Meet “Sam”: “I Started to Hate the Flute,” Part II

By Emily Braunewell, EdM, LMHC, CMPC

Welcome to the BSPP Blog! In this series, “Meet…”, we’re taking you behind the scenes for a glimpse into the work we do. All identifying information has been modified or composited to preserve our clients’ confidentiality.

In this second installment, we are returning to where we left off with Sam, a flute player seeking integrated Clinical and Performance Psychology services. If you haven’t read Part I, be sure to check that out first! 

SAM’S STORY CONTINUES…

Sam sat across from the therapist, feeling more than a little skeptical. It had been a week since she had shared about her history with the flute, and she’d spent the time reflecting on what her therapist had said at the end of their last session.  

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Trauma just, it feels like too strong of a word, almost.” 

 “I hear you,” the therapist said. “A lot of performers have a similar reaction when I say it. We tend to have a very narrow view of what trauma is compared to what it actually can look like, so it can be shocking for us to hear it. But experiencing ‘trauma’ doesn’t automatically mean having PTSD. In your case, it means that your body is still actively trying to protect you from something that happened a long time ago.”

Sam sat with this for a second. She was starting to understand, but a part of her still pushed back against the idea for some reason. 

“It doesn’t feel like what I went through was…I don’t know…bad enough, if that makes sense.” 

“So, it feels like it shouldn’t have impacted you this much?”

Sam nodded. “Exactly. It…I guess it makes me feel kind of weak.”

The therapist offered Sam a warm smile. “I wonder, where do you think you learned that? That what you experienced wasn’t bad enough.”

Sam paused, momentarily confused. That’s just what had felt true to her; she hadn’t considered that the idea had come from somewhere else. 

She allowed her mind to wander backward, toward an image of her first flute, and toward the fifth-grade band teacher, who had been bursting with excitement when he placed the instrument in her hands. 

“Great choice,” he said. “Not enough appreciation for this one!” 

Sam’s chest warmed at the memory. She missed Mr. Rosa. 

It was as Sam left the thought of Mr. Rosa’s cheerful smile behind and followed the trail through middle school band, high school private lessons, and back to that cramped practice room in the far-off corner of the performing arts building, that she remembered. 

“This should be easy by now,” Clarke was standing behind her this time. Sam’s fingers had gone nearly numb from repetition, which, to Clarke’s distaste, only further slowed Sam’s speed. “Especially if you plan to work with an orchestra of any notable scale. This kind of practice is standard.” 

Sam put a hand to the base of her throat. She got the sense that the therapist was about to ask, so she beat her to it. 

“My throat got tight thinking about it,” Sam said. “But, yeah, I think it goes back to Professor Clarke again. According to her, what we were doing was standard for the industry, if not easy.”

“Hmm,” The therapist nodded. “And you noticed your throat tightened just now?”

“It was kind of hard not to notice, if I’m being honest.”

“When we experience something overwhelming or scary,” the therapist explained. “And that something doesn’t have to be just physical, our body is wired to try to protect us – to fight, to run, to freeze. Think for a moment about what your body might have to do to run away from danger. What might happen to your muscles, or to your heart rate?” 

Sam straightened out her hand in her lap, stretching out her fingers. She hadn’t noticed it had been in a fist until just then. 

“Oh.” Was all she said. 

The therapist glanced down at Sam’s hands. “It would make sense, then, why it was so hard to stay loose.” 

“Yeah, it would,” Sam said. “But this all happened over a decade ago. Even if that was what was happening then, shouldn’t it have gone away by now? I’ve barely touched my flute since college.” 

“Well,” the therapist said, “when our body is trying to protect us from harm, but we can’t actually do anything, parts of us can get stuck in that state. Especially if it keeps happening over and over again. That means that even years later, those same stuck parts might react to things like memories or reminders, and we end up feeling like we are right back in that same place.”

Sam sighed. “That kind of sucks.”

The therapist chuckled. “Yeah, it does suck.” 

“So,” Sam said, still looking at her hands. “Does that mean I have to just, I don’t know, deal with this now? Because it feels then like Clarke was right—that I’ll never improve any further.” 

