Hello folks, and welcome to the Therapy Natters Podcast. The podcast all about therapy, mental health, and all the weird and wonderful things that make us human. I'm psychotherapist Richard Nicholls. And, as always, I'm joined by the wonderful Fiona Biddle to keep me company, How do Fiona. How was your week?
Oh yeah. Great. Thanks. Morning. And it's morning. Well, I mean we usually do these in the morning, but this is early.
Yeah, sorry about that.
the early one. I was a bit thrown by having to get up and make coffee. Usually have tea, but I
that's true. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. My social media followers, cause I do have a couple of those, will be aware that this week has been my wedding anniversary. We've been married for 20 years. It's our 20th wedding anniversary this week. So my wife said, wouldn't it be lovely to take a few days off? And I thought, yes, that will be absolutely gorgeous. Let's do that. But what about my Therapy Natters recording? Well, how about we do it at half past eight in the morning instead, which is fine.
It's only once every 20 years. It's not much to ask, is it?
And it's so lovely that it's so lovely for you, so we are very happy for you.
couple of days. The weather's been nice. I had to give up on my amateur dramatics rehearsal, unfortunately. So, sorry am-Dram friends that are out there listening to my podcast, cuz I'm sure they do. Sorry I wasn't there, but I'll be back next week. Don't worry. Which is a bit of a shame cause that's how I get my um, my needs met. That's part of it anyway is being on stage doing silly stuff, being the center of attention, I quite like it. Keeps me off the streets. Fiona.
Have you ever done any Am-Dram stuff?
Absolutely not. No. I'm not a performer.
No.
No, When I was a student, we did a rag thing where the whole theme for the year was dressing as clowns. When I was dressed as a clown, I could do all sorts of things, but that was because I was really behind something.
Ah.
it wasn't me. So, that was much easier. But, very good segue here today, Richard very, I mean, first class. First class. We have a guest with us today and this is Lynn Boudreau. Who was born in Teeside, but was brought up in Canada. So you'll notice the accent there. Lynn is a psychotherapist, hypno-psychotherapist based in Cardiff. But her other profession is as an opera singer and a proper one. I mean, do you have an
I'm
an,
opera amateur
that wasn't, that wasn't meant to be. in any way a dig. Um, When I was talking to Leslie Garrett, as you do,
Name drop.
well, yes, but you see, when I was I mentioned Lynn and she said, oh, lovely Lynn. And so Lynn has worked with people like Leslie Garrett. So we we're not talking Am, stuff here, she's proper. And this is a specialism for Lynn of working with performers to help with their anxiety not just in performance, but in auditions as well. So I hope we can talk about both those things. So, good morning, Lynn.
Good morning, and thank you for inviting me. It's gonna be a wonderful topic to talk about. One of my favorites.
It is because it's easy for me now having been doing some sort of stage performance stuff for 20 years I love being the center of attention, but one of the reasons I quite like it, particularly with the Am Dram stuff, it's because like Fiona picked up, I'm being somebody else, and there is such a difference in the way that I feel when I am playing a character and somebody else has written the script and I've just learned the words.
It's so different compared to presenting at a conference when it's all me. My words and I'm being myself. The difference is phenomenal in the anxiety and I, I turn it into excitement and I genuinely mean it when I say I'm really excited about this, but I'm also really nervous about making sure that everybody likes what I say and when it's somebody else's words, I can go, I can blame the script writer. It's not my fault it's rubbish. Is that a common, thing?
Yes, absolutely. Improvisation as well. Most scariest thing in the world, you know, for a lot of performers, having to relax yourself enough to be yourself. Without that mask, without that support that yes, it's someone else's work. No, improv is all your own. But I don't have much experience on improv. It's mostly scripts that I've had to learn. But yes, performance anxiety, what a huge umbrella as well. There's a lot of different segments of performance anxiety that we could talk about.
I think what's really important for people as well is to recognize what kind of performance anxiety that you're suffering from I mean, it could be you notice yourself making excuses like, you're too ill maybe you are avoiding calling the agent, you know, for more work. Maybe you have a, a blaming or a victim story like, oh, I didn't have the right teacher, I didn't have enough money for the right coaches. I don't know the right people.
You know, so recognizing where your anxiety and how it comes up for you, I think is important because there's a lot of reasons why we would want to protect ourselves and why anxiety comes up in the first place. Maybe finding out what the reason is would be really helpful into tackling and finding the right solution for you.
