Anxiety: from the Brain to the Larynx and Back
by Aleksandra Sieja
In this teaching tip, Aleksandra tackles an important emotion that can often cause serious internal conflict: Anxiety. How does it affect the voice? Is there anything we can do to experience freedom from this emotional state to tap into our full potential in singing? Read on to find out what she has to say!
What is fear and what are we afraid of?
I’m a huge fan of spreading a holistic approach while working with voices. Apart from anatomical or physiological factors, some of the greatest limitations in working with the voice have their origins in the mind and they are often various kinds of fears and anxieties.
In times like these, mental health is an especially important topic, so I hope this Teaching Tip will come in handy in your studios.
It’s important to say that I am not a qualified therapist and cannot replace one, but as much as I am a voice coach and a vocalist I’m also a person dealing with my own anxiety disorder and I want to share my knowledge and experience to help change your relationship with these emotions and inspire you with tools for you and your students to deal with them.
Anxiety is a complex emotional state similar to fear. Although both of these feelings arise from brain processes that cause similar physiological responses and behaviors, there is an important difference between the two. Fear is associated with a clear, real, and identifiable threat. We experience anxiety when we have those feelings even though there is no immediate danger.
We all experience both anxiety and fear from time to time, and this is perfectly normal. The positive effects of those emotions helped us as human species stay alert and focused in difficult situations and react instinctively and immediately to stay safe and avoid danger.
Problems begin when those emotions are over-entering important aspects of our life, limiting and paralyzing our actions, including those related to using or teaching the voice.
I teach mostly adults, professional and amateur contemporary and extreme singers, speakers and other voice teachers. During classes, my pupils most often confess to me that they feel anxious about:
- voice breaks
- phonating high or low sounds
- trying bolder or louder phonation
- presenting yourself in front of the audience
- recording and listening to their own voice
- making a mistake/being imperfect
- being heard by third parties (e.g., by neighbors)
- criticism and evaluation
- leaving their comfort zone
- causing damage to one’s instrument
- “wrong” selection or performance of an exercise
- failure to meet their own or someone else’s expectations
- ignorance
- lack of control
These are just to name a few…
What reactions can various kinds of anxiety cause in our body and mind?
Increased heart rate and pulse, shortness of breath, rapid breathing, tremors, sweating, diarrhea, difficulty concentrating, increased muscle tension, tightness in the throat and chest, dry throat, inability to move, desire to run or withdraw, need to avoid certain experiences, places and situations, the need for over-checking, perfectionism, difficulty in achieving relaxation, feeling paralyzed, unable to force yourself to act, sudden anger, feeling out of control, panicking, spiral of thoughts, driving yourself into guilt, doubting yourself, worrying, thinking catastrophically about the worst and scariest options…
Again – just to name a few!
None of these symptoms are supportive to phonate freely in any desirable way.
Brain to the rescue!
It’s important to realize that the situation or event is NOT causing you fear. It is the INTERPRETATION of this event by your brain as a threat that creates these emotions and with them often unwanted physiological or psychological responses. Because of this, different people may react emotionally differently to the same situation (e.g., some will be amused by clowns, others will be terrified by them). Thoughts ARE NOT facts.
This is where the superpower ability of our brain comes in handy – NEUROPLASTICITY.
It is the brain’s ability to change its own structures and reorganize its action patterns. This means that we are able to change our reaction to anxiety and create new, neurological nerve connections to reduce or completely eliminate our unnecessary anxiety. Not bad, huh?
Nerve connections are strengthened according to the principle of “survival of the most active”. Therefore, the more you repeat certain thoughts and behaviors, the stronger they become. If you will consistently interrupt your anxiety-causing thoughts and images and repeatedly replace them with new cognitive processes, you will physically alter the nerve connections in your brain.
So simple and so difficult at the same time, but effects are worth it.
How to do it?
Strategies for working with anxiety
There are many types of anxiety. Sometimes fear is caused by a thought, sometimes by a picture, sound, taste or smell, and sometimes by a subconscious, uncontrollable association of an event with a memory of a situation that the brain has interpreted as dangerous. It is an extremely interesting but extensive topic that I have no chance to elaborate on here. However, it is worth remembering that there are tools that are scientifically widely researched that are worth trying to embrace for our brain neuroplasticity.
Here are some strategies I often use on myself and my students.
- conscious, calm, deep breathing (breathing and meditation techniques)
- muscle relaxation (relaxation techniques, progressive muscle relaxation (Jacobson’s technique), music therapy, visualization)
- physical exercise (sport, dance, physical activity, jogging, walking, bike, swimming)
- taking care of a balanced diet and healthy sleep
- mindfulness training, focusing on “here and now”
- controlled exposure to anxiety
- purposeful use of music and singing and/or vocalizing (hello vocal lessons!)
- consciously working on your thoughts, by changing your attitude towards them
- e.g becoming aware of negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones, learning new thinking patterns to replace dysfunctional ones
- becoming aware of the difference between thoughts about the event and the actual event itself (sometimes we are so caught up in our anxiety thoughts that we forget that these are only thoughts, not facts, not reality)
- distraction, focusing on something else (the brain reacts to thoughts in a similar way to real events, so you can significantly lower your anxiety level by being aware of the nature of your anxiety-initiating thoughts and reduce the time you focus on them)
Choose and try those strategies that resonate with you and your students and that you can incorporate into your daily life. It is a skill you can practice and become better at over time.
If you feel that your problem with anxiety is overwhelming you or your students, do not hesitate to seek help from your loved ones and, above all, qualified mental health professionals. It is very important to raise mental health awareness and not stigma.
None of us can be completely free from those uneasy emotions, but we can all reduce the impact of unnecessary anxiety on our lives by using strategies focused on the functioning of the brain.
Hopefully this teaching tip will be an inspiration to teach and sing freely and desirably.
Remember that courage is acting in spite of the fear – from brain to lanyx and back.
Aleksandra Sieja is a contemporary and extreme vocalist, voice/vocal coach, Accredited IVTOM Member, and contralto. She graduated with honors in jazz voice/music education. Aleksandra has been training and learning about the voice since 2005. She is passionate about many musical genres, from jazz to folk and pop, to rock and metal.Currently she runs vocal classes and voice training for professionals and amateurs in her own studio, focusing on technique (including the extreme vocal techniques), repertoire, rehabilitation, vocal improvisation, as well as voice pedagogy & teacher trainings. Her goal is to encompass a holistic approach to the voice using a variety of tools, methods and techniques based on modern scientific knowledge in various fields. Aleksandra teaches students to express themselves through singing in a way that is conscious, healthy, and effective, and in doing so, students can sing in various musical styles and also use their voice freely in other fields than music.
