Tag: mental health

Elena Urioste & Melissa White: Your Unique Body, Voice & Healing Process

Posted on May 12, 2021 by - NewMusicBox, Podcasts and Discussions

Violinists and yoga instructors Melissa White and Elena Urioste share why they founded Intermission Sessions, a program uniting musicianship, movement and mindfulness that emphasizes individual focus on one’s own physical and emotional needs. We discuss the impact of abusive or unsupportive teachers and methodologies in conservatory life that strip power from students instead of inspiring self-care and compassion. Elena and Melissa share their experiences of performance anxiety, how that has shifted in the pandemic, and the stigma surrounding injury in classical music. Lastly, they offer insight into what yoga and meditation has taught them about their own musical voices and mental health.

Cindy Lam: Voicing Trauma and Connecting with Your Inner Child

Posted on March 24, 2021 by - NewMusicBox, Podcasts and Discussions, Uncategorized

Cindy Lam

Pianist and Music Educator Cindy Lam shares her experience of PTSD, initially triggered by surviving a car accident at 18, which temporarily threatened her musical capabilities, and heightened in 2020 by the loss of her father to a rare genetic Prion disease. Cindy discusses her ongoing healing process, the importance of sharing one’s story, finding joy through teaching and musical expression, and feeling strong enough to momentarily step away from music to focus on her health. She emphasizes the need to connect with our inner child, both to inspire creativity and to ultimately heal trauma. Lastly, Cindy shares her view on the stigma surrounding mental health challenges within Asian and Asian-American circles, and reflects on the escalating hate crimes against the AAPI communities and their possible impact on mental health.

Sarah Kirkland Snider: Illuminating Anxiety, Creative Process & Nurturing Support

Posted on March 10, 2021 by - NewMusicBox, Podcasts and Discussions

Sarah Kirkland Snider standing in front of a lake.

Composer Sarah Kirkland Snider shares her experience with Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder and how they impact her creative process. She unpacks the shame and stigma surrounding mental health challenges, the toxic myth of the tortured artist, strategies for coping and silver linings of hypersensitivity, and the importance of nurturing support systems within our families, universities, and professional communities.

Creating Safe Spaces and Asking for Help

Posted on February 24, 2021 by - NewMusicBox, Podcasts and Discussions

Julia Adolphe at the Piano

LooseLeaf NoteBook provides a safe space to talk about mental health challenges and modes of healing, including therapy, medication, and at-home self-care practices, as well as examining the complex and often misunderstood relationship between mental health and creativity. I share why I started this project, and how my composition professor, Steven Stucky, created a safe space for me to talk during our lessons, ultimately enabling me to seek professional help for my anxiety at the age of 19.

Listen to Julia Adolphe’s most recent LooseLeaf NoteBook podcast, as well as earlier episodes, on Spotify:

Listen to Julia Adolphe’s most recent LooseLeaf NoteBook podcast and all of the podcast content hosted by NewMusicBox on New Music USA’s SoundCloud page:

Introducing LooseLeaf NoteBook – A Podcast on Creativity and Mental Health

Posted on February 10, 2021 by - NewMusicBox, Podcasts and Discussions

Photo of Julia Adolphe inside a computer monitor with EKG and headphone graphics underneath

Two powerful feelings arose in me at the age of nine: the desire to write music and intense, overwhelming waves of anxiety. I began exhibiting daily obsessive-compulsive behaviors and my parents wondered if I should see a child psychologist. They also purchased a small keyboard for me to play, and it became clear that writing music made me feel better. I would get lost in the dreamworld, spending hours playing and creating songs and trying to figure out the relationships between the notes. Music was fun and freeing, and I would forget in those moments that I felt anxious in other areas of my life.

My obsessive-compulsive tendencies quickly subsided, but I still remained a very anxious child. Most mental health disorders don’t fully manifest until around twenty-years old, and at nineteen, I began experiencing panic attacks that brought me to the hospital. At this point, I was in college studying composition with Steven Stucky. I remember one lesson with him where I was struggling to articulate my musical ideas. My mind felt clouded and my heart was racing. He stopped me, looked me in the eye and said kindly, “Take care of yourself,” and made it clear that I could leave the lesson early if I wanted to without an explanation. I understood in that moment that my creativity was suffering, that I was suffering, and that I needed help.

There is a myth that a tortured psyche creates great art, and the classical music industry still subscribes to ideal of the mad genius.

Julia Adolphe

Mental health, emotional vitality, and creative potential are inherently linked.

Julia Adolphe

I was diagnosed soon after with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, considered a mental illness, and have been in therapy and on medication ever since. There is a myth that a tortured psyche creates great art, and the classical music industry still subscribes to ideal of the mad genius. This belief system initially interfered with my healing process. While I was open to therapy from the beginning, I was terrified that medication would dampen my creative impulses. Even more dangerous was my belief that my suffering somehow made me a more powerful artist, and that through the process of healing, I would lose access to the frenzy and adrenaline I associated with sleepless nights of composing.

It took years to find the right medication and dosage, but I quickly learned that my medication functioned like a volume knob, lowering the noise interference of anxious and oppressive thoughts, clearing a path for me to form my musical ideas as well as feel freer in my life. Through therapy, I began to examine my childhood desire to cure my anxiety with my music and the many complex ways that manifests in my adult life, and ultimately have developed a healthier relationship with my creative process. I also had to learn to reconnect with that childhood joy of writing, which we can easily lose once music making becomes entwined with the stressors and realities of professional life.

I have wanted to share my experience publicly for a long time, but finally felt ready last summer when I launched LooseLeaf NoteBook. In the midst of the pandemic, national protests against systemic racism, increasing threats of domestic terrorism, and going stir crazy in my living room, I started the podcast at first simply as a creative and emotional outlet. I yearned to connect with friends and colleagues about the collective toll this period has taken on our mental health and creativity, and to remain active and present within our community while so many of us are forced to wait, or worse, are struggling to survive or function.

Highlights from Julia Adolphe’s LooseLeaf NoteBook interviews about creativity and mental health in the context of the pandemic, featuring composers Jessie Montgomery, Billy Childs, and Samuel Adler, pianist Gloria Cheng, librettist Aiden Feltkamp, percussionist Sidney Hopson, and high schooler Jaden Gaines.

