Dr. Jeremy Sharp (01:21)
Hey folks, welcome back to the Testing Psychologist Podcast. Today’s conversation is with Dr. David Hunkos. David is a psychologist who has a specialty in music and performance anxiety, or music performance anxiety in MPA. And I’m talking to David about this subspecialty. So we talk about the assessment process for MPA, we talk about treatment of MPA. Dave has
Developed a measure for assessing psychological flexibility in musicians that he uses as part of the part of this process as well. so this is fascinating to me. This is one of those little niches in our field that as you will hear on the podcast, has a very, very small subset of psychologists who actually specialize in it. so we got to dive deep into an area that I think is super important and
And super relevant for the folks who need it. So I’ll tell you a little bit more about Dave. He’s a clinical psychologist, a lecturer, performance coach, author, and music performance researcher who’s based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He has over 20 years’ experience treating a variety of clinical problems, including anxiety, moods, substance use disorders. He specializes, like I said, in treating music performance anxiety and has presented internationally on his research in using acts.
acceptance and commitment therapy to treat MPA and enhance music performance. He’s a primary author of Act for Musicians, a guide for using acceptance and commitment training to enhance performance. What else? Overcome performance anxiety, improve well-being. He’s also affiliated with the Voice Study Center, which is a UK-based provider of postgraduate study in voice pedagogy.
He lectures on MPA, ACT, achieving peak performance. And he also trains clinical and non-clinical professionals in ACT to help them manage students’ MPA and other performance related problems. So this is a rich interview.
Again, personally and professionally interesting for me as a former very, very novice musician, but you know, enough that I cared about my performance and sometimes had a little anxiety. So this was this was really interesting to dive deep.
Into this area. So we talk about the history of music performance anxiety, we distinguish it from other types of anxiety and talk about where it might parallel other types of anxiety, talk about the relationship with perfectionism. We, of course, talk about Dave’s measure that he developed, which is based on the AAQ from the Act Framework. we talk about how to treat music performance anxiety and many other things.
So wide-ranging conversation. And as you’ll hear, you know, Dave is very open to chatting with anyone who might be out there and interested in this area. So you can find his website, which is Act For Musicians, that’s actformusicians.com in the show notes.
And on that website, you can find his email address as well, which is Dr David Junkos, which is J-U-N-C-O-S at gmail.com. So without
Further delay, let’s get to this conversation with Dr. David Junkos.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (04:29)
Dave hey, welcome to the podcast.
Dave (04:31)
Thank you for having me, Jeremy. Excited to be here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (04:35)
Yes, I’m excited to chat with you. both personally and professionally. you know, we haven’t talked about music performance anxiety at all on the podcast or you know how to assess it or work with it or anything. so I’ve got that professional interest. But I think like I mentioned before we set up the interview, you know, I used to play music back in school and gave it up, which is
of my biggest regrets in life. But, you know, I have that connection too, you know, and I’m very curious what this looks like and how, you know, how you got into this as a psychologist. So yeah, thanks for being here. I’m excited to have this conversation.
Dave (05:07)
Yeah, yeah, of course. I
I’ll tell you it’s never too late to get back into the music thing, right?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (05:12)
That’s what everybody says. Yeah. Yeah. At some
Dave (05:14)
He
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (05:15)
point I will actually take that advice and get back to it. Yeah.
Dave (05:18)
I hear you. But hopefully this
talk can inspire you to to do that again.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (05:22)
That’s I’ll take it. I’ll take it. Yeah. Well, I’ll start with a question that I always start with, which is, you know, why this essentially? I’ve I know you do a lot of different things as a psychologist, but you know, why spend time and energy on this particular aspect of the work?
Dave (05:37)
I this is where the heart and soul of the work I do is. You know, I’m a musician myself. I play guitar, I sing, I write music, play piano and keyboard as well. But guitar and and voice were like always the the main things for me. Been the singer in in original music bands, been, you instrumentalist in like cover bands and whatnot here, as well as doing like solo stuff throughout the years here. So I don’t have much of time much much free time now that I’m a dad, you know, to really play much with
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:04)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (06:04)
you
know, perform music anymore. So long story short, as a psychologist, me getting to work with musicians or getting to talk about the work I do with musicians, getting to research, you know, musicians’ issues here, all the above is my way of like keeping one foot in that world here. So it’s it’s a labor of love, for sure.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:19)
Hmm. Hmm.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, I like how you’ve kind of taken a a passion that you maybe, you know, can’t dedicate all your time to and brought it into your work somehow. So it’s, you know, it’s just we woven in versus an extra thing that you have to do. Yeah.
Dave (06:36)
Absolutely. Yep.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (06:37)
Did you know when you went to grad school that you wanted music performance to be a part of your work as a psychologist? Or did you find your way into it?
Through a different way.
Dave (06:48)
I I guess I probably did know maybe not like front and center in the mind that I want to do this kind of work in grad school, but it it was the kind of thing where I noticed that I was getting more and more busy with, you know, the psych stuff and less freely available to do the music stuff that I wanted to do. So th therein, you know, lied that kind of middle path of just working with musicians. I guess is like I said, my way of keeping one foot in that room there. So I
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (07:12)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (07:13)
I wouldn’t say that it was like a conscious effort, but I guess over time I just like
thought it was somewhat missing because yeah, you you can’t like perform music out on the Tuesday night at one AM anymore when you’re having to go to internship in the morning or stuff stuff like that, right? Or having to go private practice for eight hours the next day, right? So it it it filled that void somewhat, but but nothing beats the actually performing music. You can be a researcher, you can do the work directly with musicians, but nothing beats the real thing.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (07:39)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m right with you. It is pretty exhilarating, you know, some of those moments playing, even like in high school, you know, it was awesome. It was awesome. It’s hard to capture that feeling, you know.
Dave (07:48)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (07:50)
Yeah. Very cool. Well, let’s let’s dig into it. So I’m guessing, you know, this is a relatively niche area, I think, of our field. certainly the assessment component. We’ll talk about that, but maybe let’s set set some background, kind of set the stage for the conversation. So
help us understand what we’re talking about here. Like what is music, performance, anxiety? Let’s just start there.
Dave (08:13)
Sure, sure. Good question. There’s multiple definitions. I think the best one that is a little more on the comprehensive side is from Diana Kenny, who literally wrote the book which I have over there on performance anxiety with musicians. It’s called the Psychology Music Performance Anxiety, FYI. that not so surprisingly. And she’s an an
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (08:28)
Nice descriptive title. Yeah.
