Dr. Stagefright, or How I Sort of Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Performance Anxiety (almost)

A long-winded personal history of being scared on stage

Okay. Let’s get right to it: I don’t believe in free will.

Whoa, yeah. A bit much? Okay, maybe I’ll roll it back a bit.

I… don’t believe in free will because of my childhood?

Hmm, that actually seems more intense. Sorry. Ok. Baby steps.

Look, this is a long one. So get off the ride now if you’re not at least a little interested. Besides, I get it. You’re obviously free to draw whatever conclusions you need to based on your own experience and knowledge, and that’s totally valid. Maybe free will gives you meaning. That’s cool! But to ME, this point of view - my confronting, possibly preposterous rejection of something we all have embedded in our collectively reified view of reality - makes the most sense. Nonetheless, I am all for anything that might help you personally get through, whether or not I personally believe in it. Well, within reason. Rejecting free will, strangely, helps me get through. And I’ll explain soon. But first I should note: I am NOT a doctor or therapist (or even an academic - I didn’t even go to university! Idiot!) and that you should NOT take this sprawling screed as advice, medical or otherwise.

Anyway, it’s probably a little late for introductions now that I’ve damned myself as a free-will absolutist crackpot. But, either way, if you are here you probably already know I am Zack and that I play drums in PUP. You might be surprised (maybe not?) to find out that I have long suffered from my own, pretty intense form of performance anxiety. Which, in spite of this being my 6th draft of this essay (perfectionism), still kinda feels strange or silly to say. Especially because the sense I get, at least from the interminable chatter of my inner critic (therapy talk), is that it’s pathetic to be beholden to such a feeling, especially in its association with something so unserious like playing music. Let alone going about attaching such a drastic and consequential statement about the nature of consciousness to it. Especially as someone who CHOSE performance as their career. But, it’s something that has held a lot of sway in my life, and has led to a lot of pain, as well as important personal discovery. So before you and your brain punt me into the trash heap of histrionic motormouths, let me lay out my case.

So, let’s start again. How about: I don’t believe in free will because every time I get on stage, my sense of how ‘in control’ I am is always outmatched by the gripping fear of failure - a fear embedded deep in subterranean truths of an unpredictable childhood. Routinely feeling like I have been thrust into situations that are fundamentally worth-defining, regardless of any demonstrably concrete indicators to the contrary. Sometimes it can feel like I am totally subsumed in catastrophic thoughts. Either absorbed in threats from the future I can’t clearly see, or otherwise in the painful re-litigation of my past mistakes. The distracting, overriding and intrusive narrative that my current circumstance is beyond my capacity. Voices calling up from a void of self-worth - lamenting that I stay vigilant, as I cannot afford to be misunderstood or, worse, imperfect. Not again, lest I be punished from without or within. And though no one else sees me the way I see myself in those moments, no sort of objectivity can penetrate a very real, long-earned armor that envelopes and throttles my every action. An armor tempered in compensatory injury. I can either be perfect or nothing. There can be no negotiations. So I am left feeling hopeless, and isolated.

Wow, a rigorous appeal to pathos. I know. But, despite flying in the face of brevity and good taste: I must further elucidate. You see, in addition to wanting to cover all my bases, I have also never been fully able to give myself the benefit of the doubt (even in terms of what I think I have personally experienced emotionally). A history of being gaslit will do that to a person. So to illustrate my broader point, in addition to my dour characterization of what ought to be an otherwise joyous event (live music - hooray), I want to get into some of the behavioural science. I’ll try to be brief. But first I gotta say: wow! Oversharing, overexplaining and doubting my own perceptions? You’re getting the full experience of being in my brain today.