Through interviews and solo reflections, LooseLeaf NoteBook uncovers the connections between mental health and creativity, with a focus on nurturing artistry, emotional intelligence, and self-care. I share insight into my creative process and journey towards mental health alongside guests from across fields to provide a space for open dialogue and paths towards healing through artistic self-expression. While my focus is to help de-stigmatize mental illness within the arts, I use the terms mental health and creativity broadly to include any conversation about caring for one’s own emotional wellbeing while embarking on creative work. I also strive to feature guests who can speak to experiences beyond my own, spanning from how racism, xenophobia, and homophobia impact one’s psyche to the emotional and creative challenges of parenting or caring for an ill family member.

There is so much more to being a productive, thriving artist in our field than we learn in conservatory or discuss openly in our professional lives. It is my belief that mental health, emotional vitality, and creative potential are inherently linked. In my experience, the healthier I’ve become, the more powerful my music becomes because it is a more authentic communication and reflection of who I really am and what I need to express.

I could not feel as healthy as I do today without the support and my family, friends, and professors who have guided and comforted me along the way. I cannot overemphasize the power that Steve Stucky’s simple gesture, expressing his wish that I put my health before my musical studies, had on me during those formative years. I hope that, in turn, LooseLeaf NoteBook provides a safe space to discuss openly how we take care of ourselves and cultivate healthier creative practices, ones that allow for spontaneous inspiration as well as healthy boundaries, for pursuing artistic excellence while caring for our wellbeing – practices that support us as artists, as contributors to society, and as humans.

The Aftermath

Posted on August 27, 2019 by - Articles, Columns, NewMusicBox

Girl with balloon, graffiti on concrete

People often say that your life and your experiences affect your art and your inner voice. I don’t know if that’s entirely true. I think it’s more accurate to say that your experiences connect the dots that had always been there. At least, for me, that was the case.

Out of everything that has transpired over the past three years as I have processed the end of an abusive marriage and rebuilt my life in music, the most important thing that happened for me was reconnecting with myself. It was in reconnecting with myself and learning to listen to my intuition, my inner voice, and my own vision that I was able to rediscover and accept who I was, who I am, and who I will become.

As a result, the control over my writing has become profound. I have started to value myself as an artist where before I only saw deadlines and assignments. I started turning down projects that I didn’t see value in as a citizen-artist. I started only taking projects that I felt connected to.

For the first time, I have started requesting compensation for work.

For the first time, I have willingly talked to the press when asked.

I have started to attend conferences, to network, to sell my work the way that I should have been doing for years.

All of these things have led to more opportunities in the past three years than I had ever hoped to obtain. I have come to realize that conservatories can teach counterpoint, orchestration, instrumentation, and style, but what they can’t teach is what life taught me in some of my lowest moments.

When your life falls apart, you learn to build a new one. Likewise, when your vision collapses, you learn to see things through a different lens. Having to get out of my own head required a change in my artistic vision. I’m not quite sure why this was. Maybe it is because I was not allowed to express myself for so long, maybe because as a queer victim of domestic violence I felt completely alone, maybe its nothing more than my old defiance, but I have begun to embrace citizen-artistry with a new found defiant zeal.

Being voiceless, being treated like a non-equal, and facing discrimination for so long has caused me to want to address these topics in my work: inequality, discrimination, interpersonal violence, and giving a voice to the voiceless. Including Fear no more, my work addressing domestic violence and consisting of Sháa Áko Dahjinileh (Remember the Things They Told Us), Sonetos del amor oscuro and Ice Shall Cover Nineveh; all of my latest works have dealt with “voiceless stories” in some way. Evocations, which will premiere this year in Baltimore and Mexico City, uses integrated film and chamber ensemble to speak to the rampant inequality in Latin American society. In remembrance of the 40th anniversary of the first diagnosis of HIV/AIDS in North America, I am working on three works which deal directly with texts by and about HIV+ artists and writers. Death Will Lift Me By The Hair, my concerto for harp and large ensemble is based on fragments by the poet Tim Dlugos. Lessons from Provincetown will seek to preserve the stories of queer leaders, drag queens, and activists who passed during the 1980s HIV crisis by setting their stories to music. Mise en croix, which is being written for Peabody Conservatory’s Electronic Music Department will also deal directly with this topic.

It was ironically in the wake of a tragedy that I rediscovered my artistic direction. While I had been able to regain my voice, I knew that I was lucky. People do not always escape domestic violence. I was fortunate to do so alive, and I felt a responsibility to use my art to bear witness, give a voice to the voiceless, and call towards justice and social action in the small way I can.

Rediscovering myself was not only artistic, but personal as well. I lost over 100 pounds. I found a healthy, loving relationship with a wonderful man. I’ve settled into my life in Mexico and planned out my next two seasons. I still have hard days, but they are becoming few and far between.

As with any move, six months after relocating to Mexico City I am still working my way through boxes. Just a few days ago I opened a box that hadn’t been opened since 2016 and I came across three notebooks that I used for sketching. By chance, two of them happened to be for Remember the Things They Told Us and Sonetos del amor oscuro. I flipped through them, expecting to laugh at the poor choices I’d made when my life was in chaos and to be self-congratulatory about ultimately rejecting the material. Instead, I was actually quite shocked to see what, even subconsciously, made it into the final versions of those two works.

Underneath these notebooks I found my treasured score for Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring, which I hadn’t held since I was packing up my Baltimore apartment three years prior with a sheriff’s deputy standing guard to ensure my safety.

Appalachian Spring was the first work of symphonic music that I ever heard live, at the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra when I was 7 or 8. I had known in that instant that I wanted to be a composer.

I reflected on these findings for a moment. Even before I became who I am today, even before the last three years, part of me always was artistically present, and that was visible to me in these works.

I put on my favorite recording of Appalachian Spring and read along with the score, reflecting on who I was, who I have become, and remembering the things this work had told me.

Admitting I Had A Problem

Posted on August 21, 2019 by - Articles, Columns, NewMusicBox

Pathway to sunset

When you know something is wrong but can’t figure out what it is, you try anything to fix the problem.

When you also suffer from crippling anxiety, then you may find yourself too scared to deal with the problem head-on. At least, that’s the vicious cycle I found myself in.

And most importantly, sometimes the problem that you think is the root cause is nothing more than a symptom.

I had not been able to make the moves or get the traction in my music career that I had wanted. I thought a change of scenery would do me good.