Yeah, I remember. Haven't seen it for a very long time, but. I think it was Britain's Got Talent and, and maybe some of those early Pop Idol, pop star TV shows. So many times the judges would say, you've got a wonderful voice, but your confidence lets you down. And we'd hear that phrase again and again and again,
Hmm.
and it's such a shame to hear that there's clearly somebody there with a wonderful ability, such a great talent, that they've not necessarily, yes, they were born with some element of it, but they've practiced and practiced and practiced and practiced to get good at what they do, but their nerves lets them down. Their confidence lets them down. And then so many times. I've got my head in my hands when I hear this phrase.
When somebody gets through to so close, they're in the final and, and then somebody will say, if I don't win this, this is over for me. This is my last chance. I, I'm, I'm never gonna sing again if I don't win this. I thought, what,
Yeah.
you're clearly one of the best in the country, but if you, if you are not 100% the best in all these people's eyes, you're gonna walk away. What kind of pressure is that to put on you? Don't do that. What are you doing?
Yeah.
Is that a common mindset?
Yes, perfectionism comes in. Even things from the past creep up as well. You know, maybe some criticism from past teachers. Things that can really hold you back from wanting success. You know, maybe there's an underlying reason that if I become more successful than perhaps my parents were, if they were also musicians then the idea of succeeding past them could be quite frightening. And all of this could be in your unconscious mind as well. This is not necessarily something that you're aware of.
And so really digging deep and trying to find out, well, why, why wouldn't I want that? You know, that confidence to spill out into the stage on Britain's Got Talent. Why not? You know, I'm starting to ask questions. And this is even where hypnosis can come into play. Really relaxing into it, finding out if there's a connection that goes backward. Those really early elements of success or failure can really drive your behavior in the future.
The idea of fear of success Often sounds bizarre. Why on earth would you fear success? But a lot of people do. And when you think about it for a moment, let's take the music world. I've had this with clients that they take it from zero to a hundred and don't see anything in between. So they're imagining let's say it's a 20 year old woman who has nothing, is working in a supermarket, imagining being Beyonce. And then that's a bit scary.
To have your life changed to that degree and that will then potentially stop them doing anything. In between. Yeah. So recognizing this, that there's different degrees of these things and but yeah, fear of success I think is quite often a bigger thing than fear of failure. Because fear of failure is more logical to work with. So take, I mentioned auditions. If you've got one role in an opera.
Don Giovanni, for example, then you are only gonna have one person who's gonna get it plus an understudy. But basically it's one person. So you've got all these people vying for one, and everybody else is going to, in quotes, fail.
Yeah, absolutely. There's also other kinds of fear as well, like just fear of judgment is a really, really potent one. Fear of being found out, you know, maybe like an imposter syndrome. All other kinds of issues like, I've not prepared well enough or maybe I'll, I'll lose control and then I'll be judged. I'll be left on stage. Embarrassed and humiliated. There's that as well the fear of criticism or judgment. So also just as. Big, I'm finding in my clients as fear of failure and success. Yeah.
I think the more successful somebody gets. the further they would potentially fall when they get so-called, found out that they weren't that good after all.
Mm-hmm.
Maybe that's related to the Dunning Krueger effect, that the more that you know, the more that you know that you don't know because now you know enough to realize, wow, there's loads out there that I don't know. And the same across every profession, trade, industry, school of thought. The more musically talented you become, the more aware of musical talent you are.
Now I'm remembering those earlier auditions on things like Britain's Got Talent when, for the first couple of weeks they'd show people who genuinely couldn't sing. They had no talent at all, but they didn't know that they didn't have talent because they didn't have talent. And the more, the more talented that somebody gets, the more they realize, I'm not that talented. Am I really? Well, not if you compare yourself to Whitney Houston.
No. And like you say, Fiona, there is that wonderful middle ground where you're still talented and worthwhile, but no, you are not Beyonce or Whitney Houston, and that is okay.
So it's, it's finding those solutions to keep yourself grounded, really. Maybe relaxation and grounding before performances would work for you. Sometimes they do. I call it more surface reasons, you know, if it's nerves that are affecting perhaps your breathing mechanism. For, for instance, I'm a singer. One thing that used to always get me in the wings, you know, backstage. Was if I was really nervous about something, my deep breathing just didn't want to expand enough, you know?
And of course for singing, this is highly important. So just doing some grounding exercises to bring yourself back into the present moment, you know, some mindfulness. So instead of getting caught up in the outcome of what's about to happen, you're more in the moment and in the process. And then you would notice the expansion come back.
Sometimes that works for people more grounding, more being in the moment, relaxation techniques, but other times people need a little bit more than that, perhaps visualizations or even graded exposure. You know, because like what Fiona was saying too, if you've come from your nine to five day job and then all of a sudden you're trying to be Whitney Houston. You might need some visualizations and graded exposure to imagine step by step of what it might feel like to get there.
