The panic attack that nearly ended my career

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The thing that people don’t tell you about performance anxiety is that it doesn’t always show up under bright lights or in front of a packed crowd.

Sometimes it shows up after years of pushing.
Of working late.
Of saying yes when your body’s already screaming no.

Other times, it hits you in the most ordinary moment.

For me, it arrived on a cold morning in June 6th 2021.

I was 15 minutes late to an exam, running on 2 hours of sleep and 3 cups of coffee.
I thought I was just tired.

I had no energy, no clarity — but I told myself, “You’ve played these scales a thousand times. You’ll be fine.”

I wasn’t.

My hands were trembling.
My heart pounding out of my chest.
By the time I sat down, I couldn’t breathe properly, couldn’t focus, couldn’t move my fingers the way I’ve trained them for 20 years.

My teacher and head of jazz studies stared at me, waiting.
I whispered under my breath, “Just start.”

The first note? Wrong.
The second time around? Better.
But then, my fingers just… gave out.
I lost all control.

My hand started violently shaking.
My chest tightened.
I felt like I was floating outside my body, watching myself fall apart.

I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t unprepared.

I was having a panic attack.

For years, I’d been pushing myself too far.

No breaks. No rest.
Always practising. Always teaching. Always building.

Even when I was out with friends or family, my mind was running scales or planning content or thinking about how to grow my business.

I was averaging 4 hours of sleep a night.
Running on fumes.
Telling myself I was “grinding” for the dream.

But what I didn’t realise was that the dream was grinding me down too.

Maybe you’ve felt this too — that sense of losing yourself in the thing you once loved.

You go so hard chasing it that when you finally get there, you don’t even recognise who you’ve become.

After that day, I went home and stared at the ceiling for hours.
No music. No noise. Just questions.

“Why am I doing this?”
“What’s left of me if I stop?”
“Was this dream ever really mine?”

I couldn’t answer any of them.

For 20 years, music had been everything to me.
The goal. The plan. The identity.

But in chasing it, I had forgotten why I started in the first place.

And then something unexpected happened — the very next day.

One of my students came in for their weekly guitar lesson, and I asked my usual question:

“How’s school going?”

This time, the answer wasn’t “fine.”

He told me everything felt like it was falling apart.
That online learning during COVID was killing his motivation.
That he felt like his childhood was slipping away.

He looked tired.
Flat.
Disconnected.

And I knew exactly how that felt.

So instead of launching into scales and technique, we did something different.

We made a playlist.

A list of songs that had gotten me through tough times — the ones that reminded me that tomorrow could still be better.

Here Comes the Sun – The Beatles
Lean on Me – Bill Withers
Stand by Me – Ben E. King
Fast Car – Tracy Chapman
Imagine – John Lennon

We listened.
We talked.
We played.

And for the first time in a long time, I saw him smile.

In that moment, music stopped being about success, perfection, or performance.

It became something else.

Music wasn’t about the dream anymore.
It was about helping someone else feel a little more human.

And in doing that — I felt human again too.

Things still aren’t 100% today.

I still struggle with performance anxiety.
I still fight the urge to push myself too far.
I still get caught in the metrics and the self-comparisons.

But now I know:

Music doesn’t have to destroy you to mean something.

It doesn’t have to be a business plan.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
It just has to be honest.

So if you’ve been where I was — burned out, anxious, doubting everything —
Just know this:

You can come back from it.
You can find joy again.
You can rewrite what music means to you.

I’m still doing it, every day.

And I promise — you’re not alone.

📌 P.S. If this post resonated, would you consider sharing it with a friend?

It helps me grow this newsletter and keep it free so I can continue helping musicians build a thriving music career without sacrificing their mental health.

Thanks for reading The Mental Musician.

And if you want more support:

I created the Burnout to Breakthrough Mental Health Journal for Musicians like you — your personal mental health companion designed to help you reflect, reset, and rebuild your creative life without falling apart in the process.

Inside, you’ll find:

✅ A 3-part strategy to rebuild your energy, reset your mindset, and redefine success
✅ A fully interactive Notion journal to help you stay grounded and focused
✅ Daily, weekly, and monthly check-ins to track your wellbeing and goals
✅ A simple system you can return to anytime you feel lost, overwhelmed, or burnt out

This journal is a reminder:
you don’t have to keep burning just to keep going.

If you’re ready to take care of yourself while taking your music seriously👇

Click here to grab your journal today

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