This was confirmed for me when, in August of 2018, I isolated myself in a hotel room in Billings, Montana, for a week to complete my oratorio for the Indianapolis Opera.

I was raised Roman Catholic but converted to Eastern Rite Catholicism in college, and when David Starkey at Indianapolis Opera had asked me for a piece, I had set a few guidelines for myself:

  1. I wanted to do a piece that reflected my Hoosier upbringing
  2. I wanted to reflect my love of Orthodox chant
  3. I wanted to use a Hoosier poet

I fell in love with the work of Kenneth Rexroth because of his innate spirituality, which I connected with on a very personal level. “Ice Shall Cover Nineveh” is particularly interesting to me. Morgan Gibson, Rexroth scholar, writes that “Ice Shall Cover Nineveh” is “more explicitly prophetic than the other cubist poems in this volume. The title alludes to a legend that the Gurgler Glacier once covered Nineveh because its citizens did not feed a hungry pilgrim who was said to be one of the Magi. The calm of mountain solitude is broken by the thought of the inevitability of death for both individuals and civilizations. In trying to make sense of such loss, the poet recommends the kind of natural piety that sustained him through periodic disillusionments. Thus the poems of In What Hour move agonizingly through historical struggles towards a transcendent view of humanity in and beyond perpetual cycles of nature.”

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It was this natural piety that gave me a cathartic week in the Montana backwoods and allowed me to finish this work. As I did, I reflected on how far I had come in my healing after the end of my abusive marriage and how far I had to go. I came to realize that I had to make more changes to deal with my depression and anxiety.

In January of 2019 I followed my gut on a two-year-long dream and decided to move to Mexico City. I was looking forward to starting over, new and anonymous, in a beautiful city that I love with all my heart. I naively imagined I would set up in my apartment, begin writing immediately, and life would fall into its place.

I was wrong.

While I had treated the symptoms of my PTSD and worked on accepting the loss of my marriage, I had never dealt with the underlying issues of depression in a medical way. I had lost weight and regularly exercised, but nothing else seemed to help.

“Me da una caja de sertralina, porfa.” One simple sentence completely changed my life. After a bad fight with my partner, and despite a previous terrible experience with psychiatric medication, I started taking Zoloft, an antidepressant, to help me regulate my moods and panic attacks.

A week later I sat down at my desk and began sketching my next work. I only got about ten seconds of music, but it was a victory beyond victories for me. For someone who was so tied up in and so consumed by anxious thoughts surrounding my writing and my work, being able to sit and focus seemed near impossible. And yet, I was able to sit and focus for a time, long enough to focus and complete sections of a work that I had been trying to write for close to nine months.

When I shared with a few people that I was starting this drug I was told a bunch of horror stories about how I’d never be able to write again, that I should find a “music counselor” (whatever that is), that Picasso/Seurat/Rexroth/Beethoven/Insert-name-of-an-artistic-juggernaut never medicated themselves, they turned their anguish into art, or any number of horrible things.

At first I responded.

“The truth is, many of the juggernauts of the past drowned themselves in opium and alcohol and every other substance under the sun trying to regulate themselves.”

“The truth is, I have to figure out a way for me to be okay.”

“The truth is…”

About two weeks after the anxiety started to fade, I realized I didn’t need to respond to other people. Responding to them didn’t do anything to change any minds, all it did was validate people’s own beliefs. I realized that I did not need to justify my medical decisions to anyone but myself.

For the first time in years, I could see that things would be okay. It became easier to tackle and take apart problems in front of me.

Most importantly, I realized relationships, work, school, art…indeed life, could be okay.

It will be okay. My life is becoming okay. Once I got help, I felt as if the last piece of the puzzle fell into place and I was able to finally move to where I needed to artistically.

Don’t Wait Until You Hear Sirens

Posted on May 29, 2019 by - Articles, Commentary, NewMusicBox

Staying Composed

I think of chaotic events like an illness or a death in the family as an ambulance cutting a path through my life. No matter how congested a street is, there is always room for an ambulance; there is always room for everyone on a road to work together, move over, and create space for the ambulance to pass.

Last week, I canceled a trip to a premiere because I’d been grappling for a few weeks with the kind of anxiety that makes just leaving the house a challenge. The premiere was a multi-movement work where each composer had written a different movement; my movement was four minutes long. I figured the ensemble wouldn’t miss one composer out of many.

Still, I agonized over that decision. My flight and hotel were booked and had been booked for months. How unprofessional does it look to back out of attending your own premiere? I used to long for the day I’d be traveling around the country often, with my flight and hotel paid for by whomever was commissioning me. It was built into my definition of success: being paid to create the kind of work I wanted to create, and traveling often to go hear it. And here I was, about to cancel exactly the kind of trip I’ve worked so hard to make a part of my life.

If you’ve reached a breaking point but still feel as if you can’t prioritize your health over your work, imagine the path that a family emergency or a physical ailment would create for you.

When I’ve reached a mental or physical breaking point but no emergency is carving out a clear path for me, I remind myself that an ambulance makes its own path. If you’ve reached a breaking point but still feel as if you can’t prioritize your health over your work, imagine the path that a family emergency or a physical ailment would create for you. In any of those scenarios, you’d be forced to readjust your schedule.

On a trip to New York several weeks ago for a different premiere, I found myself in Grand Central Station on the verge of a panic attack, feeling unable to breathe and like I had little idea where I was. The year so far had felt like nothing but travel: to Boston, to Kansas City, to Minneapolis, all in the span of a month. To Portland and New York City back-to-back. And then, last week, another flight ahead of me, the fourth weekend in a row where I’d be out of town.

This year has been abundantly full of wonderful things. I’m getting married in two months. I’m releasing a book I’ve been writing for more than a year. I’ve had career-defining performances with some of the ensembles I admire most. And yet it’s this same season that has been slowly building up to where I found myself last week: with an amount of anxiety that I described, in the email I sent decisively canceling my trip, as debilitating. That’s what it had become.

In a few weeks, I’m publishing a book about anxiety in the creative process, with lessons learned from composing. It’s called Staying Composed: Overcoming Anxiety and Self-Doubt Within a Creative Life. I’m releasing a book about anxiety, and yet, ironically, this was the most anxious I’d felt in ten years: vice-grip chest pain matched by racing, runaway thoughts I suddenly found myself unable to control.