One of the things we've long known about goal setting is that it's not necessarily the end goal of something that motivates us. It's the steps in between. Because if you only imagine that end goal for many situations it's unrealistic. If somebody has a lifetime of thinking of themselves as nervous under pressure, as somebody who would stutter, stammer, and then suddenly they're being asked by their brother to do a Best Man speech and they've never done anything like that, ever.
I don't think it's that beneficial to only use visualization to imagine that end goal. I do wonder, If you, I use this phrase, you drop somebody into hypnosis and then you ask them to imagine that day and how everything's wonderful and you're standing there and you are calm and you are ask 'em to imagine how calm and relaxed they are in front of that audience and so on. I don't think that's realistic. I think more often than not when that happens for real.
They'll crumble because their brain goes, I wasn't expecting to feel nervous, I was expecting to feel calm. And I think in any situation, it's okay to feel nervous. If your passionate and interested in something, of course you're gonna be nervous about it. it means that you care. If you didn't care, you wouldn't do a good job. So care. back to that old-fashioned phrase, feel the fear and do it anyway. And maybe we do need some exposure to anxiety in order to completely get comfortable with it.
No, there's no doubt about it. I think that's absolutely a hundred percent. I don't think there are many exceptions to that.
No, I agree. I think about the the, the best man speech which I will be doing one.
Oh.
Oh yeah.
Yeah. I'm going to be a best man. and now it's been made public I cannot be sacked from my role. But the, you need, I will need, everybody I think needs some tools that they use to get to that level of calm, not just a, a hypnotic suggestion of you will be calm. You need to know how to get there. Which for me will be anchoring mostly, but we've talked about that before. In terms of the, stage frights idea, I've heard lots of people say, Lynn, that it's necessary.
That you have to have some stage fright in order to put in a good performance. do you believe that? Or Is that sometimes an excuse for not dealing with it?
It's a good question. I do think some level of anxiety. Well, yeah, nerves maybe is a nicer word. Anxiety has a, a bad rap, really. To feel the excitement, to get the cortisol up a, a little bit because I do remember running into an opera singer who was really stagnant cuz he had, done this role 150 times. So boring, yada yada, you know, really difficult for this person to be engaged. And I'm, I'm gonna mention the word flow as well.
A lot of people experience this sense of flow when they're performing and it means different things to different people, but as I understand it, it's when you are so engaged in what you're doing, that you can take a step out of yourself and then therefore the focus on actually doing it dissipates. So you're not focusing on how much effort you're putting into something, it's just happening organically and you're witnessing it and it's, it's like time stands still. It's amazing.
So you do need a bit more of this excitement to start to garner this flow. Because if you were just to walk on stage and shrug your shoulders and go, oh, here we go again. I guess it's a chemical change in the body too. Just wouldn't be taking place.
Yeah.
Yeah. And you say about anxiety has a bad rap. The phrase I used was stage fright. I mean, but it's, it is the, it's the phrase that is used, but it, yeah, I think, let's reword that into whatever works.
Stage excitement.
Stage excitement. Yeah.
Yes.
in my amateur dramatic stuff, it's a small little theater that we've been performing in for years and although we've had, we've had to change venues. Hashtag Save the Arts. Cause it's closed down. Grrr
oh gosh.
I know. Yeah. Where we're going to be performing is still only gonna have about 50 or 60 seats. So we do three nights, it's only to 50 or 60 people. But when I've done it to hundreds, It's easier cuz you can't really see them. They're just there in the distance. When you're only performing to 50 or 60, you are literally seeing the whites of their eyes. And I hear so many people who would sing at karaoke.
In a, in a big place in, in a, in a big karaoke bar where everybody's expected to sing, but they wouldn't sing to their mum or to their friend, or there's only three people in the room. I'm not singing to only three people. I'll sing to 300, but I'm not singing to three. I. Maybe because the meaning is so different to them. It's, it's, it's very strange. But the reason this popped into my head is because I'm remembering, I was in a, a comedy version of Ben Hur once, which was hilarious.
I was Ben Hur. All, all, all five foot six of me. That was, that's why it was funny. Oh, it was hilarious. Absolutely hilarious. But because I had such a big part, I was so nervous. My stomach was all over the place and I'm about to walk onto, I'm shaking, and that's normal. I, I'd normally have adrenaline that's, that's human, but within, and this is how I remember it, and I have to keep going back to it every time I get nervous. Within two minutes of being on stage. I felt in control.