“Well,” the therapist said, “right now, the tension is because your body is trying to protect you, because it associates flute with Clarke. But, if we can help your body feel safe when playing, I wonder if that might make a difference.”

Sam shrugged. “How do we do that?”

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Sam unlatched her flute case and noticed that her fingers were trembling. 

A few feet away, the therapist sat in her usual chair. She was leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, watching Sam carefully. 

“Remember to take a moment, if you need,” the therapist said. 

Sam nodded, taking her hands off the case. Over the last several weeks, the therapist had slowly guided Sam through different ways to calm her heart rate and to slow her breathing. They’d spent an entire session alone trying to loosen the tension that had gripped Sam’s shoulders for as long as she could remember. 

Sam took a slow, deliberate breath, taking stock of her body in the way she had learned. There was her heart, her lungs, her arms, her hands – a tiny bit less shaky now. As she expected, her shoulders were a blaring red alarm on this mental map, pulled nearly up to her ears. 

You’re safe, Sam told herself. She’s not here. Clarke isn’t here. 

She looked to the therapist, who took the cue to begin walking Sam through the exercises they’d been practicing, a series of carefully placed breaths and movements aimed at reminding her body that it didn’t need to fight anymore. All the while, Sam repeated the same phrase over and over again in her mind, until it started to feel real. You’re safe. You’re safe. You’re safe.

After a moment, Sam went back through her map. Her shoulders, while not completely relaxed, no longer felt like they were cemented upward. Her heart rate had gone from pounding to the kind of fluttering nerves that she associated with the first few times she got up on a stage to perform as a kid. Above all, she was no longer seeing Professor Clarke’s face on a loop in her mind, which was enough for her. 

 “Okay,” Sam said. She went back to the case, carefully clicking the lock and lifting the lid. One by one she removed the pieces of her flute and began connecting them together. It was a process that was so ingrained in her, felt so automatic, that she almost didn’t hear the therapist reminding her to pause again. 

Several times this process repeated, with the therapist prompting Sam to stop, check in, and breathe, before Sam finally raised the flute to her mouth. 

“I guess I’ll just start with scales,” she said. And then she played. 

********************************************************************************************************

“So,” the therapist asked. “How was that?” 

Sam looked at the flute in her hands. This time, she didn’t need to be prompted. Her own mind reminded Sam of a bloodhound, starting off eagerly to assess her fingers and wrists, traveling up her forearms, diligently exploring all across her neck and back, and so on. 

Throughout this assessment, the therapist waited patiently from her chair, just as she had last week when Sam had first brought out her flute. 

“It was a little better, I think,” Sam reported at last. She had played the scale fluidly, rolling over the mistake near the middle with only minimal tightening in her chest. “I mean, it wasn’t that fast.” 

“That’s okay,” The therapist said. “How did it feel?” 

“Better,” Sam said, more decisively this time. “My fingers were tired, but they weren’t cramping by the end, which is how they usually were after practicing scales for speed. So, yeah, it felt better.”

“It looked better,” the therapist said.

“It did?” 

The therapist nodded. “Your shoulders. I could see you drop them right before you started.”  

“Oh yeah,” Sam rolled her shoulders once, relishing in the movement. “That’s kind of wild.” 

“Now, I know you have specific goals for speed,” the therapist said. “And while I can’t make any guarantees, if we keep working on helping your body feel safe and loose while you play, we can see what kind of an impact that will have going forward.”

“I definitely want to see how fast I can go, especially if I want to start thinking about a Master’s.” Sam looked back at her flute. “Even for composition, a lot of programs still want you to specialize in an instrument. But I also think it’s not just the speed or technical part that feels important. I realized how much I started to hate the flute during college, to the point where I couldn’t even look at it for over 10 years. I’d really like to not hate it anymore.” 

The therapist smiled. “I think that’s a reasonable goal.” 

Sam smiled back. “Can I go again?”

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Be sure to check back regularly for more installments of our “Meet…” series, where we will take you behind the scenes to meet some of our clients and the work we have done with them.