In the book, I’d outlined coping strategies for nearly every mental hurdle you face in a creative career, and yet I didn’t have one for this feeling: wanting to step outside of your life, just for a moment, to breathe.

I’m not talking here about an occasional day or even week where you put in long, sleepless hours or order take-out for several meals in a row in order to meet a deadline. I’m talking about how you build mental and physical well-being into your day-to-day creative life. Your mental health, your sanity, and your life are worth more than any performance, any piece, or any networking opportunity.

When I first moved to Los Angeles, I had a panic attack driving down the freeway. It was practically a cliché: heading down the 110 in traffic, merging over four lanes, I felt my chest constrict painfully, had trouble breathing, and went straight to the health center thinking I was having heart problems. I was sent home with a prescription for Ativan. I’d slice up the pills into tiny pieces, because taking a whole one made me too sleepy to do much of anything. Eventually, I abandoned them and aggressively pursued other tactics instead: yoga, walking, meditation, and a resignation to the fact that I was an anxious person; I would always be a bit anxious.

Having experienced both the frantic, sleepless, anxious variety of composing and the kind where I prioritize my health above all else, I can report: the second way of living is vastly preferable in every way. I am happier with the work I make. I am not happy all the time, but I take so much more pleasure in the life I’m living.

In the decade since, I’ve designed my life to look, for the most part, the way I want it to look. I am phasing out teaching piano; I am composing full-time, which has been my career goal since I was seventeen. I take on the kind of work that lights me up, that prompts a swift and gut-reaction yes. I’ve worked various part-time jobs (arranger, editor, nanny, teacher); now I’m here. I can meet friends for mid-morning coffees and work long into the evening. I can fly across the country to an artist residency for a month without worrying that I’m missing my job; my job comes with me. I can schedule premieres and school visits and a life spent driving to and from the airport. I thought I wanted that life. When I first started to get it, I thought I wanted even more of it: this life, but bigger premieres and even more travel. This is a tremendous privilege, I know, to complain about too much travel.

I don’t know about you, but on days where my anxiety is at its peak, the act of sitting down to work feels impossible and insurmountable. My daily routine priori­tizes my mental health, because without it, I put myself and my art at risk.

This year, I could feel anxiety slowly compounding into something beyond my rational control. I was using every tool I had in my arsenal to counteract it, but I was also crying on the kitchen floor in front of my baffled partner. For the first time, exercise wasn’t helping; neither were yoga or meditation or any of the other usually helpful reframing techniques I use so often. I knew everything was ultimately going to be okay—These were all good things! I was so lucky to have this career! This was all what I wanted!—and that still wasn’t enough.

If you need help for anxiety or depression, seek it out. If you need to ask a friend for advice or a collaborator for an extension on your deadline, ask them. Your collaborators—fellow humans—will understand, and if they don’t, they haven’t yet realized the simple truth that it’s hard to make art at all when your health desperately needs your attention.

This idea is sprinkled throughout Staying Composed: if you need help beyond these coping strategies, seek it out. At my most anxious, it was thinking about this chapter I’d already written, the one that’s quoted in italics above, that made me finally book an appointment with my doctor. If I was going to tell other people to imagine the path an ambulance would carve through their life when they most needed a break, I’d better imagine that ambulance’s path through my own suddenly unmanageable life.

Now, I’m finally trying medication for anxiety. Three weeks out before the launch of a book that—in its very subtitle—promises to offer tips on overcoming anxiety, I am trying an SSRI for the first time. I call my mother to catch up over the weekend, tell her that I’m trying anxiety medication, and she says that the book will need an extra chapter, implying that it would be something like: Ignore All This Advice and Just Take Drugs. “But it’s not like that—” I start to protest, and she says, gently, that she was joking. Still, I feel like a bit of a hypocrite. A dear friend reminded me recently that the book is about “overcoming anxiety,” not “not having anxiety in the first place,” and I think of this often.

Your present situation might not feel like a true emergency, but you can still carve out time to prioritize your well-being. You can always cancel an event. You can always ask for an extended deadline; you might not be granted one, but you can ask. No artistic project is worth sacrificing your mental and physical health.

Several days into the new medication and finally having sought help outside of myself, the ping-ponging between things to worry about (deadline, other deadline, other deadline, wedding, house is a mess, forgot to mail out scores, forgot to book a flight, forgot to plan crucial element of wedding, when am I going to write music?!…) is already less of a spin cycle on endless repeat. Now, it’s more like a list of worries that float to the surface but can once again be rationally dismissed or silenced until a later date. I still have all of the anxious thoughts, and I’m still using the coping strategies I talk about in the book, but right now, my anxieties aren’t growing roots and taking hold in an unmanageable way.

Taking that medication isn’t a failure to “stay composed”; it’s a direct result of listening to my body and doing what was best for my mind. Canceling that trip to a premiere was crucial to regaining control over my mental health. It was the result of asking what an ambulance clearing a path through my life would look like and carving out that time as soon as I realized I needed help.

So what does it mean to stay composed within a creative life? I’ve done my best to articulate every answer I have, and I’m still discovering new answers. But above all, I am positive that sometimes staying composed means making the difficult decision to put yourself before your career—to put life before creative as you live your creative life.

Staying Composed, new book by Dale Trumbore about overcoming anxiety and self-doubt within a creative life, will be available digitally and in print on June 4, 2019. Pre-order and sign up to receive additional updates here.

Positive Power: Develop the Growth Mindset of Success

Posted on October 7, 2015 by - Analysis, Articles

Independent Thinking

It’s hard being a professional composer or performer! The field is flooded with talent, traditional opportunities are highly competitive, and the career path is not clear. Many changes in the music industry, technology, and the way that audiences interact with and access music have made it harder for musicians to be noticed and create sustainable careers. On the other hand, the brave new world of technology and social media, along with more creative ways to make, perform, and disseminate music and interact with new audiences, have opened up opportunities for the entrepreneurial artist.

Given the competitive nature and complexity of today’s musical landscape, it’s no wonder that musicians feel intense pressure to excel and often worry how to make it.

You are taught to go for perfection, and you inevitably feel judged on the quality of your work. However, you probably judge yourself more harshly than any music critic or panelist or audience member would, which can give rise to self-doubt and a lack of self-confidence—exacerbating the perception of the need to be “perfect.”

