How to fight the post-performance blues
How to fight the post-performance blues
Part of getting ready for a performance is preparing for how you’ll feel after it’s over. Almost every performer gets some type of emotional whiplash after performing. And post-performance slumps don’t just happen in performing arts like playing music, singing, dancing, and acting. You could also be in a funk after an athletic competition, public speaking, even taking a test. In this article, I’ll talk about some common symptoms of post-performance depression, recovery strategies, and what PPD is usually like for me.
The Performance Hangover
No one ever told me to expect it.
It was my junior recital in college; I wore a lovely green satin dress, many of my family members and friends and teachers attended, and I sang extremely well. I was happy and proud and satisfied, and everyone told me I did such a great job…
…but the next day I was basically a puddle. I felt so dejected and melancholy that I did nothing but cry the whole day.
And on top of feeling like microwaved garbage, I was so confused! I didn’t understand why I would feel so wrecked, when my performance had gone so well.
What I experienced then, and many many other times, is called Post-Performance Depression. I was blindsided by this type of emotional hangover a number of times throughout my life, until I started to notice the patterns and learn to look for the symptoms. Turns out, feeling blah after a performance is something you can prepare for and manage!
Preparing for the post-performance crash
You’re going to have big feelings after you perform. Expecting them and planning ways to handle them should be part of your preparation.
Musicians make a lot of preparation for the way we’ll feel right before and during a performance. It’s not that hard to plan for, because pretty much everyone knows what it’s going to be like. You expect the excitement and the distractions, the bright lights and the sound and sight of the audience. You know you’re going to be nervous and you’ll need to concentrate in order to do your best.
You prepare mentally with strategies for calming your nerves and staying focused. You prepare yourself physically - you make sure to wear comfortable clothes and shoes, get enough rest, avoid caffeine, and stay properly hydrated and fed. You drill the technical execution of your performance until it can withstand all those pressures in your moment of truth, when you’re out there in the spotlight.
Everything is leading up to this moment, and you’ve spent weeks anticipating and preparing for the challenges you’ll experience.
But what about afterwards? How will you feel when you step off the stage?
Well, if your performance goes well, you’ll feel good. And if you do poorly, you’ll feel bad. Right?
Yep, that’s most likely going to be your immediate emotional response. But as a little more time passes, your feelings may get more complicated. In the hours and days after your big performance, you may experience some of the following reactions:
What Post-Performance Depression (PPD) may feel like
Exhaustion - mental, emotional, and physical -You’ve been focusing all your energy on preparing and performing, and when it’s over, you’re spent!
Purposelessness - You had a goal to direct all your activity, then suddenly that purpose is gone and you don’t know what to focus on.
Boredom, listlessness - You were excited for the performance, but afterwards you feel as though you have nothing to look forward to.
Sadness - Regardless of how your performance went, you feel sad that it’s over, or you feel generally gloomy for no particular reason.
Hypersensitivity - An intense emotional experience can leave you with raw nerves, making you irritable, easily provoked, and more prone to take offense or take things personally.
Burnout - You pushed yourself too far past your limits, and now you’re easily overwhelmed; your ability to work, concentrate, and/or care about stuff is reduced, even after you’ve physically rested.
Denial - You ignore your feelings; you pretend that the experience didn’t affect you and you’re feeling the same as always.
Existential dread - Normal life sucks compared to performing. You pushed aside (unpleasant) daily responsibilities in order to prioritize preparing for your performance, and now you’re faced with lots of tedious tasks to catch up on.
Avoidance - You bail on doing stuff like exercise, therapy sessions, meditation, religious worship, chores, or social events - stuff that’s actually important for your emotional recovery but takes some effort to initiate.
Regret, shame - You over-analyze everything that fell short of your aspirations; you may feel judged by audience members or other performers.
Loneliness, disconnection - Performing gives you a high of attention and a sense of connectedness with the audience and with other performers; afterwards, you feel alone and unimportant by comparison.