Dave (08:30)
Australian psychologist. was, I I think she’s retired now, but was at University of Australia Sydney for for decades, undoubtedly. And in her 2011 book,
She says MPA is this. MPA is short for music performance anxiety. So you probably hear me using that abbreviation a lot here. It is the experience of persistent tension, you know, apprehension about music performance that’s marked by, you know, you got the Barlow triple vulnerabilities model, you know, you’ve got these vulnerabilities. You know, people are more likely to go on to develop it when you have those vulnerabilities in place, whether it’s genetic vulnerability, you know, from your mom and dad. Thanks, thanks, mom and dad, for that.
or early life experiences that just set you up to be a little bit more, you know, cautious or concerned about control over your environment or predictability of the environment. You know, these are the early vulnerabilities as well as a conditioned life event. God forbid you had like a tough performance in college that just conditioned an anxiety-disorder response out of you, essentially, where you start
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (09:25)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (09:26)
viewing music performance with more dread and more apprehension. And you might be thinking kind of more rigidly or even dangerously about it. You might be thinking, like, this is something that I should avoid.
This is not something that’s healthy. I can’t do that performance again. I can’t have that outcome happen again. You know, so you’ve got the life event combined with the vulnerabilities there that just kind of teach someone essentially to behave with an anxiety disorder response. But then, you know, more, more like proximally, it’s it’s got these symptoms here. You know, let’s talk about them. You’ve got cognitive symptoms, like worrying about making a mistake or worrying about, you know, what your teacher’s gonna think if you make that mistake.
Worrying about the implications of the implications of the implications in mistake making. Just a lot of cognitive activity about, you know, essentially that idea of like doing something wrong in your performance, right? And of course, with anxiety, you’ve got, you know, these other mental phenomena too, you know, like maybe the off overlooked ones, like attentional narrowing onto threats, right? That certainly happens. In music
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:20)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dave (10:21)
form, that could be like, I made that mistake, now I can’t stop thinking about it, right? So I’ve got this like internal threat monitoring activity. I just can’t let it go, essentially.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:30)
Yeah.
Dave (10:30)
Or it
could be an external fret monitoring, like I that Simon Cowell looking dude in the audience is judging me and I just I just can’t stop focusing on I’m just like fixated on that guy, right? So you’ve got that, you’ve got mind going blank and memory, you know, kind of issues like that too. So this is all under just one area, just the cognitive symptoms. And of course there’s other symptoms too, but I’m happy to like pause and digest if you want to before proceeding.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (10:53)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That sounds good. Could you just highlight that sensitivities model again for any folks who might not be
Dave (11:00)
Sure, sure.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (11:01)
familiar with that? yeah, just give us a little more
Dave (11:04)
yeah, David Barlow and colleagues created the the tripartite vulnerabilities model for developing anxiety disorders. And it’s not
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (11:11)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (11:11)
specific to MPA or like social anxiety only. It’s just kind of like this is how people develop disorders, generally speaking. And you’ve got the the generalized biological vulnerability, which is, you know, the susceptibility to be trait anxious, to be neurotic, to be perfectionistic, stuff like that. That just simply
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (11:27)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (11:28)
comes from mom and dad only, right? there’s also
Early life experiences that create what Barlow called a generalized psychological vulnerability, which are, you know, neglectful or abusive parents, you know, where you as a young kid, you know, rely on them, obviously. And if you don’t have them giving you constant love and support, then you’re gonna grow up thinking like other people will be unpredictable and unsafe as well. There, so that’s an example of one of several ways that you can just develop this sense like life is uncontrollable or life is unpredictable, essentially. And ironically, that makes it more likely you’re gonna go on to have an anxiety disorder thinking that way.
And then there’s the specific event that conditions you to believe, you know, to approach that thing reoccurring with apprehension. You worry about, let’s say you had a tough recital your freshman year at conservatory, and you know, you’d been very prepared, but you just something went wrong, you had anxiety and you just weren’t fully focused, and you you made a big mistake, everyone talked about it, and your teacher’s kind of railing you the next you know few sessions about it. That can condition anyone to approach performance in a different way.
They’re going to think about it more apprehensively. They’re going to be like, I don’t want that to happen again. Right. So they approach it with apprehension and the the way they think about it changes too. They think like more rigidly, like that’s dangerous or that’s threatening. I can’t do that again. So ironically,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (12:43)
Right.
Dave (12:43)
that’s going to make it more likely that you’re going to behave in like an inflexible way because you’re thinking, well, it’s it’s probably unfortunate that that it’s definitely unfortunate, but it might happen again. You know, you don’t want to like restrict your life scope so that doesn’t happen again. You might, you might like kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater.
You have to be open to that happening again for the sake of growth at the same time.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:03)
Right, right. Yeah, I mean it seems I definitely want to try to distinguish it from other types
Dave (13:08)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:09)
of anxiety. I mean, it seems like on the surface at least, my naive approach is that, you know, there’s some parallels to like sports performance, and there’s also like it kinda dips into, you know, phobia kind of territory if you’re like
truly avoidant and you know, so yeah, can you talk us through that? Like how do you sort of place music performan performance anxiety MPA like under the anxiety umbrella with the other types of anxiety?
Dave (13:35)
Good question. there’s a pretty big divide in like the researcher camp on this very debate here. some of us, myself included, think it’s a yeah, of course there’s always that. Yeah, yep.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (13:41)
Great. Like any yeah, any good topic is gonna have a a divide. Yeah.
Dave (13:47)
I think it’s part of sociophobia. and in fact, if you read the language in the DSM, you know, the more recent DSMs, the five and the the revised five, it talks about a performance-only subtype of social anxiety.
Right. So you’ve got your classic kind of social interaction anxiety. That’s kind of what we think of when we think of social phobia. But there’s also this other subsection of people that don’t like to do things in front of others who may not have a problem interacting socially, right? But you put on a stage and all of a sudden they clam up and you know that that’s a an example of the performance only subtype of social anxiety disorder. And as long as you meet all the criteria, you know, for social anxiety disorder, but it’s performance only, then you could be diagnosed with that point. So
I think the language is pretty clear in the DSM 5 that this clearly applies. In fact, they give an example of a professional musician having performance anxiety. That is an example of this subtype of social anxiety. So of course, others,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (14:38)
Sure. So
Dave (14:38)
others will had you believe it’s a form of G A D. I’ve heard that argument. I’ve heard the social, sorry, the specific phobia argument. Diana Kenny also talks about how there’s elements of like relational trauma at work, especially if you’re someone.
Who’s been abused or traumatized, you know, by like really stern, harsh parenting, you then develop, you know, anxiety at the thought of being scrutinized, at the thought of being judged, you know, for being less than perfect or something like that. So there’s like depression in there as well here. So it’s pretty fascinating
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:06)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Dave (15:08)
how it’s hard to just come up with one answer to the question, what is NPA? Diagnostically speaking, here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:14)
Right, right.
Turns out people are complicated.
Dave (15:17)
People are too complicated
than we we give them credit for, yes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:20)
Yeah, yeah, certainly.
Certainly. That sounds good. I mean, that makes sense to me. So does that mean we’re jumping ahead a little bit, but like if you were
Dave (15:27)
Yeah, no worries.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:27)
to be working with someone, would you technically diagnose them with social phobia and then specify MPA? at least for you.
