Singers... What's Stopping You? How to Banish the Many Stresses and Anxieties of a Singer's Life

Over the past few months I have been on a mission to find out what the real psychological struggles of a singer's life are ... and the results may surprise you!

I asked in the region of 100 singers to let me know what your struggles and frustrations are and what the dream outcome would be if there were a course which helped with all of these areas. 

The top struggles of a singer included fear of judgement and criticism, which led to a good number of singers just not applying for singing jobs or offering to sing at all. Unsurprisingly many singers picked out the fears around performing such as nerves taking over so they didn't feel in control of their voices or bodies before a performance. Many felt the acute symptoms of the stress response, such as rapid heartbeat, sweaty palms, chaotic thoughts, dry mouth, and so on. This can play havoc with a performance, unless a singer has some fairly robust coping strategies in place.

However, the very top struggle of the many singers who took part in my research was imposter syndrome. Singers really find this feeling of being a fraud, of not deserving to be where they are in their careers extremely debilitating.  We live in a culture where achievement is highly prized and singers are often encouraged to be self-critical, sadly many become far too good at that and self-esteem and self-confidence are then affected. 

Many of the singers I worked with, particularly in the small groups, were surprised and reassured that other singers felt the same way as they did, making them feel less alone. 

The research I carried out had led to me developing a new small group course to provide singers with this safe place to share. Many singers wanted to remain confidential and of course my one to one work is bound by confidentiality but we agreed between us to take a vow of confidentiality, so no singer felt compromised. 

The course covers all the areas of struggle and frustration the singers  outlined to me. We will be covering simple and easy to apply hypnotherapy techniques for performance anxiety, imposter syndrome, raising self-esteem and confidence, dealing with judgment and criticism, ridding yourself of negativity, planning for a performance day, future rehearsing a wonderful performance, learning how to access the emotions you need for any performance and so much more. The course will help singers to retrain their minds to work FOR them rather than AGAINST them. 

It gives singers a small confidential community in which to share psychological frustrations and practise and develop strategies together which will help singers to put aside the psychological barriers to singing and focus on what they really want to do - SING!

if you want 2023 to be the year you no longer allow your mind to hold you back and want more details about the course (which starts on January 27th) please email [email protected]. I'd love to hear from you!