42. Finding New Comfort

Anxiety, it just stops your life.

-Amanda Seyfried

No, I'm not going to talk about anxiety as such. I'm going to talk about how we have learned to deal with it. We all know what it is, of course. But here's one definition:

Anxiety:
a feeling of

• worry,
• nervousness, or
• unease,

typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome.

One of our natural adaptations to the world around us is our response to anxiety producing times and places. When we face a situation of perceived fear or threat there are survival mechanisms that come into play.

Maureen Werrbach, MA, LCPC writes about this:

...your body is responding to a perceived threat. This is called the stress response. The stress responses, fight, flight, or freeze, help us in situations where we perceive physical or mental threat.
Link to Psych Central

Right there they are:

• Fight
• Flight
• Freeze.

They are the things of anxiety that can "stop your life." They are essential responses to life-threatening situations. The problem is that they developed when almost everything in the world around us was a life-threatening situation. That rustling of the leaves in the bush was more likely a predator than a small bird. High-level awareness was a necessity to remaining alive. What is even more important is that these responses occurred deep in the early human brain, beneath consciousness. These responses were, and are, hard-wired into who we are. These initial responses would occur in a fraction of a second before the conscious mind knew what was happening.

We still have that going on. If you are standing on the sidewalk and suddenly a car veers out of control heading at you, your mid-brain response may be as long as .2 to .3 seconds before your conscious brain knows it is happening. You will probably jump out of the way. This will happen before you know with your conscious mind that it is happening.

Two-tenths of a second doesn't seem like very long. But a vehicle moving at even 40 mph will travel about 60 feet (!) in one second. In that .2 - .3 seconds it will travel 12 - 18 feet. That may be just enough time for you to jump to safety. You probably knew that you couldn't fight the vehicle. But you may have some background that causes you to freeze instead of flee, which is fatal.

The kind of threats that our ancestors faced, though, are much less common than they used to be. We don't have wild animals stalking us, for example. Our lives, in much of the world, in spite of what we often feel or hear, are far safer on a day to day basis than they have ever been. As a result we have developed ways of evaluating anxiety-producing situations and easing the fears and sub-conscious responses. Throughout our lives we develop these self-soothing mechanisms. They are defense mechanisms against  things we don't like to feel, don't have to feel, or don't want to feel. When we enter into an anxious place where fear, worry, nervousness or unease bubble up, we all have ways we have learned to cope with these. Therefore, these situations brings old issues up- old ways of finding safety or comfort. Even if they have become counter-productive!!

They are automatic thoughts!

We have all kinds of automatic thoughts going on all the time. They are like the trailer at the bottom of the TV screen during a ball game. While the game is happening on the screen, the trailer is telling you about other games, scores, etc. Our automatic thoughts are that trailer. Which means we don't pay much attention to them unless we have to.

If, in the middle of that ball game, you hear a "ping" or "beep" that is out of place you will most likely see something like a severe weather warning down in the trailer section. The "automatic thoughts" of the trailer are now conscious. You read the warning- and you miss the game-winning touchdown as the clock runs out. In spite of what we think we can do, multi-tasking is next to impossible.

When these thoughts are "negative" and get in the way we refer to them as "Automatic Negative Thoughts"- or ANTs. That can be a way of identifying them and putting them into a more healthy place in our mind.

Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way,
ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or
a pioneer of the future.

~Deepak Chopra

But these automatic thoughts, negative or positive, are how our brains work. They are finely tuned for survival- and anxiety is a sign that something feels threatening- or at least uncomfortable and we want to change it. Which brings us back to

• fight
• flight or
• freeze.

I have spent years working in addiction counseling and treatment. For some people the anxiety response they have developed over the years is to drink or use chemicals. They are seeking comfort from, ease of the anxiety and fears. It becomes the default response. They are not even aware how it happened or, at times, even why. It has become hard-wired. It is a "flight" response. Escape. Get away.

That is an extreme example, but the way it happens is similar to the many other ways we respond. Here are some other ways:

• Flight: not taking solos because of anxiety; dropping out of the group since you can't "keep up"
• Fight: always be a rebel and a trouble-maker; be unwilling to accept what someone else is suggesting because it makes you uncomfortable; passive-aggressive responses can be just as much "fight" as some overt action.
• Freeze: Not responding to a suggestion, keep doing what you have always done and ignore the ideas. (This can look like passive-aggressive, but is different in attitude.)

When these become habitual they are also chemically wired in the per-conscious mid-brain. Does this mean we are now stuck in these old ways of dealing with these situations and feelings? Fortunately, the answer is no. One of the discoveries of neuroscience is that the brain is quite "plastic," It can "rewire" itself. If it couldn't a person who had a stroke could never learn to walk or talk again. The brain develops work arounds. We can help that process.

Actually, we have to or it won't happen. That is the purpose of physical therapy/rehab after a stroke or traumatic brain injury.  That is the purpose of recovery activities for an addict. These help the brain rewire itself in more healthy ways. Learning anxiety work arounds will help our brains move beyond the ways we have always done it and find new sources of comfort in anxious times.

On the website mentioned earlier, Maureen Werrbach suggested these proven methods (Link to Psych Central):

• Embrace imperfection. Striving for perfection always leads to stress. Practice replacing perfectionistic thinking with more acceptable, less extreme ones.

• Identify automatic thoughts. Uncover the meaning of these thoughts and you can begin to replace them with more appropriate thoughts.