This creates a lot of stress that can take its toll over the long term. Yet today’s artists can benefit from a life-changing concept from positive psychology on how to deal with these pressures as they make their way in the world: the growth mindset.

What’s on your minds?

Let’s first examine what’s on the minds of the many musicians with whom I have the privilege of working when they begin to doubt themselves and think that they have to be perfect and outdo the competition.

“I am going to die at this performance because I just don’t have what it takes.”

“Every time I write for a new instrument, I feel hopeless because it will never be as good as it needs to be.”

“I totally blew that competition. I’m just a loser.”

“I’ve got to be better than everyone else in order to succeed.”

“If only the ensemble had played my piece better, we would have gotten good reviews. Now my career is going nowhere.”

Which of these sounds familiar to you?

Do you notice all those harsh judgments, permeated with an underlying fear of failure, despite your training and your talent? These thoughts create a lot of stress that can wear you down over time.

Happily, you are not doomed by these thoughts because they are only perceptions and not the truth.

In fact, you have the ability to change those thoughts and adopt a new mindset to approach challenges in the spirit of growth and experimentation, as opposed to perfectionism and fear of failure: the growth mindset of success.

The Growth Mindset of Success

The growth mindset is the brainchild of Dr. Carol Dweck of Stanford University whose research on the mindset of success is documented in her eminently readable book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

According to Dr. Dweck, your success turns on how you view your talent and intelligence:

Growth Mindset

The growth mindset stems from a belief that your talent and intelligence are the starting point and that success comes as a result of effort, experimentation, learning, and persistence. Those with a growth mindset are more resilient, work harder, embrace collaboration with others, and achieve greater success than those with a fixed mindset because they are motivated by the desire to grow and learn. You reach out to others for help. You examine the strategies that work and keep building on them. You discard the strategies that don’t work. And you keep the faith, no matter what!

Fixed Mindset

Those with a fixed mindset believe that you are either born with talent and intelligence or you are not, which means you cannot change how talented or smart you are. As a result, you are afraid to take risks and rock the boat because you might make a mistake—which would prove that you really are not talented. Those with the fixed mindset are locked into perfectionism. They tend to play it safe and avoid experimentation. They also shy away from asking others for help, which they perceive as sign of weakness and further proof of a lack of talent and intelligence.

The fascinating conclusion of Dr. Dweck’s research is that those with a fixed mindset are less “successful” than those with a growth mindset. And with some work, you can overcome those fixed-mindset thoughts and develop the growth mindset with a four-step process.

Young plant

How to Develop the Growth Mindset in Four Steps

Step 1. Become Aware of Your Fixed-Mindset Thoughts

At the outset, it is important to acknowledge that we all have fixed-mindset thoughts. The key is to recognize when the fixed mindset arises because that is the first step in a four-step process of change:

Musicians encounter the fixed mindset in many different situations:

  • Writing a new piece
  • In competitions and auditions
  • On stage in performance
  • Teaching
  • Alone in the practice room
  • Comparing yourself to other professionals whom you perceive to be “better” than you
  • Procrastinating for fear of not being good enough
  • Networking and having to meet new people

Pay close attention to the situations that trigger your fixed-mindset thoughts. Write them down or make a record of them over the next week so that you know exactly when to expect these negative thoughts. Notice the words that crop up in your mind that represent your fixed mindset, such as:

  • I’m not good enough.
  • I’ll never make it.
  • This is way too hard.
  • I give up.

Step 2. Affirm Your Choice to Change

Once you become aware of the situations that trigger the fixed mindset along with your fixed mindset thoughts, the next step is to convince yourself that you have the power to change.

Weigh the Evidence

One strategy is to look for evidence that supports and negates your fixed-mindset thought.

Suppose you have just left a difficult rehearsal and are thinking, “I just don’t have what it takes to make it. I’m such a loser.”

What evidence supports this thought?

  • I did not play as well as I wanted.
  • I didn’t win the last competition that I entered.

How about the evidence that negates this thought?

  • One tough rehearsal does not doom me to failure.
  • After a rough rehearsal, I work really hard and I don’t give up.
  • I am committed to figuring out a better way.
  • I played beautifully at my last recital.
  • I enjoy a challenge.

By doing this exercise, you are challenging that initial fixed-mindset thought and reaffirming your commitment to overcoming your obstacles and working hard towards creating success. This is the growth mindset at work!

Document your successes

Another exercise that affirms the growth mindset is a success journal where you document your successes and outline the process you used to create that success. Not only is the list a great reminder that you have in fact experienced success, but it also shows that success comes about through hard work, focus, persistence, learning from mistakes, and resilience.

Step 3. Answer with a Growth-Mindset Voice

The third step in adopting the growth mindset is to answer your fixed-mindset thought with a growth-mindset thought:

What can you say in response to the fixed-mindset thought?

  • I’ve done it before and I can do it again.
  • I am committed to handling this situation.
  • What can I learn from this?
  • What will I do next time?

You can find the right words from your success journal.

Another technique is to imagine what you are like at your best. Think about an actual experience of optimal performance, such as your last wonderful musical performance, the terrific piece you wrote last month, or a heavenly improvisation session. What are you like in this situation? Write down the words that describe you at your best and use those words to replace your fixed-mindset thoughts.

Step 4. Take a Growth-Mindset Action

The fourth step in changing from a fixed to a growth mindset is to take an action that reaffirms your commitment to growth. What are some actions that you can take?

  • When you hit a snag, keep going and don’t give up.
  • Explore a new way of overcoming your challenges and come up with new and better strategies.
  • Clear your mind by taking a break and doing something that restores your energy—such as exercise, a coffee break, or a phone call with a friend.
  • Reach out to colleagues and mentors for suggestions on how to improve.

The process of change takes practice. The good news for musicians is that you all know the process of practicing for improvement! So use those same skills to practice replacing the voice of the fixed mindset with the words of the growth mindset.

Rainbow Colored Toy

How Musicians Can Use the Growth Mindset to Overcome Challenges to Success

Let’s examine how other musicians have used the growth mindset to overcome many of the common mental challenges to being successful.

  1. Music Performance

Music performance is filled with opportunities for self-doubt and the fixed mindset. How can you use the growth mindset to overcome the fear of not being good enough and the perceived need to be perfect?