Dave (15:36)
I think I would only need to do that if I was like strict on like an inclusion criteria for a study, which I have done in the past, where I wanted to make
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:43)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave (15:44)
sure this person definitely has MPA.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (15:46)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (15:47)
I would use excuse me, I I’ve used the skid for that aim and you know I’ve taught other like interns to use a skid, you know, so we can recruit people that we think are, you know, homogeneous homogeneously similar like that. But in that day to day practice, no, it’s not so important. And in fact
much of the work that I do, I believe, is replicable across different types of practitioners. I’ve trained singing teachers and non-clinical professionals to do the kind of work that I do in using act
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:11)
Mm.
Dave (16:12)
coaching rather than act psychotherapy to treat performance anxiety. And they’re definitely not diagnosing people with the skid or giving, you know, them like social anxiety questionnaires and diagnosing them with social anxiety, but you don’t have to. And and this is where I wanted to get to earlier about when talking about the different groupings of symptoms here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (16:30)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (16:30)
Either
a clinical or a non-clinical professional be can be trained to view these, they can detect these kinds of symptoms in people. And I think that is a better surefire way to identify someone who has it than giving someone a questionnaire or giving someone like a diagnostic interview. Because you had to be well trained to do those other more clinical things here. So, for example, aside from the cognitive symptoms, you’ve obviously got the physiological arousal symptoms. We all know what it
feels like to feel anxious, it’s not comfortable. So I probably don’t need to go into detail about what that means. Shortness of breath and clammy hands, you know, heart rate up, you know, all that fun stuff there, right?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (17:06)
yeah.
Dave (17:07)
but then there’s the behavioral symptoms. And this is where training either clinical or non-clinical people is actually useful here. Because there’s there’s complexity. There’s avoidance as well as anxious behavior. And when someone has MPA, you can you can believe there’s going to be some avoidance, whether it’s obvious, like the case of give a
Classic cake example in a few minutes for Barbara Streisand and start to talk about her. She she stopped performing for decades because she had a tough performance in her twenties in in like the like a New York City style concert. She stopped
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (17:35)
Yeah.
Dave (17:36)
performing for decades based on what happened there. So sometimes avoidant behavior is obvious, like we could all see she stopped. What what’s up with that?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (17:45)
Right.
Dave (17:46)
Versus something that’s a little more subtle. And this is where training is very useful. I’ll just kind of hammer this point home real fast here.
You’re not gonna get away with that very easily if you wanna be a professional, just stopping performing. Certainly, if you’re a student, you’re gonna get pretty bad grades, you might even flunk out if you just stop showing them, right? So people tend to avoid in more like subtle ways. Like they they stick to what their teacher had taught them only and they they stay very technically focused. But there’s
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:11)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (18:12)
little by way of like express expressivity or artistry or dynamics in their performance. It just tends to be too technically like focused, you know what I mean? So that
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:20)
Yeah.
Dave (18:20)
If done over time, that’s a form of avoidance because you feel nervous, like kind of putting down the technical aspect and like growing in this more artistic way. You just you don’t really know how to do that, so I’m just gonna not go down that road and just stick to what my teacher told me. That’s an example of like a subtle avoidant behavior. And teachers need to know
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:36)
Right, right. Yeah, the
Dave (18:38)
that. They need to be able to pick up on that.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:41)
Right, right. Yeah. I mean I thought about would it would this apply if someone, you know, kind of perpetually chose pieces that were too easy or like well within their you know,
Dave (18:49)
Yep. Exactly.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (18:52)
their scope of expertise.
Dave (18:53)
Yep. I I could give you a list of so many like obvious and not so obvious subtle like avoidant behaviors that I’ve seen throughout the years.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:00)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dave (19:01)
as a vocalist holding the sheet music too often and not allowing your body just to like to be free and to express with your body.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:09)
Yeah.
Dave (19:10)
sometimes also vocalists will hold on to the accompaniment’s piano too much for the same reason. They just don’t know like how to insert their body into their performances. So this becomes
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:18)
Interesting.
Dave (19:18)
like the life raft for them. They’re just like, yeah, no, I’m not gonna use my body, so just hold on to this and that’s how.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:24)
Okay. Okay.
Dave (19:25)
Changing majors
to one that’s less performance intense, changing instruments to ones that don’t seat you so close to the audience. I’ve heard that. I had
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:31)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dave (19:33)
a a professional violinist who used to be sorry, who switched to viola because the violas are in the back and she didn’t want to be in the front anymore. And it was that simple. She she was too nervous to sit so close to the audience, so she wanted to go back where it was safer essentially.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:46)
Sure.
Yeah, yeah. I was gonna ask about there’s a couple questions wrapped up in here. Yeah, yeah.
Dave (19:51)
The list goes on and on too of all those avoidant behaviors here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (19:55)
Well, yeah, this is interesting. This is raising a couple things for me. you know, I thought about is there a dynamic of yeah, like performing more in an ensemble versus solo as a you know, kind of avoidance. But then that
Dave (20:08)
Yeah, yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:08)
led to another question of like I guess in my mind this whole time I’ve been picturing solo artists, but does this happen?
in ensemble work as well.
Dave (20:18)
Yes. coming back to the definition by Diana Kenny, in that definition, she she clearly talks about the personological risk factors for developing anxiety, but there’s also set and setting risk factors too, which is very interesting.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:30)
Mm.
Dave (20:31)
she talked about when there’s a high ego investment involved in the performance or the outcome of the performance, you’re more likely to get anxious, unfortunately for you. And that that’s a bummer because those are the ones you really care about the most, right? But unfortunately those are the ones where you’re most likely to get anxious, right?
a as well as there being, you know, an evaluation component and like a fear of failure. She talks about
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:50)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (20:50)
these three areas there evaluation, threat, fear of failure, ego investment. And that’s that’s true of like many performances that a young student would have to give, right? So
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (20:59)
Yeah.
Dave (21:00)
whether you’re doing it in in a solo way, or soloistic way as part of an ensemble, even in a music lesson, if those like setting specific risk factors are popping up, then you’re likely to have MPA in a lesson too, which is mind blowing but certainly possible.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:16)
Right, right. Yeah. It’s fascinating. I we talked a little bit about perfectionism. You mentioned it a bit ago. Like how how does perfectionism get situated in here? I mean, I know it’s not like diagnostic necessarily, but as far as we understand both of these constructs, how how do they
Dave (21:32)
It it is so intertwined with MPA. you can’t really speak about the one without the other there.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:37)
Mm.
Dave (21:38)
I’m of the opinion that if you actually look very closely at Kenny’s definition of MPA, it’s pretty lengthy, maybe four, five, six sentences in total. She’s talking about perfectionism. And
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (21:48)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (21:48)
and it’s interesting that you mentioned perfectionism and the time in this conversation here. Those set and setting risk factors there sound like perfectionism, right? Like when you’re equating your sense of self with the outcome of your music performance.
