Counseling Case Study

A young vocalist, Tatiana, is preparing for a leading role and an audition for another role (both for bigger productions that are new for her). She is struggling with stress management, figuring out an ideal practice routine that balances both priorities and is struggling with confidence given the high level of validation placed on judge feedback and audience reactions alike in her profession. Tatiana has held leading roles in smaller productions in the past but feels “it’s all happening so fast”. She fears “screwing up or making mistakes” and “ruining her reputation/career before it even starts”.

1. Initial Assessment: The Certfied Mental Performance Consultant® (CMPC) meets with Tatiana to understand her confidence levels, sources of confidence, practice/pre-performance routines, and previously used stress management tools and practice routines. 
2. Building Self-Confidence: The CMPC helps Tatiana identify sources of confidence that are within her control (e.g., the external target vs internal process of creating sound, listening to past recordings (highlight reel) from practice or other performances). The CMPC also helps Tatiana reconnect with her strengths as singer/artist and how she got this far. 
3. Normalizing Stress: The CMPC helps Tatiana reflect on the physiological symptoms of stress, the importance of her interpretation of those symptoms, as well as taking time to label the source of potential stressors. The CMPC challenges Tatiana to strategize how she can view stress around needing to practice into something that can spur her into action, for example. Also, can she view pre-performance nerves as excitement around performing for a bigger audience, rather than just nerves and anxiety around potential mistakes/negative outcomes?
4. Contingency Planning: Some questions remained around how to deal with potential mistakes during important performances. The CMPC helped Tatiana turn some of those fears into an imagery routine where she found herself working on a stay/regain focus type of self-talk/mantra in response to potential missed notes. 
5. Discovering Preferred Responses: This imagery routine also helped illuminate a new source of confidence for Tatiana. Rather than just relying on others’ feedback for her singing, she would work on blocking that out and focusing on the joy associated with finding the perfect pitch, timing, timber, or tune of her voice and connecting with that as much as possible each time she imagined herself missing a note.
6. Progress Monitoring: Leading up to her performance and audition, Tatiana and the CMPC met for shorter/check-in sessions once to twice per week to monitor her confidence levels, perceived stress, and productivity adhering to her imagery routine and attempts at re-framing stress.

Outcome: Tatiana feels overwhelmingly more prepared and comfortable going into these “bigger” performances knowing that she spent so much time preparing for them in her mind already, as well as remembering how she can get herself to re-focus on her process goals and what makes her feel confident should her mind waver towards worrying about mistakes again (either during or before her performances).