Anyway, here’s the rhetorical appeal to academic authority: In short, research shows that a person’s early developmental environment is a major influence, with genetic and epigenetic factors responsible for the balance, on cognitive development. This includes the development of the foundational framework for a person’s understanding of, and relationship to, the world. As well as the ways in which finite neurochemical processes modulate their perception of that framework. Which, most practically for us right now, includes the environment's resulting influence in forming foundational strategies for personal safety and survival in that environment, which later become near subconscious, primordial or otherwise largely unseen drivers of behaviour. In short, my own developmental environment led to the formation of certain reflexive, seemingly irresistible behaviours and character traits that helped me cope with scenarios in which I didn’t feel safe, emotionally or otherwise. Traits that now extended through adolescence into my adulthood. Startlingly deterministic from a behaviour standpoint.

(Oh and, for the reasons above, and if I may invoke some secular-humanist / materialist philosophy, it seems that free will - as a popular frame of reference for human behaviour - becomes a continuously diminishing slice of the “explanatory pie” for the emergent property of consciousness. Almost in a ‘God of the gaps’ sort of way. Whoa! Operation Jargon-Storm over here. Anyway, because of this, I find it hard to square free will with my view of the world, in a similar way that I find it hard to believe there’s a God. They are both popular, magical ideas in the context of materially observable nature that we have taken for granted for a long time - so long that they go unquestioned as a belief.)

But, the upshot of this is, strangely, that it provides quite a sound rationale for being kinder to yourself. To understand that your behaviour is ultimately downstream effects of downstream effects, kind of lets you off the hook a little bit. It leaves a little more room for understanding, and a little less for self-punishment. I would also be remiss if I didn’t note that this has major implications for society at large. But, I won’t get into that here. My tangential verbal diarrhea notwithstanding, there are whole-ass books by scholars and academics that go to great lengths to explain these concepts (Sapolsky and Feldman-Barrett among them), so I have no hope of distilling it here. Though, I will list resources, academic, therapeutic and otherwise, below. But, it is exactly this chain of reasoning that provides a framework for understanding myself and gives me a path toward healing. So, why is this relevant to performance anxiety? Well, ultimately anxiety is a behaviour, or at least has influence on behaviour, even if it isn’t outwardly visible. And is implicated, therefore, by developmental experience. It is also, potentially, implicating for a person’s future, potentially inwardly injurious, behavior.

If you're like me, then for reasons beyond your control, you faced some difficult stuff growing up. Without getting too in the weeds, I will say that while I have consistently had many caring people in my life, and those who have done their absolute best to nurture me best they can, I also faced early development in challenging circumstances that had me sacrifice my agency and authenticity to earn safety. Circumstances that taught me that I am not enough as I am to deserve attendance or regard, that I was inherently burdensome, so I should either hide myself (avoidance), or do the most (perfectionism, self-criticism, self-doubt, hesitance) to ensure that at the very least I don’t insult those around me with my presence. It made me fear my own actions for the threat of punishment. The behavioural consequences of this for a person are, understandably, notable. I became self-doubting, self-critical, reserved, not wanting to be seen for the ‘rough hewn mistake’ I embody. Why should I be freely permitted to insult those around me with my incompetence, without rightful punishment? Behaviours taught by a history of responsibility being mislaid on a younger version of myself. Back to ‘teach me the lesson’: that I’d better be more hesitant next time, for my own protection. As result, a brain can become quite accustomed (like in a fundamental ‘this is the basis of all reality’ sense) that these behaviours will keep you safe existentially. It’s these ‘high stakes’ that make the cycle of these painful coping methods feel so normal. Because your brain’s main job is to keep you safe. Even if it causes you unrelenting pain, aspiring to safety feels normal - whatever form it takes. And then, avoidance/isolation has you keep all the resulting pain of ‘self-punishment and self-abandonment in the name of survival’ to yourself, so you aren’t a burden to others. Cyclical & self-feeding.