You’re more likely to do that when you have like the bad kind of perfection, when you’re more maladapted with your perfectionistic thinking. Whereas if you’re you know, a little more adapted, then it’s not you that’s getting rejected. It’s your performance or your professional services or your style or something like that. It’s not you as a whole person, right? So it’s it it it’s embedded in the language of the the definition MPA. It is a huge risk factor for anxiety disorders, generally speaking, as well as a lot of other, you know, mental health problems, but
Very, very much so with MPA. If you’re someone with maladapted perfectionism you’ll you probably already have MPA. If if you don’t have it yet, then you will have it fairly soon. Unfortunately.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (22:38)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sure, sure. Well, I’d love to move to the the assessment p component and then we’ll talk about treatment as well. But you know, part of the reason that we reached out to you is because you have developed a a measure for assessing MPA. so I want to talk about that, but I wanna talk about the full assessment process. Like, you know, is this
Right. What does what does an interview look like? Is there an interview? You know, when do you administer this measure? What’s the measure look like?
You know, all those all these kinds of things. So you can take that wherever you’d like to.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (24:29)
Hey, everyone. I’m really excited that NovoPsych Psychometrics is sponsoring the show. NovoPsych is a platform for psychologists who care deeply about assessment and testing and want their self-report measures to be the very best. NovoPsych has an extensive library of 150 standardized instruments with strong coverage across the presentations many of us assess every day, like disability, functional impact, autism, ADHD, and a wide range of symptom measures.
You can also use it for broad personality assessments like the Big Five or go deeper when you’re looking to understand personality pathology. What makes NovoPsych different isn’t just the range of scales, it is the quality of the experience. So I really appreciate the depth of psychometric info that it provides and the clear graphs and visualizations that make results easier to interpret and communicate. If you want to try NovoPsych psychometrics, you can access a 15 day free trial via the link in the show notes, which is
novopsych.com slash testing psychologist. That’s N-O-V-O-P-S-Y-C-H dot com slash testing psychologist.
Dave (25:34)
Sure, sure, sure. So to be clear, the measure we came up with is not an MPA measure per se.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:39)
Okay.
Dave (25:39)
It’s a measure of psychological flexibility within music performance and music practice. But undoubtedly, you’re going to be touching on like performance anxiety stuff. You know, the language is similar, there’s high overlap there.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:50)
Yes.
Dave (25:51)
so yeah, we created the musicians acceptance and action questionnaire, aka the A Q, or Mac for short. And
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (25:56)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (25:57)
it is essentially just a variant of the A the traditional AAQ, which is very popular questionnaire in the IP.
This is the acceptance in action questionnaire. It’s probably like the most popular industry standard way of measuring psychological flexibility. And if you go on, you know, if you go on a webpage where all this information is here, contextualscience.org, FYI, that’s kind of the parent association for all act-related stuff, just put it that way. They’ve got a list of all the different AAQ variants. and there’s AAQ at work, the work AAQ, the WAC. There’s yep, yep, they got fun names here.
There’s the AAQ in like an academic context to measure psychological flexibility with students, right?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (26:36)
Mm.
Dave (26:37)
There’s domain and disorder-specific ones, substance abuse, diabetes, chronic pain. All these kind of clinical domain areas have their own version of the AAQ, essentially. And up until now, no one has done such a thing for musicians here. So I felt there was a strong need to do that just because you know no one had done it first. And probably more importantly, a bigger motivate motivator was.
I’ve noticed this is interesting. I’ve noticed I’m working with some musicians, if you give them the AAQ, which again is a general measure of just overall psychological flexibility, it’s not specific to any one area of their life really, they can score pretty well on that, right? But they’re coming to see you for performance anxiety treatment. That’s the irony of it here. So maybe this is too overly general of a questionnaire because according to their responses on this questionnaire, psychologically speaking, they seem like they’re okay, right?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (27:25)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (27:25)
But then
when you get more specific and talk about music performance, yes, that’s where I’m psychologically inflexible. That’s where I have anxiety, that’s where I have a lot of avoidance, that’s where I have all these things that are going wrong for me essentially. So this was in a nutshell in my dissertation case. I I noticed this very thing with with him. He was a professional drummer in his forties. He came to see me for twelve sessions of ACT. And when assessing him, I gave him the AAQ, thinking like he would be, you know, problematic on the AQ, thinking he would be like, Yeah, this will be a clear cut case of psychological inflexibility. But
To my surprise and my dissertation advisors were like, Ha, he scored really well on this. That’s kinda hard to understand. Why might that be? So that seed was planted like years prior doing the dissertation work essentially. And here we are years
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (28:07)
Right.
Dave (28:08)
later, you know, more than ten years later, my colleagues and I, like, yeah, there is a need to identify someone with more domain specific inflexibility within music performance in particular, rather than just giving the same old, same old like clinical questionnaires here. So
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (28:23)
That’s great. Yeah. So can you speak to how it differs? I mean, in particular, I don’t know if you can give a couple of examples of questions.
Dave (28:32)
So yeah, the musicians questionnaire that we made here, if you read some of these questions and compare it to the language in the AQ, it’s practically the same language. And I I’ve noticed that other researchers when doing a variant of the AQ kind of like keep the same language intact basically. So for example, I don’t have the AQ. Actually I think I do have the AEQ handy, if I can pull it up real fast. Here it is. Look at that. I had it in no time.
For example,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (28:58)
Nice.
Dave (28:59)
number four on the AAQ two, which is in its second version now, my painful memories prevent me from having a fulfilling life. And it’s a Likert scale, one to seven. One never true, seven always true, everything else in between. Painful memories prevent me from having a fulfilling life.
My performance, our number four is my performance related difficulties prevent me from giving meaningful performances. You see? Same idea there.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:25)
Mm, yeah, yeah. I see what mean. Sure.
Dave (29:29)
memories of previous like failings. Excuse me, I think is the language on the AQ too. My painful experiences and memories make it difficult for me to have a life that I would value. That’s the number one. Our number one is my pr my memories of previous mistakes prevent me from performing in ways that I find them.
So you can see the language is fairly consistent across both questionnaires.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:51)
Yeah, yeah. Nice, nice.
Dave (29:54)
okay, so you can see them both here. All right, so I’ll make them
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (29:54)
So just as for the listener, you know, Dave
sharing a screen with the with the measures displayed.
Dave (30:03)
Yep. this might be a problem with tiny font size here. Now that we have them both on the same screen, you might you might be able might not be able to see this in full here. But yeah, the the Mac itself, just like the AQ, has the same number of items, seven items. like
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (30:18)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (30:18)
I said, the language is consistent. Even the title is the same, except we just added musicians instead of the acceptance and action questioner only. And if you look very, very carefully at it here, which I doubt you’re doing right now, but if you have the time to.
The first six items are performance specific, where the word perform appears in the language there, whereas number seven exclusively talks about music practice there. for example, my difficult
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (30:46)
I see.
