Sport Psychology Tactics - Musicians, Mental Blocks & Brainspotting
About the Author
Ben Foodman is a licensed psychotherapist & performance specialist. He owns his private practice located in Charlotte North Carolina where he specializes in working with athletes to help them overcome mental blocks (the yips), PTSD, ADD / ADHD and achieve flow states through the techniques of Brainspotting & Neurofeedback. If you are interested in services, use the link here! Enjoy the article below!
Introduction: Mental Blocks (AKA The Yips), Musicians & Sport Psychology
Whether I am working with musicians in Nashville, or other artists within the field of music performance, one of the most common issues that comes up during my work is how to help individuals deal with mental blocks. These mental blocks can range in severity such as being ‘stuck’ or unable to generate normal bouts of creativity, to experiencing panic attacks prior to live performance. Many musicians dealing with these issues have been unable to move through these problems and oftentimes are left with extensive self-doubt and fear that their career in the industry will be over sooner rather than later. To make matters worse, many sport psychologists focus on utilizing outdated ‘mental skills’ approaches that rarely help musicians address the core, underlying issues.
Ultimately musicians experiencing mental blocks don’t need motivational quotes, or catchy one-liners that are allegedly meant to help them ‘reframe’ their problem. These types of performers need approaches that are rooted in a neuroscientific foundation that simultaneously addresses the deep underlying cause for the mental block. For this Training Report I want to discuss the neuroscience of mental blocks for musicians and common mental blocks that are experienced within the musical performance population. Finally, I want to discuss approaches that I regularly use in my practice that have consistently helped the musicians I work with work through their mental blocks. First, let’s explore the neuroscience of mental blocks.
Part I. The Neuroscience Of Mental Blocks For Musicians
Mental blocks are disruptions of information processing within the brain. From a neurological perspective this means that neurons are not firing and connecting as they normally would under normal circumstances. When this occurs, the mental block can prevent musicians from being able to function at their desired level of performance. This can occur for a multitude of reasons, but some of the most common examples for the creation of mental blocks within musicians that I find in my practice are as follows: rejections experienced by musicians; musical performance humiliations or rejections; physically or psychologically traumatic experiences (e.g. sexual abuse, car accidents, emotional abuse); disturbing childhood traumas.
When these stress overload events occur, the experience swamps the normal flow of information processing causing neurologically-based emergency response systems to not only activate but remain on for extended periods of times. This prolonged activation may seem counter-intuitive as the individual experiencing these symptoms will have extreme difficulty functioning at their original baseline homeostasis, but is a necessary function as we do not have the ‘shake it off’ skill that many animals in the animal kingdom still possess. We need to undergo advanced and deep processing to ‘shut off’ these activation systems. Now that we have explored the neurology of mental blocks, we should explore common mental blocks musicians experience.
Part II. Common Mental Blocks & Musician Yips
When musicians come to consult with me, I have found that there are very common issues that are unique to this population when dealing with mental blocks. Some of the most common mental blocks are as follows: inability to create new music or develop new performances; unexplainable intense anxiety or fear before performances; unexplainable inability to communicate with others; decreased emotions or anhedonia; decreased focus or frequent bouts of inattention; significant decrease in energy and/or increase in social isolation; loss of motivation; loss of excitement and/or creativity; unexplainable loss of motor skills needed to play instrument. There are undoubtedly many other symptoms that others have experienced that I have not listed, but there is one significant mental block that I find needs to be consistently addressed in addition to the previously mentioned mental blocks.
Many of the performing musicians I have worked with are under the perception that their previous trauma and pain helps with creativity. While there is no doubt that previous trauma and pain can inspire ideas, there are significant limits that this mindset can impose but are often overlooked by musicians. A foundational characteristic of creativity is the ability to see possibilities. Oftentimes individuals who remain crystallized in states of fear or perseveration on previous trauma have significant difficulty seeing the potential for their own future. Previous trauma can provide content that is worth deep exploration, but creativity and possibility are not bound by specific content and extend to all areas of the brain. So how can we best access these areas of the brain to enhance creativity?
Part III. Brainspotting & Mental Blocks
Brainspotting & Expansion work are the most effective therapeutic and coaching approaches neuroscience & sport psychology have to offer. Because many of the previously mentioned mental blocks are manifestations of stored stress & trauma, these approaches both help musicians release the stored trauma that is creating the mental block and help the musician enhance their creative process in ways they could not have imagined. I have written extensively in previous Training Reports about the benefits of Brainspotting & Expansion, but it is important to understand that when dealing with mental blocks, musicians will not benefit from traditional sport psychology interventions due to the fact that most sport psychologists use neocortical exclusive approaches.
Brainspotting & Expansion differ from the traditional sport psychologist’s approach, as there is both a heavy emphasis on the somatic experience of psychological processing as well as enhancing the signaling connection between both neocortical and subcortical brain processing. Quite simply, Brainspotting & Expansion make use of the entire brain body connection that occurs in musical performance which is vital for musicians. After all, no musician ignores how they feel in their body during performance. How musicians feel during creativity and performance is a signaling process that informs them of how well they are performing. So if you are a musician looking to improve in your craft, Brainspotting & Expansion will put you in the best position possible to succeed in your craft as both a professional and an artist!
Note To Reader:
If you are an athlete reading this segment of the TRAINING REPORT, hopefully this content was helpful! I put the Training Report together because I felt like many of the discussions on issues such as the Yips/mental blocks, strength training & other subject matter on athlete performance concepts were really missing the mark on these ideas (e.g. how trauma is the direct cause of the Yips). If you are interested in learning more, make sure to subscribe below for when I put out new content on issues related to sport psychology & athlete performance! Also, if you are looking to work with a mental performance specialist, you are in the right place! USE THIS LINK to reach out to me to see if my services are the right fit for your goals!
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