Often, it involves identifying the specific challenge and coming up with a new approach.

One musician, who was thoroughly discouraged by mistakes he made during an orchestra rehearsal, realized he was setting unrealistic expectations for himself with the following self-talk:

“I should be better than this. I don’t deserve to be playing principal with an orchestra of this caliber.”

While his fixed mindset caused him to doubt his talent, he reached out to a friend who had more experience as a principal and learned what it took to be a confident performer, thereby changing his entire approach. This led him to be very satisfied with his performance at the final concert.

Another musician was able to overcome her fear of “messing up” by adopting a growth strategy of being “upfront about my lack of experience coupled with being ready to learn something new,” finding that this “has always led to positive results.”

Another musician used the growth mindset to stop thinking of herself as not good enough:

“I can respond to the voice that paralyzes or frightens me with the voice of the growth mindset, by…access[ing my] best self, or thinking of ways a challenging situation can help me grow.”

  1. Auditions and Competitions

Auditions and competitions can easily trigger a fixed mindset with the inevitable comparisons to others. The growth mindset can help to change one’s approach to these stressful situations. A musician who successfully learned how to adopt a growth mindset shared how much more “good” energy he felt with a growth mindset, which helped to attract many more people to his world than with a fixed mindset. He also reframed the word “impossible” as “simply a word and not a state of being” which enabled him to clear his mind about competition.

Instead he perceived himself as follows: “I’m possible. No matter how the rest of the auditions pan out the remainder of the year, I know that going into my work and life with a growth mindset really opens my eyes to so many more ideas and opportunities than I see in a fixed mindset.”

  1. Career progress and success

Where you stand in your career is another area that is ripe for fixed-mindset thoughts. It is easy to look to other musicians whom you perceive to be farther along in their careers and feel that you “should” be at a certain point. This is understandable but not helpful! In fact, an old boss of mine used to say, “There is nothing more misleading than the score at half-time.”

So think about where you stand now, where you want to go in your career, and what you have to do now in order to get there. If you think of music as a life-long journey, you can instead believe that you are not there “yet” and, with hard work and persistence, you can learn what it takes to achieve the success you are aiming for. This is another manifestation of the growth mindset that Dr. Carol Dweck has spoken about in her TED Talk entitled “The Power of Believing That You Can Improve. ”

  1. Learning from others and being open to their suggestions

The fixed mindset tells you that asking others for help is a sign of weakness and proof that you lack talent. This type of thinking can inhibit you from reaching out to colleagues, friends, mentors, or teachers and locks you into using the same unhelpful strategies. That is one reason that those with the fixed mindset tend to peter out and not achieve success in the long run.

Instead, using the growth mindset can encourage you to seek help from others, play for and show your work to your colleagues, and embrace the collaborative process since you are able to hear suggestions as learning experiences—as opposed to feeling that others are judging you and that you are simply not good enough.

  1. Networking and Public Speaking

Today’s musicians need to reach out to others by creating larger networks of support, as well as speaking to audiences during and around performances. Both of these situations easily lend themselves to fixed-mindset thinking.

Many musicians I know are afraid of networking since they think that they have to “sell themselves.” With that concept of networking in mind, they understandably avoid these situations, particularly if they think that they are not worthy. Yet I think of networking as developing a network of mutually supportive business professionals over the long-term without expecting immediate results. Networking is also an opportunity to learn from others. The growth mindset can help you to reframe networking so that you can approach other professionals.

Another area that gives rise to a lot of fear is public speaking. Many musicians tell me that their discomfort with public speaking stems from anxieties about being judged, not having anything to say, and feeling inadequate to address an audience. However, public speaking is increasingly important in today’s music world as a way of engaging audiences and bringing new people into our orbit. One of my musician students was able to overcome his fear of public speaking by thinking of it as “jumping into a cold pool. Things will always feel more comfortable once the jump is made, but it is taking the first step that is the hardest. The only way to get better, as with many things in life, is to do just do it and learn from my mistakes to grow.”

  1. Thinking big and taking action

I encourage musicians to articulate big dreams like creating one’s own ensemble, going on a world tour, or writing for orchestra. Thinking big can be scary when you perceive the vision as impossible to achieve: a classic fixed-mindset thought. With the growth mindset, you can overcome feeling overwhelmed by breaking down big goals into smaller shorter-term goals and concentrating on taking steps that you can achieve now towards that big goal. This will enable you to experience small successes on which you can build as you work on your long-term goals.

In my experience, musicians with the fixed mindset tend to be single-minded in their goals. Someone with a growth mindset is much more flexible and positive about taking steps, regardless of size, in order to achieve an end goal gradually, being more realistic about the process, and allowing himself the freedom to thrive.

Indeed, one of my students found that while she was excited about her big goals, it was the tangible actions that reaffirmed her commitment to growth:

“The very act of breaking a goal down and taking action is antithetical to the fixed mindset. SMART goals are tangible recognition that eventual achievement comes through a process, rather than a sudden windfall, and that we must persevere and take actions step-by-step, rather than expecting ourselves to be immediately capable of something difficult.”

  1. Being flexible and dealing with the unpredictable

Things do not always go as planned and the growth mindset can help you to stay positive and deal with the last-minute changes that inevitably crop up.

For example, what happens when your plans for a rehearsal are upset by last-minute substitutions? The fixed mindset would slow down the music making and instill stress in the other players for fear that the rehearsal won’t be perfect. Yet a growth mindset can help you to keep a cool head, remain open-minded, and trust your substitutions and improvisations in order to roll with the punches and make great music.

Moreover, the growth mindset enables you to accept that things do not always go as planned and that even when one’s expectations are not met, there is always room for improvement. This lesson applies to schoolwork, performances, compositions, working towards one’s musical career goals, and nurturing personal and professional relationships. You are able see life in a more positive light, to realize the potential for growth, and to accept what is out of one’s control.

The same spirit of acceptance and growth can come in handy for those who experience injuries and other setbacks. Using the growth mindset can help you to reframe this experience and be grateful that you can still teach or write music and spend time advancing your career and developing new skills.

The musical life is fraught with challenges that can create a great deal of mental anguish. Yet, by changing your approach and adopting the growth mindset, you can embrace a process to deal with and overcome the obstacles that you may encounter in your career to create something of value to yourself and to society at large.