There are as many manifestations as there are individual performers, so you might experience something I didn’t list here, but I think I covered most of the bases.
I’d venture to guess that many less experienced musicians have never really considered what feelings they might experience hours or days after they perform. I don’t recall any teachers or mentors ever prompting me to examine my long-term post-performance emotional state. And I don’t remember anyone warning me about post-performance emotional fallout, beyond the immediate adrenaline crash. I had to figure all this out myself from experience and from talking to other performers.
But you have to think about how performing affects you in order to effectively deal with your feelings.
Recognizing what it is that you’re really feeling will allow you to see what might help you to recover your emotional balance. Try some of these methods:
Ways to manage Post-Performance Depression
Let it happen - Give yourself permission to feel your feelings and react to your experience. It’s okay to feel however you feel and do whatever you need to do to handle the emotional fallout from your big performance.
Mingle with the audience - Go get that validation, because you earned it! Let people tell you how much they enjoyed the performance.
Have an off-ramp - A transitional activity like going out to dinner after the show slows the descent from your adrenaline high. This is why cast parties are such a thing!
Make time to rest - Schedule time off from work or other responsibilities so you can recover emotionally and physically. You may need extra sleep, alone time, a restorative activity like a nature walk or spa day, or some other form of relaxation.
Clear your to-do list - Work ahead to get chores and responsibilities handled ahead of time, or ask someone to help you by temporarily taking over some of your tasks.
Set a new goal - Plan your next goal or activity in advance, so you won’t feel at a loss for what to do next. It could be something fun or something productive; you know best what will motivate you.
Monitor yourself - Pay extra attention to your emotions and your actions and listen to what they’re telling you about your needs. Check the impulse to engage in harmful coping mechanisms like overwork, substance use, filling the void with food, or taking out your feelings on the people around you.
Find your joy - Get happy! Watch a funny movie, play with little kids, ride a rollercoaster - whatever makes you laugh.
Exercise - You may not feel like doing it, but it really does help lift you out of negative thoughts and feelings.*
Lean on your loved ones - Both before and after the performance, spend time connecting with people who really love you. Meaningful social connection will more than make up for no longer being in the spotlight.
*People with depression are sick to DEATH of hearing, “Just exercise more!” If what you have is clinical depression, then no, exercise is not going to magically cure you. I just want you to know that I know that.
Awareness is key
Self-awareness helps you accept and prepare for whatever type of post-performance emotions you experience. And it helps you avoid unconscious counterproductive reactions.
If you’re ignoring messages from your mind and body and denying your need for recovery after a performance, you risk unconsciously choosing coping strategies that are harmful or destructive.
As the days after the performance pass, keep paying attention to how you’re feeling. You may realize you need to adjust your recovery strategies or try new ones. You’ll figure out what’s helping and what isn’t, and you can use that information to better prepare for the aftermath of future performances.
Look for patterns
Think back to your previous performances. Are there certain feelings you almost always have? Knowing your patterns is a great meta-strategy for managing the post-performance blues, because it allows you to plan ahead for whatever will help you feel better. Most of the strategies I suggested above require taking time away from your usual activities, which is rarely possible unless you manage your schedule in advance.
Ask yourself, not just how you feel after big performances, but what you typically do. Do you throw yourself into work, or brush off your feelings like it’s all no big deal? Are you moody and prone to lashing out at people? Do you obsessively relive your onstage moments in every conversation, or collapse on the couch and mope, or eat a pile of junk food, or do some other weird thing that hasn’t occurred to me because I never do it myself?
Use that knowledge to plan to either rein yourself in or redirect yourself when you start feeling the urge to act that way. Or maybe you just need to give yourself space and grace for that behavior.
A personal example
Just a couple of weeks ago, I had a chance to put these strategies into action. I sing with Pacific Chorale, and we gave a concert Saturday night titled Songs of the Soul. It was a beautiful program of modern choral music; the oldest composition we sang, Frank Martin’s gorgeous and notoriously difficult “Mass for Double Choir,” was composed 100 years ago. All the other pieces were by living composers: Dale Trumbore, Caroline Shaw, Edie Hill, Paul Fowler, and Galina Grigoryeva.
