With a Little Help from My Friends
Week 1: eight strangers in a room. Week 8: eight singers touching shoulders in the wings. What was built between them — and the three mechanisms that made peer connection a resource for anxiety itself.
Big Picture
The findings begin here. Across eight weeks with eight young singers, performance anxiety eased not child by child, but as their community changed. Read Post 9.
More than words
The Riddle
Lean on me
Behind every helpful thing we say to a nervous young singer, there are researchers who spent decades figuring out what works. Post 6 is a thank-you to them — and an introduction to the quieter places where my doctoral research joins the conversation.
Fix You
The stories we tell about music performance anxiety shape what young singers believe about themselves — and the most common ones aren't serving them well. This post challenges three unhelpful narratives about MPA in children, drawing on the research to offer a different reframe: the child is not broken, but the conditions around them may deserve closer attention.
You are not alone