• Become a neutral observer. Stop looking at the stressful situation through your emotion-filled lens. Imagine that your stressful thoughts are someone else’s. You will notice that you can see things more objectively this way.

• Practice breathing exercises. Focus your attention on your breath. Fill your lungs slowly and exhale slowly for a count of 10. Start over if you lose count. This exercise is meant to reduce your body’s response to stress.

• Accept and tolerate life events. Acknowledge, endure, and accept what is happening in your life at the moment. Focus on the present and be mindful of your surroundings. Be deliberate about allowing this exact moment to be what it is, rather than what you wish or hope it to be.

Don't expect an immediate, extreme change. Anxiety and stress response habits are as ingrained as any other long-term habit. But as we learn the newer responses and practice them as needed, they will slowly but surely become our new comfort and new normal.

P.S. You’re not going to die. Here’s the white-hot truth: if you go bankrupt, you’ll still be okay. If you lose the gig, the lover, the house, you’ll still be okay. If you sing off-key, get beat by the competition, have your heart shattered, get fired…it’s not going to kill you. Ask anyone who’s been through it.

~Danielle LaPorte

10. Panic and Air

If you panic,

you will die.

-R. Baca

A couple years ago I was doing a hike near Lake Itasca here in Minnesota. There was this circular trail around a lake that branched off the main trail. Or, at least is felt like that. In reality it was just a loop that came back to the same spot and then back out. The problem was that at the spot where the trail started the loop, the two sides of the loop were almost parallel to each other. So, as I returned to the point where the loop started, I found myself facing a "Y" and I didn't know which way to turn. I turned left and realized I was passing things I already passed in the same direction. So I turned around and got back to the "Y" and turned right. Yep- wrong again. I was now heading up the loop from the other side. I wasn't sure of this until I got to a place where I took some pictures of a beaver dam.

By this time I am already later than I expected to be in getting back to the car. My wife would certainly be getting worried. (She was.) We were out in the wilderness and the GPS on my iPhone wasn't showing any map. I knew I wasn't lost. But I knew I could become like Winnie-the-Pooh going in circles around the same tree. The only lesson I could think of at that time was an old hiking reminder:

Don't panic! Your life may depend on it.

I am not sure I was quite at "panic" level on the trail, but I was beginning to get concerned. I thought I knew what I was doing. But it was getting warm, I was getting a little tired. How was I going to deal with this?

I stopped, took a deep breath or two, calmed my mind and set about figuring out that I needed just to be more observant of what I was doing. It worked.

So when Bob Baca said the quote at the top of this post at Trumpet Camp it resonated. It applies to playing the trumpet, as much as it applies to hiking Itasca Park. Don't panic.

We can sure panic when we aren't prepared to play that solo in tomorrow's concert. We can panic when we get lost in the middle of a complicated (or easy) piece in the band's gig. Maybe we're in the midst of the show and our lip decides to quiver and rebel. What are we to do?

First and foremost: Don't panic. It will work against you. We have developed quite a system for survival over the years of our human evolution. the "panic" response is one of them. Panic, or anxiety, can happen when we are facing a "dangerous" or even "life-threatening" situation. Way back in our human development such anxiety or panic got all the systems moving in order for us to survive.

We can call it today the "Fight, Flight, or Freeze" response.

But that quivering lip, the un-prepared solo or jumped line in a song is not life-threatening. Our response is just a left-over. But we can easily metaphorically "die" if we allow the panic to take over. The extra adrenaline pumping with an elevated blood-pressure moving blood away from the thinking brain so we react intuitively makes it more likely that we will not get through the panic. The solo will fail, we won't find our spot in time for our next entrance, the quivering lip just gets work.

But there is another response that we can learn and cultivate. Instead of fight, flight, or freeze, we can learn "Flow." As in "Go with the flow!" I don't know who T. McIrvine is, but I found this quote from him online about playing the trumpet.

Release the air,
don't blow the air.

-T. McIrvine

This is, of course, good advice at all times, which I may talk about some other time. For today, though, this is a great way to think when facing those moments of panic. Stop and breathe. No, not that short, panting breath or that heavy rush of air as if you were blowing out the candles on your 100th birthday cake. Something more relaxed, conscious.

So let's put these things together: Panic and air. Take it easy. Allow the air to fill from the diaphragm. Count to five as you are inhaling through the nose. Hold for a count of two. Count to six as you slowly exhale, letting the air move from your stomach. Do this a couple of times. Don't focus on anything but your breathing.

Can you do this while playing? Probably not to its fullest, but look for several measures of rest. Then do it. Sure you won't revitalize your quivering lip, but you will loosen the tension that only makes the quivering worse. Pay attention to the ease of playing- letting the air release through the mouthpiece and around through the horn. It may be just enough to get you through the rest of the gig.

In your practice on that day before the concert, it will slow you down enough to figure out what you need to do.

Getting rid of the panic response will reconnect you to the music and you will more easily recognize where you might be in the music. After all, you have been practicing and you know the piece, right?

Lots of ways breathing can work for us, not just making a better sound. Perhaps good breathing exercises should be in our regular routine. Long tones, of course, can help with that as can "releasing" air through the lead tube without the tuning slide. But regular daily meditative, mindful breathing may do as much for our tone and music as scales. (BOTH are important, of course.)

As we learn to breathe, life itself can be a lot easier to come with.

Here's a closing quote from a new book I just came across:

Sometimes it's okay if the only thing
you did today was breathe.
-Yumi Sakugawa, There's No Right Way to Meditate