Dave (30:46)
thoughts and feelings prevent me from making progress while practicing. it
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (30:50)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (30:50)
didn’t make much sense to
To exclude any music practice related items, but we’re also kind of limited. We didn’t want to have a super long questionnaire. So we just chose to put one item on practice only. in retrospect, maybe we probably should have had like two or three practice-focused questions here, because we got some interesting outcomes that didn’t go our way. What when just looking at music practice psychological flexibility, but long story short, that’s I think it’s just boils down to there’s only one question about music practice here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (31:20)
Sure. That’s fair. I mean, I like that it’s brief. I think that helps, especially in a setting where you’re not necessarily doing like a a full comprehensive assessment. You know, you’re looking for something that’s gonna be relatively quick and give you good info right off the bat. Yeah.
Dave (31:36)
Exactly. Yeah,
and and speaking to how the assessment goes here, like I said, if I was recruiting someone into a research study, I would be a lot more thorough with the assessment phase here. There would be like maybe one or two assessment interviews prior to starting the treatment. But when you’re coaching, especially if you’re coaching someone in a hurry, you don’t have don’t have more than one or two or three sessions sometimes, given something like this here. You can use it as a pre and post measure, you know, pre and post the intervention you’re gonna do just to see if they’re making any kind of
Progress.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:07)
Right, right. Yeah, I think that’s a great segue to, you know, the clinical use of this measure. actually sorry, I’m gonna pause and and go back. Could you talk briefly, at least as far as you have, like anything around the psychometrics of the measure or what y’all are finding at this point?
Dave (32:22)
Sure, sure.
Yep. so I’ll share that this is still preliminary because it hasn’t been published yet, and we probably want to run another study just because there are some glitches here. But as of now, you know it’s got promising data. it converges well with other questionnaires. You would expect it to be similar to like a flow questionnaire we gave participants, both this and the flow, and you know, strongly, positively, significantly, positively correlated there, as well as other psychological flexibility measures too. diverges away
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (32:49)
Yeah.
Dave (32:49)
from
Performance anxiety measure. In fact, that was the strongest correlation we observed with the Kenny, Dinah Kenny’s music performance anxiety questionnaire, the industry standard way of measuring MPA, by the way. That correlation was like negative point eight, I think. So extremely strongly correlated, but strongly negatively correlated there, which is pretty not surprising, but but interesting to see that that was the strongest correlation that we found.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (33:14)
Right. Right. Yeah, that’s great. Okay.
Dave (33:17)
in terms of you know factorial validity, I would say the jury’s still out on that one because we had that’s where the issues were coming up with our methodology. I don’t think long story short, it appears to be measuring psychologic flexibility. I don’t think there’s anything else that’s latently coming up in this questionnaire. But the analysis that we did probably could be strengthened a little bit with the factorial analysis there. So I’ll say that. But here’s the fun part. Here’s the fun part of what we did in this study here. So obviously it’s heavily based on the AAQ.
So we compared it to AAQ2, I should say. We compared it to that as a a way of measuring things that musicians would want to measure. Like, for example, what kind of grades are you getting on your most recent juried music exam? Can the Mac be a good predictor of that? And how does the Mac stack up compared to the AAQ as a predictor of that? And it was a really cool finding. we found that it actually successfully separated those students who reported getting A’s on a recent juried music exam from those who reported getting B’s or lower.
And it made that statistical like clean separation, meaning like these are coming from separate populations essentially, just by virtue of their max scores. Whereas the AAQ could not make that cleanly. The p-value wasn’t wasn’t significant in separating these two as if they were separate populations. They appear to be the same population using the AAQ only. So that’s a pretty cool finding. And if that’s replicated
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:35)
That’s cool.
Dave (34:36)
across other samples, you can you can infer that maybe.
Those with just naturally more flexibility or those who go through an ACT training are more likely to report getting A’s, or actually not just report getting A’s, but getting A’s on like a juried music exam.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (34:50)
Yeah, yeah. I like that. Yeah, this is great. This is great. I mean, you know, I’m a little night I get out of my depth pretty quickly when it comes to psychometrics, but it’s always, you know, it’s important, of course, to ask how that’s going and
Dave (35:03)
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:03)
it sounds like y’all are headed down the right path.
Dave (35:06)
We’re heading down an interesting path. There’s never a dull moment with this stuff here. I’ll just I’ll br I’ll give you the elevator pitch for the other interesting psychometrics. I’ll do them like 10 seconds or less here if you don’t mind.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:16)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Dave (35:18)
it it seems so this is all justification to create the Mac here because it seems to be slightly better than the AAQ in identifying those students who get A’s, as well as we gave it to professional musicians and we found that y you probably are not surprised to hear this. We we couldn’t
Cleanly separate those professionals who won music competitions from those who didn’t using the Mac, meaning psychological flexibility doesn’t seem to be at work there, whether using the Mac or the AAQ. But we found that
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (35:45)
Mm.
Dave (35:45)
we could cleanly separate those who entered music competitions from those who didn’t. And the Mac was predictive of those musicians who were entering competitions, meaning it probably takes more psychological flexibility to enter rather than win a music competition versus those who don’t here. So that was
That was an interesting finding. That suggests that
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:05)
Sure.
Dave (36:06)
that the ability to predict who wins a music competition is impossible. Basically, if psychological
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:12)
Yeah.
Dave (36:13)
flexibility is not a good, like robust predictor of that, then what is essentially? Because in in the world of sports, it actually is a strong predictor of who’s winning games, of who’s winning competitions,
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:23)
Mm.
Dave (36:24)
who’s beating their personal bests, who’s running
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:26)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (36:27)
faster. There there’s so many like
Obviously, sports has more objective outcomes here. There’s so much correlation, much more correlation with psychologically flexibility, psychologically flexible athletes, I mean to say, and winning and doing good. But in music performance, it’s all it all boils down to who is adjudicating here. And it’s hard
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (36:45)
Sure.
Dave (36:45)
to know what’s going on in the mind of someone who’s sitting on an adjudication panel and saying, Yes, this guy is the best performer today. I’m going to give him 10 out of 10. This one’s second place. You would think that the performers who are psychologically flexible would be able to win more often, but
There was no statistical like significance whatsoever there. Which is so frustrating. Which is so frustrating for us. But it’s understandable.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:02)
Right, right. Well yeah. ‘Cause it’s such a
such an important outcome measure. I mean winning, obviously like people want to win and if you get to that level, that’s what you look toward for affirmation or whatever. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave (37:15)
Right. Exactly.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:18)
Yeah. But it is subjective. Like you said, there’s I mean, there’s no way to control the yeah. Yeah.
Dave (37:21)
It’s so subjective. You could be
the world’s most psychologically inflexible musician and still win like a lot of music competitions and score very poorly on this Mac and and and everything like is just fine and dandy. Like there’s no easy way to predict who’s gonna be the winners of these competitions, unfortunately.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (37:38)
Gotcha. Gotcha. So how do you actually use this measure? You know, so I don’t know if you could do a case example or or something like that, just to like walk us through how would you, yeah, how would you use this measure or like the assessment process in general to like figure out how what’s going on with someone who may have MPA and then move on to treatment.