These are pillars to a behaviour like performance anxiety (and its, shall we say, “enthusiastic steward” perfectionism). They are also the basis to a whole host of mental health disorders. The type of psychic seed that blooms, in the presence of other maladaptive behaviours, into something like CPTSD (Complex Post-Traumatic Disorder). Especially in people prone to sensitivity or empathy. These factors, in particular the rejection inherent to an unpredictable developmental environment, can also worsen and hasten undiagnosed ADHD - and all of its characteristic traits. Like it did for me. Suffice it to say, when you are put at risk, through neglect or abuse (emotional or otherwise) early on in your life, before your brain is capable of handling that risk, you start to develop methods of survival. Behaviours that become your casual way of being. Things like people-pleasing, or avoidance or dissociation. Invisible and toxically self-reinforcing. You learn to ‘do the most’ because you never feel like you are enough. You develop a fear of, and deference to, others opinions - real or presumed. You learn to change or hide who you are and how you feel in order to not be abandoned. You become hesitant and indecisive - untrusting of yourself to not fail those around you. Doubtful, for example, of how you might handle the next fill, or transition to another section of a song. The problem is, in performance, hesitating or avoiding the next passage isn’t an option. So, the distraction of this self-doubt ensures a mistake. But, you push through, and repeat the process, with the surmounting emotional consequence of repeated self-punishment. You develop a hypervigilance for threats to your belonging. You are absorbed in trying to predict these threats, and learn how to hide or writhe in inauthenticity to avoid them. And, again, because this process is meant to be protective, however emotionally injurious, your brain doesn’t register it as a threat. It’s baked in - an automatic fall back. Particularly in moments of anxiety.

What’s worse, is that lack of sleep or rest (a major impediment to resilience in the face of depression or anxiety), is a major factor on tour. It also tends to worsen symptoms of ADHD. Added to the cumulative effects of routine re-traumatization (through exposure to the main contributor to performance anxiety: performing) you can see how living with this is at least a bit of a distraction. If not practically unsustainable without doing further damage to your mental health. As is probably obvious, this has had major implications for my relationship to myself, and to my work, and to the people around me in general. I am sure it has cast me as grumpy or dispassionate or difficult or downright unreachable in some people’s eyes. And, you know what? Fair. Nonetheless, I am not going to get better by continuing the cycle of self-punishment.

So, again if you are like me, given only rare glimpses of your own inherent value, you might do well to look for outside reasons to be understanding of yourself - in particular your ‘mistakes.’ For me, learning about psychology and the brain has always been a pathway for me to try to help myself. In the sense that, where I lack an in-borne capacity to justify being nice to myself (self-compassion - thanks positive psychology!), I look to science/academics to give me something ‘concrete’ in terms of justification. I know. A little robotic. But, when there’s not a lot to grab on to inside, you do what you can. A kind of behavioural scaffolding not uncommon in therapy. Basically, I have always known what being nice to others looked like. Just never myself. So I used that frame of reference and tried to turn it inward. And, ya know, I really need it. I know because I have loving people in my life that have reflected to me that I can be downright cruel to myself. And it took a long long time, because of my personal history, to develop enough agency to believe I deserved any better. So, in this way, a ‘betrayal’ to free will feels like a pretty concrete and logical reason to justify being more forgiving of yourself. Or, at least, a way to allow a less punishing place from which to view your own behaviours. Or ‘mistakes’. Either way, showing yourself any kind of understanding is really the best first step to relating better to yourself as a person.

To that end, to say I don’t believe in free will is not to say that I think human nature is rigid. It absolutely isn’t. I more mean that I don’t think free will describes human nature very well.

As Lisa Feldman-Barret (who is an author on human behaviour, and a Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at Northeastern University), recently said about our nature in her appearance on the podcast ‘Diary of a CEO’: humans make meaning. And meaning, ultimately, is the basis of survival and connection. Today, this behaviour means this much safety. Tomorrow, in another situation, this other behaviour means a different amount of safety. I am safe with this person, and not with that other person. I am safe (or not) on my own, for one reason or another. So we learn, adapt, change. I mean, obviously, people change all the time. To borrow and generalize from the idea of AI as a field, the base code of our layered, interdependent behavioural algorithms is, by its nature, amendable. The programming of your brain adapts by adding conditions to apply to new scenarios. It’s how and why you learn - whether your brian is straight up storing information from experience for later use, or behaviour is modeled by caregivers that itself, in turn, influences your experience and what you learn. We look for, and learn new meaning so we can stay safe. So while we look, maybe we - people like me with a dearth of inlaid value or regard - ought to actively be looking for tangible experiential proof of our worthiness. And thus prove that we are now safe from those influences in your past that would have you believe otherwise. In short, whether you are given an experience, through trauma say, or you give yourself an experience (love or therapy or the music you come to associate with a certain time in your life) then the way you interact with the world, and experience it on that basis, changes too. Which, I am sure you are glad, gets me to my point. That behaviours, like anxiety for example, are amendable through our own intervention.

