Author: ohsuzan
Date: 2009-02-06 20:48
<<but the type of reaction I'm talking about is someone who cannot play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in front of a group. It has nothing to do with the difficulty of the music or the preparedness of the performer>>
I can relate to this. When I first started taking (clarinet) lessons (after many, many years of wishing that I could have lessons), I absolutely could not play in front of the teacher. I could play in front of people where "it didn't matter," but if I thought someone who knew what they were doing was hearing me, I would freeze, or shake, or weep. This went on for years.
I still find it a little difficult some times, when playing for the first time in front of a potential critic. For me, the cure has had to do with gaining a healthy degree of personal humility (aka, willingness to be wrong), and realizing, as I said once before, that it was really not about me, and that I needed to get over myself.
But I know that there are people who are, for example, so shy that they turn very red and totally clam up or become inarticulate when confronted with even a very benign social situation. This is not garden-variety stage fright. This is an emotional issue, based on who-knows-what past experiences and choices.
I think we choose to behave certain ways because we believe the behavior protects us from some (real or imagined) stress or conflict. If the behavior is effective for us, we repeat it in other stressful situations, until it becomes so ingrained and habitual that it is part of our personalities. When the behavior stops being useful (or starts being counter-productive), we wish we could change, -- but we often don't at that point a) remember why we started doing it in the first place, and b) have no clue how to change it.
This is the sort of issue that cognitive behavioral therapy is good at addressing.
Susan
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