***

Astrid Baumgardner

Astrid Baumgardner
Photo by Adrian Kinloch

Astrid Baumgardner, JD, PCC, a professional life coach and lawyer, has the privilege of working with supremely talented world-class early-stage musical artists at the Yale School of Music, where she heads the Office of Career Strategies and teaches career entrepreneurship. Baumgardner is also president and founder of her coaching company, Astrid Baumgardner Coaching + Training, where she coaches musicians and creative business professionals. Baumgardner guest lectures at conservatories, leadership academies, and universities and writes a popular blog on career entrepreneurship. Read more about her work here.

 

Build the Playground: Carolyn O’Brien on composing through depression

Posted on September 11, 2015 by - Articles, Commentary

Depression banner thin

Welcome to the final installment of our Mental Health & Musical Creativity series. For an introduction, as well as links to previous articles, click here.

Today, I’m delighted to bring you my conversation with Carolyn O’Brien. I visited her, her husband Bob Hullinger, and their dog Pete at their home in Evanston, Illinois. I brought a bottle of rosé, and Carolyn made the most incredible salmon cakes. More than any other conversation on this week’s series, my discussion with Carolyn and Bob was a talk among friends.

You’ll be inspired here not only by Carolyn and Bob’s relationship, but also by the ingenious strategies Carolyn has devised for how to compose through and with depression. Enjoy learning from, and laughing with, Carolyn and Bob in this intimate interview. — E.M. 

The composer and her husband, Bob Hullinger, in a photobooth this winter.

The composer and her husband, Bob Hullinger, this winter.

Carolyn O’Brien: (cutting up strawberries for dessert) Emotional sensitivity is great for art, but it’s rough for functioning in the world.

Ellen McSweeney: Right. In fact, something just came out in the Guardian this week that the gene for depression and creativity are the same.

CO: Have you ever heard of Andrew Solomon? The Noonday Demon? His book actually saved my life. In 2001 my dad had kidney cancer, and I went home to take care of him. I was really screwed up about taking care of my dad: drinking at night, caffeinating all day. Self-medicating. I didn’t understand what was going on with me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So I read Andrew Solomon’s Noonday Demon, and that was a pretty impressive book in terms of teaching me what condition I had. My sister read it with me; her name is Ellen, too. She’s my rock; she’s my closest link to anything about my history. I went to visit her and I basically said, “I need you to read this with me, I think I have depression.” After we read it, she was certain: “Yeah, you have it.”

EM: Isn’t that incredible, how someone else’s writing becomes your lifeline?

CO: Yeah, it really is. Have you read Darkness Visible by William Styron? I’ll send you home with it. I’d love that book, too. I don’t have the Andrew Solomon anymore, because I’ve bought so many copies and given them all away.

EM: For you, what is depression?

CO: There’s an amazing TED Talk with Andrew Solomon, and I haven’t found anything more articulate and precise than Andrew Solomon’s description of depression to the layperson. As soon as I heard him, I said, “Oh my God, that’s exactly what it is. It’s a complete and total breakdown. It’s a deprivation of energy. It’s like having no gas in your car—your car that feels.”

For me, depression isn’t just being sad, or self-medicating to calm down or raise up. It’s also a loss of cognitive skills. Two or three years ago, I almost got tested for Alzheimer’s because I had such terrible memory problems. Once I have the right medication balance, I’m in remission and I’m sharp again. But it scares the shit out of me when I can’t think straight. It took me forever to pass my exams at Northwestern. It took me forever to get candidacy because of it. And it was because I just didn’t have the right biochemical balance to keep my brain working. To me, that’s the scariest part: the memory loss, the cognitive problems. A loss of energy? I can always deal with that, watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer for days at a time on the couch. It sucks, but it isn’t as frightening. It’s the fear of losing my mind. I would miss thinking clearly.

EM: Tell me about how this life experience shapes the music, or how the music-making shapes this life experience.

CO: In 2011, which was a particularly difficult time for me, I realized that I could not think for very long. The depression was causing such cognitive problems for me that I just couldn’t. So I started this process of composing where I created a whole formal structure before I even wrote a note. And then I would just fill it in as I went, almost like building a brick structure. So I literally spiraled myself out of the depression using the Fibonacci series to write a piece. I started with the tiniest point, knowing that I could only function for a few beats, the tiniest amount of music. And then as I got to feeling better, and the meds started kicking in, I was able to spiral out more at a time. The Fibonacci series was perfect, because it’s this exponential growth. I wrote out little sixteenth notes: 1, then 3, then 5, then 8. It sounds ridiculous, but—

EM: No, it doesn’t! It makes absolute sense! What’s the piece?

CO: It’s my saxophone quartet, called Thing Contained. It’s a complete Fibonacci opening and closing up. It’s kind of one of these “everything but the kitchen sink” pieces; it’s not a perfect piece. But considering that I was in such a rough place when I wrote it, it’s special to me.

EM: And in a way, you saved yourself, by making it safe for you to compose. You were giving yourself these boundaries where you could just do a small amount at a time.

CO: The other thing is that because I used to be an orchestra teacher, I know how to help kids with learning disabilities. And once I was diagnosed with my own learning disabilities, connected to the depression, I had to start teaching myself. I had to go outside of myself for a moment, and be patient with myself, which is hard because I’m very impatient with me. But I learned to say to myself, “Just go from X to Y, or Y to Z today. Just do that, and you can stop.” And the spaces between X and Y and Z grew bigger, and I was able to function for longer.

And now, as a result – four years later – I create forms for all my pieces. I build the playground, and then I go and play on it. I have to be disciplined at the start, and then I can be original and fun and intuitive once the structure is built. It informs everything I do. I’m not wholly unhappy that this happened to me. It’s informed my work in such a way that I don’t really fail at the form anymore. The form is down. The next step is to pull away from the form a little bit, and get out of the rigor and into more fun. If anything, it might be a little too tight now! Which is way better than the opposite.

EM: This was so brilliant, on the part of struggling-ass you. To build this little playground where it’s safe. It’s a great tip!

CO: It’s definitely going to be part of my pedagogy in the future.

EM: Did your teachers give you tools to help compose as a depressed person?

CO: Well, it’s funny. When I was working with Lee [Hyla], I had what I thought was a creative block, when it turned out to be a cognitive issue. That was stupid. I hadn’t been composing long enough to have a creative block! I hadn’t exhausted four concepts yet! Lee was really cool about it because he’d had an eight-year writer’s block, as he called it. He said, “You’ve just had a three-year block? Well, I had an eight-year block!”