And I have to remember the worst part is beforehand. It's the buildup to it. That's the worst part. And I think uh, like my son's doing his A levels at the minute, which is the reason why we've not gone away for our anniversary. Sorry mate. Your fault. He knows. Love you mate. It's the, it's the thought that counts. How many times do we use that phrase in so many different ways? It's the thought that counts. It's the thinking that makes it so. There is no good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
If the meaning behind all the adrenaline is, I can't do this can I? Look, here's evidence. Look at, look at my nerves. Look, my hands are shaking. That means I can't do this. Well, what if your hands shaking and that feeling in your body means that you care. It means that you're passionate about this.
Well, maybe we can then divert that into our performance, whether it's a Best man speech, whether it's asking somebody out on a date, and that's the kind of performance, and when I was thinking of the title for this episode, I thought, well, shall I call it performance anxiety?
Oh no, that sounds more like it's sex related, but even then, you know, it's, it's all related to the same things that if there's a load of chemicals going around in your body that makes your heart do this and your stomach do that, the meaning behind it is what is going to cause either a problem or not. And I want everybody to feel the fear and do it anyway, I guess. Whatever it is they've got to do. Whatever it is.
When you were just talking about chemicals uh, my mind wandered off onto sport performance anxiety and how different sports require a different state
like golf.
So yes, golf is one where you need a different state to, if you are just about to run hundred meters.
Yep.
Yeah.
a big part of that is managing the state.
Yep. And getting that right, you don't want a golfer to be ready for, you know, running on stage and, and having really high cortisol levels, and yes, you wanna be more grounded, relaxed, and open. Open to mental focus. As opposed to handling high anxiety levels. Yeah. But you wouldn't learn that, I suppose, through your practicing of your craft as well.
But again, that's a very, if you start off as a club golfer, you are going to experience judgment from the people that you are playing with. But the idea of standing on the first tee at St. Andrews for the open with everybody watching you and the potential of what you do, being lauded or ridiculed to manage that state must be really difficult.
Yeah, absolutely. like you were saying before, Richard as well about, you know, performing in front of just a few people or performing for a, a large crowd. I always like the bigger crowds, the bigger, the better. Because it meant that yes, the spotlights were on you, all the audience would be in darkness. So you would be able to just be more in yourself doing it for yourself as opposed to trying to please, an audience. Because at the end of the day, I was there for the applause.
You know, that meant success. That meant, you know, the meaning you would put behind the applause is I've done a good job, but it's very difficult to then manage their expectations. When you're also trying to feel the fear and do it anyway. And so some of my best work though, was up close and personal. So even driving more fear into the mix, it was actually the better performances. The more intimate performances that got the better reaction from the audience as well.
So many times I was the, you know, the singing waitress at weddings, the ones that would come out and pretend to be a waitress for half of the event. And then you would have to create some kind of diversion. Like a big argument between the, the waiters and the waitresses and that the guests would be looking and going, what's going on? What's going on there? There's some problem. Oh no, my wedding day.
Ah, and then, we would press play and then the backing tracks to La Traviata would come on and we would sing Brindisi and Cheers everyone with champagne.
Wow.
So those were very up close and personal, having to get into people's proximity, their personal space. That were the best performances, you know, even though the most anxiety driven performances. Yeah. Although I did probably 500 of them, so no, I didn't, I wasn't nervous at the end of them. No, but I remember my first one, and boy, it was, it was frightening.
I had to be an an internal guest as well, so I had to infiltrate myself as a. Long lost family member from Canada and I had to sit there and eat chicken, you know, before we had to stand up and, and reveal ourselves. I couldn't even swallow the chicken. Yeah. I didn't know what to do. Lost my appetite. Anyway, it went well. They were very much fooled. So there you go. The proximity, the intimacy can sometimes be the best. Yeah.
I do remember a strange, I can't remember which play it was I was in, but I remember doing something once and afterwards there was an immediate response in, in the back of my mind that went, this is making my dad proud. And I dunno where that came from. My dad had been long dead, I think, but still they're in the back of my mind. They still make my dad proud. He'd be, he's proud of this. Well, what I'm not doing this for him am I?
Didn't know that I was, but there was a part in my brain that thought I was, because we are hardwired as a kid to make sure that those caregivers. They notice us they look out for us. We feel safe with them and they are proud of us. And if we're not careful, we can carry that feeling that, oh, I need to make sure that everybody likes me everywhere we go, until it becomes totally unconscious. We don't even remember that that was a thought that we were having, that everybody should like me.
Until it becomes such a part of a personality, it's unconscious and drives our action. Who was it that, it was Carl Jung wasn't it? That said something along the lines of a wonderful phrase. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. That's what he said, and I, and I think we all need to recognize the silly games that our brain plays with us. If we can pick that apart with a therapist, not always with one.
