Klarinet Archive - Posting 000806.txt from 2002/10

From: "WILLIAM SEMPLE" <wsemple@-----.com>
Subj: Re: [kl] audition nerves
Date: Wed, 30 Oct 2002 08:18:46 -0500

Is this the standard beta blocker?

I live in Boulder, CO. Believe me, if there is a non-pharma treatment to
anxiety, one can find it here.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Anna Benassi" <acb@-----.is>
Subject: [kl] audition nerves

> 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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