Dave (37:59)
That’s a question.
I would say this is kind of like the cheat sheet thing that I do in the work that I do with musicians, meaning if you want to have like a simple, clean, pre and post measure of how effective your intervention is, then yes, this is probably useful there. Again, I say probably because it’s still preliminary. We we think it works, but we need a little more data showing it does work. It does. We just need a little cleaner data.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:19)
Yeah. You just gotta get the data.
Dave (38:23)
but it’s interesting.
When I train non-clinical folks like voice teachers in universities or performance coaches who don’t really have access to these questionnaires, even though I say use my questionnaire if you want. I I don’t want it restricted only to the psychologist or psychiatrist.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:37)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (38:37)
I think it’s better to train them in looking for behavior change as being a better indicator that ACT is working or that, you know, the assessment is working. because you you can fake things on a questionnaire, right? You can fake good, you can fake bad, you can have social desirability, you know,
Things pop up all the time, right? But but
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (38:56)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (38:57)
you can’t fake behavior changers. So I I kind of I tell all the folks I trained that are non-clinical, I say, yeah, you can use this questionnaire as a way of like kind of like cleanly cheating to see if the act intervention worked here. But the better indicator of change is that behavior indicator. So if someone is not avoiding anymore, for example, then yeah, you could say you have taught them to be more accepting and more willing to do things that are challenging, which is part of the act training, right?
so this probably illustrates the ACT model at work more than it does the assessment phase here, because this particular student didn’t get the MAC, she got the AAQ. And you’d also ask me if I use other ACT measures. I definitely do. There’s like specific measures for willingness and acceptance, specific measures for fusion versus defusion.
Not sure how much familiarity you have with that language there. No.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:48)
No, if you could explain it, that’d be great.
Dave (39:50)
Yeah, so the ACT model has the sixth skill set, which they collectively refer to as the hexaflex.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (39:56)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (39:56)
it’s like a visual diagram. It’s got all like six skills that you basically learn in the ACT model. Mindfulness, acceptance, diffusion, those are kind of like the first mindfulness-based ones. Values, clarity, committed action, self as context versus content. Those are the three remaining ones there. So you’ve you’ve got
Yeah, you you’ve got these skills essentially, right? And each one of these has like its own like sub-questionnaire that you could use here. So if you just want to zero in on willingness only, you can give a willingness focus questionnaire. You just want to focus on values only, there’s questionnaires for that here. The Mac focuses on all six of these, by the way. So with this case study in particular, the the assessment phase, because she was part of research study was pretty involved, you know, doing a social disorder a social anxiety disorder vo vowel, using the skid.
Making sure you know she didn’t have anything else that was secondary that could become a problem for her during you know the entirety of the treatment, like depression, eating disorder, stuff like that that could come up there. And once you decide, yeah, she seems, you know, relatively stable aside from the performance anxiety, include her in. And here’s where it gets interesting. So she had wanted to overcome a lot of self-consciousness in the way that she performed. And earlier I I cited an example of an avoidance behavior that was hers. She would always hold her sheet music.
And performing.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (41:10)
Mm.
Dave (41:11)
And she was someone that when you speak to her outside of a music performance context, she’s talking with her hands, she’s talking with her face, she’s talking with her body. She’s very expressive. But in the music performance itself, she wasn’t. She was just like kind of like a deer in headlights, you know, just holding on to that sheet music like for deer life and not knowing what to do otherwise if she could let it go. So I picked up on that and I pointed out, you know, I can’t help but notice when you’re speaking just about life in general.
so like colorful and expressive with your body and your language and you’re like very effective as a talker as a communicator right that but for some reason like that same version of you doesn’t appear in the classical music performances here which I get you kind of need to be genre appropriate and respectful I understand that but there’s something missing too right there’s like a confidence in you outside of here can we take that and insert that in here so long story short this is part of the values clarity you know section of the act here
Figuring out like what do I love about music performance? What do I love about life? Where are my sources of confidence and energy and well-being? How do I take them and insert more of that stuff into my performances? So that way my performances become more valuable and become more me, right? More authentic to me. So
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (42:23)
Mm.
Dave (42:24)
this isn’t rocket science, but we basically figured out through the values clarifying conversations, she likes expressing herself, right? Not not so surprisingly.
And not just as a speaker, but as a performer. She values seeing other people like really just use their body and voice very well and artfully, right? So it took some time for her to clarify yes, this is actually something that’s really meaningful to me. I want more of this, basically, in my performances. And it just boiled down to the committed action piece of just getting herself to do it more and more often and overcoming that self consciousness. So this is the the work part of the ACT model here. we came up with the idea for every performance that she gave for the semester, she was gonna.
Do like slightly more arm gesturing, slightly more facial gesturing, slightly more body gesturing. And it was as simple as like three to five times during a piece of music. Like a three-minute piece of music, maybe two or three times gesturing. That’s it. Let’s start simple, right? And if I could show you the pre and post videos, I don’t know if I have it on cue ready yet, but you see clear as day in the post-performance. first of all, she’s a lot more still when not holding, she’s not holding her sheet music. She’s still.
So she really cultivated a good sense of presence through the mindfulness, acceptance, and diffusion work there. But she’s doing things that are interesting with her body. And there’s this one high note that she hits beautifully. And while hitting it, she extends her arms outward like this, almost like she’s kind of like flying or being liberated or something
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (43:48)
Uh-huh.
Dave (43:49)
like that. And I didn’t tell her to do that. She just did it. And she did it so like in sync with the music. It was very artfully done. It was beautiful. And like I I told her.
This is before like the study ended. She was doing that to me. I was like, do that more. What you just did was was so like locked in right there. You’re you’re embodying this ex this emotion that you wanna portray. This is like what the composer is intending for you to like do right now. So do that. And she did it more and more and more. And then she did it in I’m sorry, she did it in the post therapy video performance as well. And you see the same kind of behavior there. So that’s her expressing herself more and more. And and that is part of the that’s the fun part of the alcohol. Well, you you get to like
Pick the things that you find valuable about music performance and insert them into your performances somehow while respecting genre or respecting what your teacher taught you as well too.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (44:38)
Sure, sure. I that sounds like a an incredible moment. I can just imagine, you know, like seeing that on video and yeah, just like being so excited and happy for her. Yeah, yeah.
Dave (44:47)
It was like a nailing it kind of moment for her there. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (44:50)
that’s great. That was great. How did you settle on ACT as a framework for treatment? Like I would have to imagine well, I don’t know, you tell me I’m maybe I’m making a an incorrect guess that there are other protocols, so to speak, or other ways to treat
Dave (45:02)
there’s there’s certainly other
ways it’s gonna get. Absolutely.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (45:06)
Yeah,
yeah. Well how did you pick act as
Dave (45:09)
it’s a good question. When I was a doctoral student in LaSalle, it was in the air a lot. It we were like focusing on the third wave therapies more so than C B T, even though we were like heavily sold as a C B T program and and trained more heavily in C B T than I was at ACT. But Frank Gardner was there, Zella Moore, his wife was there, Andrew Andrew Millanon.