Maybe there is some stuff you can do without one, some journaling, some self-reflection, some podcast listening that sort of pushes you and nudges you in a particular direction. But how much easier is it to do with somebody who knows what they're doing and can help you through all of this? I, I don't think there's many professions that can't be worked in easier, more efficiently, more productively, happier. If you can understand yourself better and what drives you. And certainly for performing.
If you can do that, there's a part of us that, ah, I think that owes it to the world to do it. Hashtag save the arts.
I was also thinking about you, mentioned improvisation earlier, Lynn. I used to go to quite a lot of improv comedy in London, but also just basic standup comedy. the, personal skills, the, the, the personality to be able to do that strikes me as absolutely amazing. But one thing I really noticed was the ones who seemed to be less prepared were much better, much more enjoyable, funnier than the ones who were clearly scripted. But of course we don't really know.
Well, I mean, some of them, if they were doing a lot of audience participation and interaction, then you know, that they can't be prepared unless they've got stooges and seeing as that it involved me and my friends several times. We, we know that they weren't but the, the ones that were terribly scripted loses something in that context.
Yep. Yep. Picking up on the energy of the room, picking up on what the audiences are laughing at, what they're not laughing at. Takes it's such a skill. In fact, I went to um, see some standup just a few weeks ago. And there was a heckler in the audience that was removed. I mean, it just sent the audience into, shock and also, oh my gosh, I don't think that was necessary.
And these kind of whispers were going around the room and it took a good five minutes to remove these two people from the room. And you, there's the comic standing there going, oh, I dunno how to come back from here. This was real big interruption. But his talent was amazing. He, it, it was all about, I think what he was doing was really keeping himself grounded and, and focused on his, it wasn't a script, but his set, you know, you own your set, they do practice it over and over and over again.
and so they ha it's like having bullet points, you know, when you're just about to give a presentation, you want your bullet points. So he picked up on his bullet points. It took a little while though he had to, you know, rely on us to give him a nice round of applause. And, come on, you can do it. And he did and it, and picked up on his sense of self again and not letting the anxiety get carried away. Yeah. And it worked a dream. Yeah.
Something that jumped out at me, just there. Lynnin is a phrase that we use in so many places in culture, and that is, Just be yourself. The thing is, if somebody doesn't like who they are, they don't wanna be themselves, and if we can learn how to like ourselves, we can learn to accept ourselves, then maybe we can be ourselves and be authentic. And then we don't need to fake it till we make it. I mean, I'm all for faking it till you make it to a degree. Cuz you're learning how to make it.
You're practicing. As long as you've got the mindset of I'm just learning, I'm just honing my skill, that's fine. I'm practicing being this person. I'm not faking it. I'm practicing being this person until it becomes automatic and easy for me. But you have to have the right mindset to do that. And I do think that does come with boosting our self-esteem as much as we can. have you found that?
I think the mindfulness practice just letting yourself just say what you wanna say, feel what you wanna feel, experience whatever it is you wanna experience without denying these experiences. You know, so I, I do find in my work there's a lot of wanting to push parts of themselves away. You know, I hear my inner critic voice or I I, I have a, a part of me that's really disappointed in myself and I just wanna push them away.
I find taking the opposite approach by embracing these these parts of yourself, and own them and to really work with them in order to change to what your needs are present day. Perhaps these parts were trying to fulfill needs that were in the past. Maybe they did have a role that was needed, in the past, and now it just needs updating or it needs, you know, you just need to be more accepting and that therefore, I find when you take on that attitude, then kindness comes.
And the self-compassion comes and then it's okay to make mistakes. It's okay to fumble through life. It's great. And then you realize that more people appreciate and relate to that. And you see that in your relationships with yourself and, and others.
Wonderful. Well, Lynn, we, we need to bring, I was about to sound like a therapy session we could do with bringing this session to a close for this week, but we need to bring the session to a close for this week. If anybody wants to find any more information about you and what you can, what you do uh, how would we find all about you, Lynn?
I have a website it is mindbydesign.co.uk. I am on Facebook. And I work from a, a clinic here in Cardiff. Just by Googling my name, that clinic would come up as well if you wanted to come and see me in my therapy room.
And you work online too, presumably.
Oh, I do, I do work online as well, and booking forms are on my website.
Super duper. Well, we'd best love them and leave them for another week, Fiona. Have a super one if you need anything, as always, there is a link in the show notes to a form on my website where you can fill in a form, give some topic ideas, ask us some questions. I'll add some links in there as well about how to find Lynn so have a good week. We'll speak to you next time. Bye everybody.
Thank you, Lynn.
Bye bye.