Anxiety Can Be Helpful During Musical Instrument Performances

About the Author
Diana Bermudez, PhD, LPC, ATR is a psychotherapist specialized in families with young children. For over 20 years she has helped children, parents, and professionals to enhance emotional health and decrease challenging behaviors; through her trainings, coaching and therapy (based on art, play and mindfulness). She is a registered art therapist, doctor in counseling from George Washington University, licensed counselor in Virginia, certified in Theraplay (L1), Pyramid Model trainer and coach, and Radiant Child Yoga instructor. She is the owner of Amare Counseling and Education, where she provides family counseling and mental health consultation for early childhood professionals.

How is Anxiety Helpful?

Anxiety can be helpful during instrumental music recitals and other forms of performance. In spite of its commonly negative connotation, the purpose of anxiety is to prevent what might go wrong during important events. Without awareness, performance anxiety can escalate to unhealthy levels. Yet, the key is to modulate anxiety to a healthy and productive level. A high level of anxiety can trigger our automatic fight/flight/freeze response and override our capacity to make rational decisions, which could lead to avoiding the performance, shaking with fear, fast breathing/heartbeat, negative thoughts, freezing, irritability… and overall a decrease in the quality and enjoyment of making music. On the other hand, too little would not give us the impetus to act in order to rehearse for the performance and give it our best. 

This phenomenon has been known for decades as the “Inverted U Hypothesis” or “Yerkes-Dodson Law,” and applied primarily in sports psychology (BBC, 2025).  We can easily apply it to musical instrument performances or assessments, and other experiences that challenge us and require alertness. In brief, we perform best at stressful moments when our level of alertness (aka arousal) is somewhere in the middle between low and high.  The precise level of alertness for optimal performance varies from person to person and can be learned through practice. 
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How Parents Can Help

The good news is that we can intentionally decrease anxiety to our personalized level for optimal performance. Our sympathetic nervous system is in charge of unconsciously preparing our bodies and minds to fight, escape or freeze when facing a situation that threatens our safety or integrity, AKA “the stress response.”  When we notice signs of the stress response, for example shaking, rapid/shallow breathing, queasiness, thoughts of doom; we can bring it down to our optimal level of alertness by telling our brains that our parasympathetic nervous system can relax because the situation is not actually threatening, just challenging. 

As parents, we can help our children to develop this skill. But how?

1. Mindfulness, particularly deep breathing exercises, conscious movement and relaxation have been empirically proven to reduce the stress response and to improve both medical and emotional conditions (Kavat-zinn, 2013). These practices are most effective when done daily to create the habit, which allows us to replicate it easily before the performance event.  I have created playful ways for young children to relax and calm down, with the support of adults, available in the form of videos and handouts (Bermudez, 2025). Tweens and teenagers can independently follow mindfulness exercises available in workbooks (Biegel, 2017) and electronic apps.
   
   
2. Positive self-talk is essential for replacing negative thoughts.  For example, thinking “this recital does not have to be perfect, even mistakes are part of my training” reduces anxiety and is more constructive than thinking “if this recital is not perfect, I will fail, disappoint my family and even give up on music.“ A beautiful explanation/illustration of positive self-talk for children ages 4-10 is the book “The Magical Yet” (DiTerlizzi, 2020). Tweens and teens can benefit from self-help books on performance anxiety (Ade-Alade, 2023).
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3. Physical activity in the form of walks, dance, yoga and any physical exercise helps to release muscle tension that has accumulated from stress, and to produce wellbeing hormones that balance out stress hormones.  Relaxing our muscles gives our nervous system the message that we can also relax our thoughts and anxiety. We benefit the most when physical activity is part of our daily routines. We can also induce this muscle relaxation in the minutes right before a music recital by gently shaking or wiggling our arms, legs, head, shoulders, etc., accompanied by deep breathing. Parents can teach young children this relaxation technique in a playful manner by following the steps in my video of the “noodle game” (Bermudez, 2025) 

We all deserve to harness our performance anxiety, not just to optimize our performance, but also to fully enjoy those moments. When we develop these skills and look forward to both rehearsals and recitals, then we can maximize the mental health benefits of playing an instrument (Kovar, 2025), and perhaps even experience moments of flow. 
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Sources

BBC. Mental Preparation AQA. Arousal-the Inverted ‘U’ Theory.2025.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zyx7tyc/revision/2
Kavat-Zinn, J. Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness. 2013.
Bermudez, D. Parent Resources. 
https://www.amarecenter.com/parent-resources/ 2025.
Bermudez, D. Teaching Young Children to Relax through Play. 2025.
https://youtu.be/oXyANeEFTT0?si=AuVPY6GPVr_60RzJ
Biegel, G. The stress Reduction Workbook for Teens: Mindfulness Skills to Help You Deal with Stress. 2017. 
DiTerlizzi, A. & Gomez, LA. The Magical Yet. 2020.
Ade-Alade, S. From Stress To Success: Teen Performance Anxiety Toolkit for Achieving Goals: Empowerment and Resilience Strategies to Conquer Anxiety and Reach Your Potential (Teen Mental Health Series). 2023.
Kovar, N. How Playing an Instrument Could be the Mental Health Boost Your Family Needs.
​https://www.amarecenter.com/news/how-playing-an-instrument-could-be-the-mental-health-boost-your-family-needs/ 2025.

Written By Dr Diana Bermudez, PhD, LPC, ATR 
Owner of Amare Counseling and Education