It wasn’t just the breathtaking music and the top-notch musicianship of my colleagues that made this performance special, though. This was the program we had been preparing for the spring of 2020. We were all so disappointed it had to be canceled when the pandemic struck. If you’re a choral singer, then you know how distressing 2020 was for us. We found ourselves cut off from making music together in person, something we all have found so emotionally sustaining for most of our lives, and we didn’t know when we’d ever be able to sing together again. Finally presenting this concert felt like reclaiming some of what we had lost over the past two years.
And we sounded, if I may say so myself, SO GOOD.
Just listen to this 30-second clip from our dress rehearsal:
(Liked that? Want more? Preview/buy Pacific Chorale’s 2020 album “All Things Common” here)
As happy as I was with our singing and the audience’s enthusiastic response, this amazing, sublime, fulfilling performance had me reeling for days! I caught myself doing a bunch of weird stuff to try to deal with the emotional fallout of putting so much time and energy and heart into a high-pressure, very meaningful performance.
I started out okay: I went out to dinner with a friend afterwards and had a lovely time, which helped ease me back out of concert mode. Then, I launched myself back into a busy schedule of performing and teaching - four lessons and three performances in the next three days, and one of those was a day off! - and basically acted like it’s just another week and I’m totally fine, same as always.
(Narrator: “She was not, in fact, totally fine.”)
I was not, in fact, totally fine. I was very, very tired - physically and emotionally. And at first, I resisted acknowledging that I needed more time and space to recover. But fortunately, I know myself, and I could tell my needs were going unmet because I felt sleepy and unfocused (Exhaustion), the thought of doing stuff I usually enjoy filled me with dread (Burnout), and I started getting upset about personal conflicts that were not particularly real (Hypersensitivity). So I adjusted: I canceled some stuff I had been planning to do during the week and caught up on sleep and reading and cat petting.
I don’t like to admit weakness. It’s a perfectionist thing. For me, what happened this week is the hardest part of dealing with a post-performance slump: Denial. But when I steel myself to take a clear-eyed, analytical look at my feelings and actions, I can easily see the signs, and they’re very predictable:
I always get physically and emotionally tired after I perform, so I need some extra sleep and alone time in the next few days. I often feel lonely and irrelevant after the performance is over; connecting one-on-one or in a small group with friends and family right after performing helps me get over it. My emotional bandwidth is somewhat reduced for a few days, so I get upset about small things or get a little snippy with people if I don’t watch myself.
Keeping up with my schedule requirements helps me move on and avoid falling into a mope-hole, like I did after my recital in college, but it also makes me even more tired. I have to strike a balance between giving myself something to do and letting myself take it easy, and I have to give myself the better part of a week to get back in balance and not try to rush it. I have to recognize that I’m not at my best during this recovery time and adjust my expectations for what I’ll be able to handle.
The other hardest part of my performance recovery is the awful disappointment of coming home to a sink full of dirty dishes and a pile of unwashed laundry.
I know perfectly well that I always push aside my tedious responsibilities in order to focus on a performance, but I still do it every time. To be fair, I’m perpetually pretty busy, and I really am in a big time crunch during the week before a big concert, so it’s not like I’m just being lazy. It genuinely is hard to find the time to fit everything in, and I stand by my decision to prioritize concert prep over house cleaning. At least, at this point, I’m never surprised by the chore triage that’s always necessary after a performance-centric week.
You know what I could do about this problem?
Ask someone for help.
So far, I never have, though, because I hate needing help. I even wrote an article titled I hate needing help. It’s part one of a 3-part miniseries about perfectionists’ struggles with asking for and accepting assistance. Next week’s article will be part 2 of that series, so if you (like me) need some convincing that you should ask for help, sign up for the mailing list to be sure you don’t miss that post.
Do you have any strategies or rituals that help you deal with feeling down after a performance? Share your insights in the comments.