Finding a way back to more fulfillment in music was definitely a motivating factor in all this. I have always known, in my depths, that I had to work through my issues because of just how much playing and creating music means to me. But, to my advantage (especially in matters of mental health) I also knew, somehow, somewhere inside that how I treated myself wasn't quite right. And this gave me the curiosity to look for why that might be, and what I can do about it. I owe this ‘advantage’ (or faith, yuck) to a few key factors. My mom - who modeled compassion and empathy to me. Julia - who gives me the consistency, patience and acceptance that was missing from the "thin soup" of regard that I, by and large, lived in growing up. My friends (and yes, band mates) - who routinely pushed me to question my overwhelmingly negative view of myself. And my therapist. She's great.

I mention my therapist, for a reason. And I recognize that therapy isn’t an affordable option for everyone. I get that. Do it if you can. But there’s lots you can do, especially with a good support network, without one. Having people you can lean on is crucial. Community is crucial because healing is relational. Training yourself to trust others again, to have confidence that they can handle the ‘unvarnished’ version of yourself. To actively recognize the strength offered by those around you. Because of this and my own dogged, probably toxic, self-reliance, I was able to make a lot of progress without yet ‘going to therapy’. This is not ideal, but was serendipitous in a way, because I wasn't even ready to receive therapy, in that I wasn’t able to justify self-care to myself up until the time - coincidentally - that I could afford therapy. I guess the real point is that you can’t truly receive care until you can admit that you need care. Humanize your own suffering - something you may have long taken for granted. For me, this was specifically in recognizing how, through emotional neglect and a lack of unconditional regard growing up, I couldn't see myself as worthy of care. But because of those around me, and the supportive people I have had in my life, I had leave to question my self-punishing behaviours, and find a path to self-compassion through education.

Finally, there’s a major component that has helped me. And I know that this will sound like another commercial courtesy of ‘Big Mindfulness.’ But hear me out, because cognitive and behavioural therapies based in mindfulness have empirically-based methods and results. They are also not strictly spiritual. And they are accessible, with great starting points for people who cannot yet afford to pay for full-time therapy. You will need to do a lot of reading to get to your favourite ‘flavour’ or combination of flavours. But if you can learn to care about yourself enough, in order to do the work to find what is best for you, it can really help. The key is tending to parts of yourself that were neglected during development by targeting and healing, or otherwise developing them. But first you need to identify them and their injury. Aspects like self-regard, agency, and self-efficacy. Looking for and inquiring as to what created your self-doubt, or self-criticism, and trying to meet those aspects with compassion, sympathy, and understanding. Allowing them to fully express themselves so you can fully understand them. The thing is, this needs to be an authentic process because your brain, you know, the thing that makes you YOU, is obviously gonna be able to see through the bullshit. So, if you don’t believe it, it won’t work.

