Resource Lab
Anxiety Tools for Musicians
Practical things to try when your brain is racing, your body is wound up, or anxiety is making music life harder than it needs to be.
Keep This Page for the Days You Need It
Anxiety does not always need a giant explanation. Sometimes you need something you can do in the next five minutes. These tools are organized by what is happening right now: getting too activated, getting stuck in your thoughts, avoiding something, preparing for a stressful situation, or trying to come down afterward.
When Your Body Is Going Into Alarm Mode
Start with the body. You do not have to convince yourself that everything is fine before you can help your nervous system settle.
Try a Longer Exhale
Let your inhale happen comfortably, then make your exhale a little slower and longer. Repeat for several breaths without forcing a huge breath.
Try it: Inhale gently for about 4 seconds and exhale for about 6 seconds. Do 5 to 10 rounds.
Drop Your Shoulders
Anxiety can quietly turn into muscle tension. Unclench your jaw, lower your shoulders, loosen your hands, and let your tongue rest instead of holding tension everywhere at once.
Try it: Do a slow head-to-toe check and release anything you notice yourself gripping.
Give Your Eyes Something to Notice
When anxiety pulls your attention inward, deliberately look around the room. Notice shapes, colors, sounds, textures, and where you are. You are giving your attention somewhere else to go.
Try it: Name five things you can see, four things you can feel, and three things you can hear.
Move Before You Try to Think
If you are restless or keyed up, sitting still and trying to reason your way out of it may not be the most useful first step.
Try it: Walk around the block, shake out your arms, stretch, or take a few minutes to move before returning to the problem.
When Your Brain Will Not Stop Running the Same Thought
Anxiety often presents a question that feels urgent: What if I screw this up? What if they hate it? What if I do not get the gig? What if something goes wrong? The goal is not to argue with every thought. It is to stop treating every thought as a problem that needs an immediate answer.
Four Tools for Getting Out of the Thought Spiral
Name It
“I am having the thought that this is going to go badly” is different from “This is going to go badly.”
Ask What You Know
Separate what has actually happened from what your brain is predicting might happen.
Find the Next Thing
Move from “How do I solve everything?” to “What is the next useful thing I can do?”
Come Back to the Room
Notice what is happening around you instead of spending all your attention inside the prediction.
The “What If?” Worksheet
When a worry keeps circling, write it down instead of continuing to solve it in your head.
Take Five Minutes
- What am I worried will happen? Write the prediction as specifically as possible.
- What evidence do I have? Separate facts from assumptions.
- What is actually within my control? Put your attention there.
- If the difficult thing happened, what would I do? Make a basic plan instead of repeatedly imagining the disaster.
- What do I want to do right now? Pick one concrete next action.
You do not have to feel completely calm before you do the thing.
When Anxiety Is Making You Avoid Things
Avoidance works beautifully in the short term. You skip the uncomfortable thing and immediately feel better. That relief can teach your brain to keep avoiding it. The answer is not to force yourself into everything. It is to notice when anxiety is quietly deciding your life for you.
Make the Step Smaller
If sending one email feels enormous, opening the email may be the first step. If networking feels impossible, staying at the event for ten minutes may be enough for today.
Ask: What is the smallest version of this that still moves me forward?
Stay Long Enough to Learn Something
When it is safe to do so, give yourself enough time in the situation to discover that anxiety can rise and fall without you needing to escape immediately.
Try it: Pick a reasonable amount of time before you leave rather than leaving at the first spike of anxiety.
Stop Making “Perfect” the Entry Requirement
Waiting until you feel completely prepared can become another form of avoidance. Sometimes the useful goal is simply participating.
Try it: Decide ahead of time what “good enough” looks like.
Notice the Safety Behaviors
Rehearsing endlessly, checking repeatedly, asking for reassurance, hiding behind someone else, or using alcohol to get through a situation can all reduce anxiety temporarily.
Ask: What am I doing mainly so I do not have to feel anxious?
Before a Show, Audition, Meeting, or Other High-Pressure Situation
A short routine can give your attention somewhere useful to go. It does not need to be elaborate.
A 10-Minute Reset
- Get out of your head. Put your phone down for a few minutes if you can.
- Move. Walk, stretch, shake out your hands, or loosen obvious tension.
- Breathe. Take several comfortable breaths with a slower exhale.
- Choose one focus. Decide what you want your attention on rather than trying to monitor everything.
- Expect some activation. A racing heart does not automatically mean you are going to perform badly. Physiological activation is common before high-stakes performance, and learning how to relate to it differently is one approach supported in performance-anxiety research. :contentReference[oaicite:1]{index=1}
After the Thing Is Over
Anxiety does not always end when the show, meeting, audition, or conversation ends. Sometimes the review starts afterward.
Do Not Review Immediately
Give yourself some time before deciding what everything meant. You may be tired, activated, or still seeing the experience through the anxiety you felt during it.
Find Three Things That Worked
They do not have to be impressive. The point is to keep your brain from turning the entire experience into a list of mistakes.
Pick One Thing for Next Time
If something genuinely needs changing, choose one useful adjustment. You do not need to conduct a full forensic investigation of the night.
When You Need to Come Down After a Long Day
Sometimes anxiety has kept you going for hours and you are exhausted but still activated. The goal here is not to force yourself to relax. Give your system a few predictable signals that the demanding part of the day is over.
Change Locations
Leave the workspace, venue, studio, or hotel room if possible. Even a short walk can create a physical boundary between what just happened and what comes next.
Lower the Stimulation
Dim the lights, turn down the volume, step away from your phone, or give yourself some quiet. You do not have to fill every transition with more input.
Eat and Hydrate
If you have been working for hours, check the basics. Being hungry, dehydrated, or running on caffeine can make an already activated system feel worse.
Do Something Predictable
A familiar shower, walk, playlist, stretch, book, or other routine can give your brain a clear transition into the next part of the day.
A Tool Does Not Have to Make Anxiety Disappear to Be Useful
Sometimes the win is getting your anxiety from a 9 to a 7. Sometimes it is being able to perform while still feeling nervous. Sometimes it is noticing the spiral earlier. The goal is not perfect calm. It is having more choices about what you do next.
A Quick Toolbox to Save
- Slow your breathing and lengthen the exhale
- Unclench your jaw, hands, and shoulders
- Look around and notice what is actually happening
- Move your body before trying to solve the problem
- Name the thought instead of treating it as a fact
- Separate what you know from what you are predicting
- Find the smallest useful next step
- Notice when avoidance is making your world smaller
- Decide what “good enough” looks like before you start
- Build a short pre-performance routine
- Wait before picking apart what just happened
- Give yourself a predictable transition after intense work
When Self-Help Tools Are Not Enough
Tools are useful, but they cannot always solve what is underneath the anxiety. If anxiety is regularly affecting your work, relationships, sleep, choices, or ability to participate in things that matter to you, it may be worth getting more individualized support.
Therapy can help you figure out what keeps the anxiety going and work on the pattern itself. That might include thoughts, avoidance, nervous-system activation, difficult past experiences, perfectionism, relationships, burnout, or the particular pressures that come with your life in music.
Want More Individualized Support?
Musician Therapy Studio provides mental health therapy for musicians, performers, crew, and creatives in Colorado, with in-person sessions in Arvada and online therapy statewide.
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