Lee turned me on to a style of composing, which got him out of his writer’s block, that he created and also got from Stravinsky, which is this idea of non-linear narrative.  Once he figured out how to put these seemingly unrelated chunks together and make them work, he no longer worried about what order things would happen in; he would just make them and figure it out later in an organic-sounding way. He was able to suture the seams.

EM: So he wouldn’t put pressure on himself to connect those dots immediately.

CO: Right, exactly. He used to compose on these tiny, tiny little pieces of staff paper, this easy-on-your-eyes green, old-school stuff. He bought every notebook of this kind of paper. I don’t know if there’s any left of it. He composed on those bits of papers and fit them together after he created the material. I think he was able to compose away from the piano, too. He could just compose anywhere, and do that.

Lee just backed off. He gave me space to have my problem without judgment, which is the first time that’s ever happened, ever in my life, from anyone, except for that guy, Bob, that I married. And my sister, Ellen.

EM: So, a pretty small pantheon. It is really rare that someone is able to do that.

CO: I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and I certainly couldn’t explain it while I was in the thick of it. And once I could explain it, there were very few people capable of putting themselves in the shoes of this person who’s suffering. But Lee could.

EM: I feel like lately, it’s becoming so clear that a big part of mental health is about limits. It’s about parameters. It’s even about adversity, maybe. Setting up a space for yourself where you can just barely succeed.

CO: One night I was being a little whiner and saying how much I hated school. And Bobby asked me, “When were you actually happy in school?” And I said, “Kindergarten.” And I was kinda flippant, but it’s also true! You’re at this station, and you’re building this thing with these blocks in a certain amount of time. And Bob said, “I have a book for that!” And he brought me this book, Inventing Kindergarten. It’s about Friedrich Froebel. It has the works of Klee, and Frank Lloyd Wright, that show how the concepts taught in this legit kindergarten manifested themselves later in their mature lives and their art.

So, some of the forms I now play with and use are completely based on one of the concepts from the kindergarten lessons. I use triangles and other shapes to represent additive and subtractive processes. Kindergarten is a time when you have these parameters, but you play while you’re in them. You get an adult to build you a thing, and then you get to use your imagination to play in that thing.

EM: So you need to be both the adult and the child, in that case.

CO: You do. And that’s a big part of my discipline as a composer.

EM: I have an idea for a final realm of inquiry, which involves both of you.

CO: (to Bob) Poor bastard.

EM: So, all the other composers I’ve interviewed for this have brought up—obliquely or explicitly—relationships. For Marcos, it was, “How do I work as intensely as I need to and have a relationship?” And I think for Keeril and Daniel, it was the same. Personally, I’ve been in a relationship that didn’t support my creativity, and now I’m in one that does. I’m curious to hear your perspectives on how you’ve supported each other’s creativity.

CO: I wonder if our relationship is different than the other composers mentioned, simply because when I met Bob, I was a teacher and he was putting himself through art school and tending bar. I wasn’t a composer yet; I had no idea I wanted to be a composer yet.

EM: Did you find that out because you met him?

CO: (to Bob) Should I give you the credit for that?

EM: Did it become a possibility for you because you were with him?

CO: I would not be a composer today if I had not had the support of Bob on every level. Not just monetarily, though I would never want to downplay that. Because let’s face it, if I had to support myself financially during the worst of my depression, I don’t think I could have survived that and be a composer and grad student. There’s a reason I don’t have children around here, because I can only handle so much. I would not be this healthy, nor would I be a composer without Bob.

Bob Hullinger: All I’ll say is that I don’t think you could have even entertained the thought. Back in 2000, it’s not like we were rolling in money. But that year, I got a raise, which helped you to feel secure to leave your job. For me, part of managing a relationship is dealing with the practicalities. I’m a graphic designer for hire; self-expression is not the coin of my realm. I solve business problems. But it all comes out of the fact that I feel lucky to have this job that I have.

CO: (teasingly) Do you feel lucky to have the wife that you have?

BH: I feel extremely lucky. In 23 years, Carolyn has never once put pressure on me to do more, to do better, to earn more, “why don’t you,” “why can’t you.” I’m eternally grateful for that total support, because I’m self-taught. I don’t have an advanced degree; I stumbled onto my job and this career. For me, I get a vicarious thrill out of the abbreviations at the end of her name. In one way or another, financially or emotionally, subsidizing this process makes me feel like an adult and a good partner.

I realize that Carolyn has an extremely important thing to say, musically, and I know how good she is at reaching people. I know what an amazing educator she is. I know that this is her life. And the point of being in a relationship for me is not 1+1=2. It’s 1+1=3, or more. It’s the space between you, the things that you fill it with, and how you then can go into the world together and make a difference. And the fact that so many people love and adore and respect Carolyn as a person and as a composer, I’m just glad to have my toe in the water on this one.

The composer and her husband in a photo booth in 1995.

Carolyn and Bob in 1995.

I remember the first couple of weeks, after her first composition lessons in California. She would come home like Moses coming off Mt. Sinai, like Charlton Heston: Behold his mighty hand! Something had changed. I knew she wasn’t the same little bunny that I married. But Carolyn’s a big artist, and a big brain, and has a big thing to say. And I’ll be damned if anybody’s gonna stand in her way.

CO: Wow! Ellen, please don’t be frightened that Bob just transformed into the Incredible Hulk to protect me against all threats to my career! I think I put too many gamma rays in the salad dressing. But seriously, when I have someone fighting for me, supporting me and inspiring me so much like Bob does every day, it’s really not hard to find the energy to maintain this relationship while being a composer. He helps me conquer a great deal of my self-doubt, but he’s also honest about stuff he doesn’t think works in my music. I have a cheering section with finely tuned taste. His work pushes me, too. And, with my diagnosis of severe depression, intense ambition with speedy results isn’t really part of the deal. I have to take my time because my mind works on a slower timeline. Bob has never judged me for that. He has helped me to stop judging myself. So, yes ma’am, I put my marriage first, but I find it easy to put it first because I have had solid ground with Bob for over twenty years. I tell you, every single person who meets him takes about two minutes to realize and tell me what a damned lucky woman I am. It’s true.