I know. This sounds like flighty feely bullshit. It kinda is. That’s the point. Being softer with yourself than your pain and inherited self-concept has allowed you to be. I’m telling you, as a born cynic and skeptic, because I do it and am getting better: compassionate self-inquiry works. It’s BECAUSE behaviours like anxiety develop due to factors beyond our control that we can work to understand them and show ourselves some grace in response to the resulting behaviours. This isn’t self pity. It’s active, intentional grace and unconditional understanding of our pain. A concerted re-conditioning through the lens of self-compassion, that gives ourselves what we lacked early on. An effort in building agency and a felt sense of efficacy, and a relationship of trust and refuge with yourself, that ultimately helps disarm maladaptive anxiety and put it to other good work, or to rest. Offering misdirected primordial safety behaviours the opportunity to feel safe. To see that we no longer, in the present, face the early threats to our emotional or physical safety that we once did. I am telling you. It’s a lot of work. But if nothing else: learning to care about how you yourself are doing, in and of itself, is a huge step.

Personally, the thing that finally helped me buy into the efficacy, and see the benefits of cognitive therapy (after doing CBT for a long time to no real effect) is the combination of a couple things. As has possibly been established, I am very ‘materialist’ in the sense that anything concrete, as grounded and factual as possible, will give me the best chance of connecting to a concept. Especially something that feels this ‘flighty’. I needed to know that there was a physiological basis for this. In Lisa Feldman-Barrett’s book “How Feelings Are Made” she describes a physiological process called ‘interoception.’ A real, concrete, neurological phenomenon that reflects the physiology of how we feel. The American Psychological Association defines it as ‘the ability to be aware of internal sensations in the body, including heart rate, respiration, hunger, fullness, temperature, and pain, as well as emotion sensations. Many people consider interoception to be an additional sense that is critical to the way we understand how we feel on a moment-to-moment basis.” Feldman-Barrett describes it as the physical sensations we apply abstract meaning to in the form of affect, or emotion. Effectively, the physical feeling of a mental feeling. And what do mindfulness based therapies train? Awareness of those physical feelings and how they connect to our emotional state. To become aware of those feelings is to be able to begin to understand them, where they might come from, and how you ought to treat them in a productive, constructive way. Effectively, how to treat yourself when you are made aware of how you feel. So, I ask, in the context of perfectionism or self-abandonment: how would you treat the pain of a friend who might be lamenting their own felt worthlessness? And why aren’t you treating yourself that way? Why aren’t I treating myself that way?

I know. A simple answer. But definitely not an easy one. This isn’t a full picture, anyway. It's more an abridged journey. But, keeping curious helps. There are surprising options everywhere for self-discovery. Building this relationship to yourself and your emotions is a path through so many difficult things. Therapies like Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Internal Family Systems were my way through. And being able to access interoceptive awareness also made books like Chris Germer’s ‘The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion’ of great use in finding a way of not solely being self-punishing. And to anyone saying perfectionism is nearly interchangeable with goals of excellence, I’ll save you some time: no it isn’t. Miss me with that toxic shit. Excellence involves a concrete and conscious, self-compassionate curiosity, employing non-damaging self-talk to encourage yourself toward improvement. Perfectionism is personal progress held hostage by self-punishment, the fear of failure that leads to that punishment, and the shame that results from that failure. It is, by definition, unproductive. I am ready to abandon it, as soon as I can. And I think the only real path forward is pretty obvious. Honestly, is there a better antidote to innate perfectionism, pernicious self-doubt and self-punishment, than the act of self-regard inherent to actively searching for any reason, at all, to not treat yourself that way? I’d say probably not.

Resources that helped me write this, but also in general - incomplete and in no particular order:

The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion by Chris Germer

No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz

What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo

Both “Complex PTSD” and “The Tao of Fully Feeling” by Pete Walker

Both “The Myth of Normal” and “Scattered Minds” by Gabor Maté

How Feelings Are Made by Lisa Feldman-Barrett

Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer

The Dad Rock That Made Me A Woman by Niko Stratis

Hustle & Float by Rahaf Harfoush

Refusal of Work by David Frayne

The Limits Of My Language by Eva Meijer

Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl

Chaos by James Gleick

Both “Behave” and “Determined” by Robert Sapolsky, as well as his Stanford lecture series - available for free on YouTube

David Foster Wallace’s Commencement Speech to Kenyon College in 2005 (“This Is Water”)

Being Well with Forrest Hanson (Podcast)