Klarinet Archive - Posting 000798.txt from 2002/10

From: Anna Benassi <acb@-----.is>
Subj: [kl] audition nerves
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 04:46:53 -0500

Perhaps I'm opening a can of worms, but does anyone have experience -
personal or hearsay - with propranolol (commonest trade name is
Inderal) for performance anxiety? It was recommended to me before my
music school auditions - recommended by my doctor, actually, as I was
undergoing extensive thyroid hormone therapy at the time and subject
to physical and emotional swings I couldn't control. It helped
greatly, and I have used it on and off since under performance-type
stress. For the uninitiated, it's a blood-pressure and heartbeat
regulator that does not dope you but helps calm the physical symptoms
accompanying stage fright - the shaking hands, trembling voice, etc.
The better educated among us can certainly provide a more
scientifically accurate description of its function. Another thing I
have been told my MD is that Prozac has a similar effect on
performance anxiety and can be used symptomatically when one is under
stress of this sort.

Another thing I have wondered about is the use of psychological
technique (perhaps in conjunction with drugs, perhaps not) to control
performance/audition anxiety. A friend of mine was doing a master's in
sport psychology, and I attended a class with her and bought the
textbook on a lark. The subject was the use of imagery and the like to
project a strong belief in your own success onto the situation in
question - in the case of this class, the situation was the elite
athlete trying to optimize his or her performance. It occurred to me
then that performance anxiety is really an interdisciplinary problem
and that performance psychology can be an interdisciplinary form of
treatment. It even occurred to me to design a college degree program
in performance psychology for performing artists, but I never did. I
was much more interested in the clarinet itself.

But the question behind this digression is whether anyone knows of
such a non-pharmaceutical approach - or combination of approaches - to
performance and/or audition anxiety.

Gott hop. Children beating each other up on their day off school.

Anna

PS: Yes, it is pretty here in Iceland (which is greener than
Greenland, by the way). The people are doing their dag-nab blue-eyed
best to crud it up, but they haven't won yet. Nancy, if you make it
here again, let me know.

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