These are all people that are big in the world of sports psychology, who use ACT basically in sports psychology. So I was there simultaneously
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (45:34)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (45:36)
getting trained by them. And that’s how I mean it was just like in the air. It was like a very exciting time to be learning this stuff because that’s when like ACT and the sport version of ACT called Mac, the Gardner and his wife Moore created. It was all happening at LaSalle. When I was a grad student, it was all happening like across the nation with ACT just becoming like more and more popular. So I I felt privileged to be like part of that like kind of
new zeitgeist in in the world of s performance psychology, even though it was more sport performance psychology. It wasn’t really focused on music. But that’s kind
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:03)
Yeah.
Dave (46:04)
of where my dissertation idea was heading. I was like we’re always talking about sport performance. We’re using ACT, we’re using the Mac here. What about the musicians? You know, they’re performers too. They they need our help as well. So that was kind of the the impetus.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:15)
Right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s great. Yeah, it seems like it fits it fits pretty well. I like act. I mean if I did therapy, I feel like I would gravitate toward it quite a bit.
Dave (46:26)
Yeah.
Music students tend to to gravitate to it. And you’ve got other options too that are are probably more tried and true within the music world that originate from the music world as well. I’m not sure if you’re familiar
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:37)
Mm.
Dave (46:38)
with that list of foot, like Alexander technique and Feldenkrais method and there’s there’s so many that have
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:41)
I sure, sure. Yeah, I’ve heard of these things.
Dave (46:45)
just come like like from that world only, really. They haven’t come from clinical psychology.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (46:50)
Yeah, yeah. Can you briefly tell us what those are just to offer a comparison point?
Dave (46:55)
Sure. So I I know more about AT Alexander Tech than I do about Alexander Technique than I about phonemicry. So speak to ATE. It’s basically like a series of exercises to straighten posture and to free like unnecessary muscle tension in the body. And it was
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:10)
Mm.
Dave (47:11)
used essentially to to help singers to be able to project their voice the proper way in in
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:15)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (47:15)
settings where there is like no microphone or amplifier or anything like that. And
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:19)
Mm.
Dave (47:19)
they need to like be singing the r the right way, not the wrong way.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (47:22)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (47:22)
But of
course, like many Modalities Act included, it’s been used in so many other ways throughout the decades too. It is a common way to treat performance anxiety too, but it involves a lot of like stretching and you know, sitting like how I’m not sitting right now, just very upright, extreme like kind of like excruciatingly upright, where it just feels like exaggeratedly upright posture when seated, when walking, when performing. But it it works pretty good, actually. It works for that purpose. It works, you know.
To project the voice, it works to like alleviate muscle tension, which is helpful for preventing you know, prevention of injury. But as a performance anxiety treatment, it’s they’re all kind of like it’s like the Dota Burr verdict in Alice in Wonderland here. There is no one clear winner above all the others. Here we’re all kind of experimental with this phase and maybe promising, but there is no one clear winner that yes, this is best practice in treating performance anxiety, even though Diana Kenning would disagree with me on that. She says that CBT is best practice for.
Performance anxiety, but I actually disagree with you. I think it’s best available research, but it’s not best practice because when you give CBT to musicians, they don’t tend to like it sometimes. It tends to be too very clinical, you know. So
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dave (48:31)
long story short, I’m rambling here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:33)
No, no. I mean this is good stuff.
Yeah, I could see that. I could see that fitting a little
Dave (48:36)
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:37)
bit better. I’m I mean, I’m making generalizations here, of course, but you know, it seems like musicians as a group are a little more plugged into creativity and flexibility and artistic. you know, I could see CBT being a little too structured and yeah, I don’t know, concrete maybe with not enough wiggle room.
Dave (48:57)
That tends to be the case.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (48:59)
Yeah. Yeah. So if somebody wanted to get into this area of practice, how would you recommend they do that? Like someone’s listening and they’re like, This sounds fascinating, you know, I think I want to do this. How would somebody do that?
Dave (49:12)
Well, clinically, obviously, you know, getting some kind of clinical training and specifically in ACT doesn’t need to be ACT for performance anxiety, just in ACT, you know, there’s thousands of training opportunities per year in you know, all across the world, online in person with ACT. I often train folks that are non clinical, like voice teachers or instrumental
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (49:30)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (49:30)
music teachers or performance coaches. So I would recommend yeah, I if you can if you can find a non clinical version of ACT to use like Act Coaching.
Can get trained in act coaching as opposed to act psychotherapy, then that’s gonna be your best bet. but of
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (49:44)
Okay.
Dave (49:44)
course people ask what’s the difference? And there isn’t a strong difference really. It’s kind of the same model. It just depends on where it’s applied, like in what the setting is, and as well as who the person doing it is. If it’s done by a therapist, then you can call it therapy. If it’s done by a coach, you can call it coaching. That’s the most precise difference I can give you there, to be honest.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:05)
Okay, okay. I mean, yeah, that’s fair. I feel like that’s hard to separate sometimes. You know, there’s a lot
Dave (50:08)
Yeah.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:09)
of overlap between the two. Yeah.
Dave (50:11)
to add though I do do training myself here. I I train both clinicians and non clinicians in ACT to treat performance anxiety and adjacent problems like perfectionism too. I do that often through a place called the Voice Study Center, which is a UK based postgraduate school. they do a lot of online courses, so I’m part of like their online course sets, if you will. There’s like a whole world of onto itself of ACT for MPA through the Voice Study Center that I’ve been involved with throughout the year sort of so
If you’d like to be training with me, you can go through any one of the Voice Study Center trainings that I give per year in using ActiveTrude MPA or adjacent problems. I certainly go outside of the Voice Study Center. That’s kind of been my home base in recent years, but I can do private trainings.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (50:54)
Gotcha, gotcha. That’s fantastic. yeah, this is really interesting area of practice. I know it’s it’s become a smaller part of your work, you know. can you speak at all to sort of the maybe you’d say the business model of having this as part of your practice? Like in terms of like how do you market this? how do you become known? Where do you, you know, do you have to be plugged into a like a music school? do you have any thoughts on that? And if not, that’s okay.
Dave (51:18)
I do, but I’m probably bad at that kind of thing because I this is not my this is not my full time gig by any stretch
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:23)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave (51:24)
here. And if it were then yeah, I probably would have a lot more like answer to give to that question. I tend to I
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:29)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave (51:30)
I tend to be bad at the networking stuff here. What what I’ll say this, you know, I I continue to do research, not every year, but you know, every once in a while. I’m happy to say I I have two studies in the works, hopefully both of them get published. One of them is the Mac questionnaire study.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:44)
Yeah.
