this kind of way or do you think it’s a learnt behaviour?

A couple of things.. We are social animals. We cannot survive, well technically you could now, you could live in your apartment and you could Uber and you could never go out of your apartment, so you could technically not see another person, but in reality there are people doing those things for you so we are social animals. We can’t survive alone we need each other and we’re wired to depend on each other. One of my favourite phrases is ‘A lone monkey is a dead monkey’ so we are wired to care what other people think of us and that’s another acceptance piece, that no matter how much I don’t want to care about what the audition panel thinks of me or what the people listening to this broadcast (think of me), I can’t switch that off and so I need to be willing to step into that. That I care what people think.

We learn this behaviour by a society in a way that we grow up. The other part of it is about music. Our first experience of music is a baby in our arms and the baby making noises and the mother copying those noises. I’ve got a beautiful little clip of a baby copying the.. no it’s the grandmother copying the baby and then it’s just sort of in this lovely loop and there’s oxytocin.. so there’s a bonding chemical that’s that set off when we’re making music together. There’s another aspect of it there’s sort of choral aspect.. singing with people.. Making music together.. Our hearts start to beat together we breathe together and again more of the hormones probably oxytocin.

So music functions to join us together and to work together, but what happens when we stand up in front of other people on our own, it’s a completely normal response to feel stage fright. You to feel anxiety because if they don’t like us and this is what our wiring is telling us.. If they don’t like us, they will kick us out and we will die. As we get older and we stand up and in front of other people and we have this experience that’s unpleasant, this the physiological and emotional response to standing up in front of other people. Every time they do it, it escalates. I mean, some people don’t have that but mainly it’s a human response to respond in this way and the more you give into it and run away from it and the more you believe it’s ruined your performance, the more strongly we don’t want to have that experience and it makes it worse so it’s a completely normal response.

You would believe that a majority of us at some stage would be experiencing this. The more you invest in music and music performance and the more that you want it the more that you’re self-identified as a singer or as a musician or the more skin in the game you’ve got, of course the worse it is because you’ve got so much depending on that note.. on making sure you get that and making sure you don’t ruin that. The more you care about and the more you want it, it’s all tied in together and the guy that mainly started ACT, Steven Hayes.. his quote is ‘We hurt where we care’ so if we care it will hurt.

From your experience, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that you’ve seen any people that struggle with stage fright have?

There’s a couple of people out there advertising their services for performance anxiety and they use words like bulletproof and other winning type words. That sort of idea that I’ve got to be really strong class.. I’m gonna master my nerves I’m gonna get rid of this thing that I don’t like, get rid of your anxiety. I think they’re very counterproductive and that’s where I was before I came to ACT.. That there’s something wrong with me because I can’t get strong enough or I can’t stay centered enough or I can’t. I’m still having these thoughts of I’m not good enough for so I think that sort of stuff is dangerous that you can become indestructible through your own efforts and I think those I could use learn the helpful for misconception for instance.

Where do you think we learn those ideas from?

Cultural.. top it up.. be a man..

I do read something helpful about that stuff when you’ve got to get through something that’s going to kill you and you know you have to get to the other side of the moat and to get away from the crocodile.

There is something helpful about toughen up.. keep on going.. but I would say that in the performance of music sometimes it’s not helpful to have these preconceived idea is that that we will become bulletproof.. that we will become ironclad.. tough.. by some sort of process that people are selling.

Why do you think that so many musicians that do struggle from these fears continue to play music year after year even though they’re struggling so much?

Well in my case it was my profession and I had a job and I had a mortgage and I was a musician.. This is what I do seriously.. it was my identity and my ego and so that’s why but it’s also much more than that.. I mean in my ego I really did love playing music and I really struggled to find that most of the time but there were moments in the last thirty years where it was absolute bliss so it’s like these tiny tiny moments of bliss.. Maybe they’re worth it.. maybe the struggle is worth it for these tiny little moments of absolute sense of flow and transcendence that we experience and I think that’s what keeps people walking through the struggle.. It is those moments of ecstasy almost and I would say connection with others.

If we have a look at our society.. both the culture of music and the culture of Australia, what kind of changes do you think made to support musicians with in terms of stage fright and performance?

What I’m doing right now is an attempt to support musicians being in a part of a big part of the ACT community. This community where just the therapeutic stance so even with your therapist. Your therapist will say ‘I’m struggling with the same thing that you are’ and that beautiful validation.. that there’s nothing wrong with your client. Your client is struggling with the same things that you are and I’ve been to a lot of conferences.. I’ve had a lot of supervision I’ve I’ve had a lot of therapy and the idea that I’m no better than you so I am very open about talking about this as much as I can. I mean sometimes I don’t talk about it because I am struggling and I’m just got to get through it so I just shut down and I focus on what I have to do. I don’t tell everybody that I’m struggling while I’m struggling. If I’ve got a performance and I’m worried about something, I will basically stay focused on her and I won’t tell everyone about it but I will be quite open after the event that that was hard and what was hard about it and what came up for me and how I dealt with it so that’s one thing that we can be open about how difficult this is.

I mean, if we could teach mindfulness skills in primary school and there is a huge movement that is trying to that knows the benefit of mindfulness skills.. teaching concentration skills.. teaching focusing skills.. teaching compassion skills that will be a start and then building it into training for musicians.

What would you say right now if there’s somebody watching this who is on the brink of giving up.. They love their music but they’re experiencing that fear and the bodily reactions.. What would you say to them right now?

Would it be too outrageous to say have a break.. put it away and see what that’s like.. put it down and maybe stop struggling with it for a while and notice when you put it down.. when you put it away.. I mean to be quite frank my life is quite fine without music. I mean, I don’t practice my horn I don’t I don’t feel like I’m missing it. I do miss Shrek a little bit that was a really fun show.. I must admit and I get a bit nostalgic about that but I go back for three years. I gave up in the past.. I’ve stopped playing when I had babies. I didn’t play.. I mean it’s quite nice to stop having the struggle. Well you know that’s therapy though, isn’t it? Would it be okay just to put it down for a while?

When you’ve had your breaks and you’ve come back have you felt like it’s been different when you come back?

Yeah, actually my husband has a good phrase ‘when you put it away for a while, you forget your bad habits and then you can start afresh’. If I was working with someone, I would really clearly help them articulate why they’re picking it up again and is very clear about who they want to be when they’re picking it up again and sort out what’s under your control because a lot of time people come to me just before an audition and they come and they want to get the job and you have to ask well is is it under your control? What they think of you.. whether they’re going to give you the job or not and being able to tease out what is under your control and what isn’t and being able to let go of you don’t know.. whether they’re going to give you the job or not, you can’t be whole it and so who are you going to be with that knowledge?

Is there anything else that you’d like to share about performance anxiety or about anything else?

As you can see I could talk all day about all of this stuff. I’ve thought about this for nearly 50 years. Why can I do it here but I can’t do it here it’s to me that’s the central question.. Why and how can I fix it? I feel like I have an answer.