Dave (51:45)
so you know, staying plugged in by doing research, doing trainings, I do those most often throughout the year. I’ll do like anywhere from I don’t know, three to five courses through the Voice Study Center, plus private trainings on the side as well.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (51:54)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Dave (51:56)
Plus going to music schools myself, I do that. I’ve I’ve been kind of up and down the East Coast, you know, giving workshop like act focused workshops on treating performance anxiety. I’ll be doing one in Michigan soon. Actually that one’s gonna be on Zoom, but they offered to find me out, but I thought it was a little
It would be more realistic since I have kids to do it on Zoom.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:13)
yes.
Dave (52:13)
yeah. Yeah, just a variety of things that I try and do to stay plugged into that world here.
But yeah, I I I I don’t like network much for myself beyond those activities. I I don’t like pound the pavement and knock on front doors and say I do this. I wrote a book. I could very probably very easily sell myself, you know, but I just kinda take a backseat and hope that the work comes to me. That’s been my more passive approach to networking here.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:38)
Sure. I mean it seems like it’s working. Al I mean, all those things you described, it it seems like you’re doing quite a bit, actually. Yeah. Yeah.
Dave (52:45)
I think so. I think so too. Yeah.
Yeah, I I need more sleep these days.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any idea of the number of psychologists who specialize in this? Like around is it a relatively small group? Is it a
Dave (52:58)
Yes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (52:58)
larger group? Yeah.
Dave (52:59)
I would say probably in worldwide, less than ten would be my guess there.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:04)
Less than ten?
Dave (53:05)
Who who specifically would be music performance anxiety focused or like specialists who are psychologists? Less
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:11)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave (53:12)
than ten. And and this is a I’m glad you asked this question actually. it it brings up a more important question of if you’re a musician, then how do you find someone like me, right? Given
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:20)
My gosh.
Dave (53:21)
that there’s only like a handful of us in the world here. I wrote a 2018 paper that talked about
If you can find someone like me, great. but you’re probably better off working with a sports psychologist because they’re a little bit easier to find, right?
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (53:33)
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Dave (53:34)
you you probably have one living near you, you know, most people in the world do, at least in you know, like the English speaking countries that we’re talking about here, UK, Australia, US. but even then, my opinion has since changed. That used to be the thinking. But this has been the impetus to train music teachers and just bring the act world into music institutions so that way they don’t have to leave their institution.
That’s a lot easier. Music teachers are highly accessible. And turns out
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:00)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (54:00)
they can be trained to do this kind of work. And I’m happy to share that with the Voice Study Center trainings that I’ve been giving throughout the years, we have nearly fifteen research studies, predominantly masters, theses, but predominantly focused on this area where singing teachers are replicating the work that I’m doing. It’s pretty cool. They’re doing what I’m
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:17)
It’s nice.
Dave (54:17)
doing and they’re getting the same results here. So you probably don’t need to be psychologist to do this here. So
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:23)
Yeah, yeah. That’s good to know. Access is is an issue in so many areas of our practice, right? And
Dave (54:29)
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:30)
I that’s actually kind of mind blowing that there’s so few folks around the world who do this.
Dave (54:36)
I would say
who specifically focus on music performance anxieties. Maybe like
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:40)
Yeah.
Dave (54:41)
th there there’s co well, coaches, there’s a lot of coaches, I’ll say that. But as psychologists in
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:45)
Okay, sure, sure.
Dave (54:46)
particular, I haven’t met too many. Just a hint.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (54:49)
Yeah. Yeah. Gotcha. Okay. Okay. Well, I mean it sounds like there’s room. There’s room for more practitioners and
Dave (54:55)
absolutely. absolutely.
We need The table’s too tiny.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:00)
Right, right. Yeah. Well, and this is I don’t know, I’m again like kind of extrapolating from sports or athletic performance, but I would imagine you tell me, like for if a musician is feeling like restricted or hampered or almost like injured, I think of it as like the injury parallel, like if you were an athlete, you know, to not be able to perform at your highest, that’s just you know, that is
devastating and you can ruminate on it and yeah. Yeah.
Dave (55:24)
It’s the worst. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Act Act is very useful in that regard, actually, if I can speak quickly on that. with the diffusion skill set, you know, I’m talking with my hands here for a reason. When you’re fused with your thinking, it’s like your thoughts are just so front and centrally located in your mind. You don’t really separate yourself from them. They just are reality or they are what
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (55:43)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (55:44)
what they say they are, right? Versus, you know, when you’re less fused, your thoughts are like right here. You can see them for what they are. This is very important when you’re having thoughts about identity.
And worth. And you just gave a tough performance, and now all of a sudden all these other identity thoughts are entailed into the thought train here. Act is very specific on kind of delineating that that likely will happen, right? This is courtesy of RFT, relational frame theory, that teaches us the nuts and bolts of our thinking. Yeah, those things have been associated to each other. Performance outcome, self-worth. Yep, these are just gonna be in the same thought, essentially. And you want to teach yourself to just like be here with that stuff there.
And it’s not you, even thoughts about you are not you. They’re just occurring in you like that.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:25)
Mm.
Dave (56:26)
And this helps athletes get over injury, it helps them get over loss, because the identity thoughts can be blindly close to your your mind’s eye, so to speak. And when they’re that close, you can’t behave flexibly in the presence. It’s like all you can
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:37)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (56:38)
do is just avoid this stuff, or avoid stuff that triggers this, like and stop performing essentially. But a psychologically flexible person can like have these thoughts, even the ones that are like self-beliefs and self-stories of worth.
That are really troublesome, you know, like the I’m a failure story or the I’m a terrible musician story. You can teach yourself to be
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (56:56)
Mm-hmm.
Dave (56:57)
the observer of that stuff essentially and not be defined by it, and then still get back into the practice room and like just keep going, keep going forward, right? So that’s an act of flexibility, which is what it’s all about.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (57:10)
Sure, sure. I love that. I love
Dave (57:11)
Comes up with athletes, comes
up with musicians, comes up with everyone.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (57:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re doing a good job selling this act approach. I’m really thinking about this. Like, how can I apply this to everything in my life? Yeah. This is great.
Dave (57:24)
yeah,
yep, happy to help.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (57:27)
Thanks. Well, I really appreciate you being here. This has been a cool conversation and like I said, one that I’m like loosely connected to personally and professionally. So yeah, thanks for delving into this, sharing all this with the audience.
Dave (57:39)
My pleasure. Happy to be here, Jeremy. I have a webpage, actormusicians.com, says more about me and the work I do in case your listeners are curious to know more.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (57:48)
Yeah, absolutely. We’ll put that in the show notes to make sure that people can can find you. And if you’re willing to share the measure, you know, happy to link to that as well.
Dave (57:56)
absolutely, yes.
Dr. Jeremy Sharp (57:57)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thanks again, Dave. That’s been good.
Dave (57:59)
Sure,
you got it. Thank you so much.
Click here to listen to the podcast instead.