Transcripts generated automatically and therefore may contain errors!
My friend Miranda works in publishing, specifically at a christian imprint of a major publishing house that produces mostly fiction. We had dinner with her and her husband Mike and it came to a point that it was clear Miranda had something to tell us. So after one drink, she announced she was leaving the imprint, I’m thinking of starting my own literary agency. Mike put his hand on hers. I looked at them to try to determine how she felt about this move. “That’s great, congratulations”, I tepidly chimed in. Miranda said, “Yes, it’s been a long time dream of mine and…she hesitated.” Mike broke in, “Well, that and I am making her!” They both smiled knowingly and she filled us in. Since the pandemic Miranda had been working from their living room and so Mike, who also was working from home, could overhear a lot of the meetings that Miranda was in for work. One day after a particularly stressful day of a particularly stressful week, Mike sat Miranda down and said, I don’t know if you realize this but you are in a toxic work environment. I’ve been listening to your meetings for a few weeks now and I am shocked at how they speak to you and to others. No wonder you don’t sleep well. No wonder you’re sick all the time. I know you are the major breadwinner in this family, but no job is worth killing yourself over. You have to quit.
This podcast is for Miranda and Mike
It’s for anyone wondering how stress is affecting their health and well-being
It’s for artists who need some tools to manage all the deadlines or pressure
This show is for anyone looking to debunk that “tortured artist” stereotype, for those who want to believe that the creative life can bring us deep satisfaction, healing, and even joy. I’m so glad you’re here.
I’m Merideth Hite Estevez, and this is Artists for joy the podcast
SHORT MUSIC BREAK
each week I will share stories of artists seeking joy… We’ll explore how so many travelers along this the artist’s way have left us bread crumbs—wisdom and inspiration that can help us stay joyful on the journey.
This week on the podcast, stress. What effect does stress have on our creative lives? Can stress be good? I’ll tell you what happened to Miranda when she left that toxic work environment. Plus the best advice I’ve found from a neuroscientist about managing the biological response to stress, something you can try IMMEDIATELY. Also I have a special guest who will join me for the listener question portion of the show and of course I’ll give you something to consider this week.
I woke up recently from one of those dreams. You know the ones. You are going to be late to an appointment, rehearsal, performance, class, and your feet suddenly won’t work. You can’t find your glasses. This particular dream was a stress dream on STERIODS! Literally, I had rehearsal and I couldn’t find my car keys. Then I found the keys but my mother who was apparently coming with me, and she was taking forever. Then, once we finally got in the car it was raining so hard that we couldn’t see to drive. Then it started snowing and the car was sliding. Then we finally arrived and I realized I didn’t have my reed case. An oboe colleague offered me a reed and I go to put it on my oboe and the top joint of my instrument is a rubix cube. That is not a joke. I couldn’t play the oboe until I solved the puzzle. Then I finally get it together and I go to play the tuning note for the orchestra and the conductor looks at me funny. It turns out this concert was on historical instruments and not at 440 hertz but 415 (if that goes over your head, just know I stopped playing historical instruments 10 years ago). Luckily my colleague had an extra baroque oboe which we were apparently about to play beethoven 7th symphony on, which you guessed it is not a baroque piece…go figure.
Anyway, I finally go to offer the right tuning note and play the rehearsal when I realize there is now a giant climbing wall between me and the violas. So I can no longer see the conductor, or anyone really. The other thing that kept going wrong in this dream is that I couldn’t seem to exhale when I was playing. Fun fact about the oboe, the aperture of the reed is so small that you often have lungs full of stale air and you need to exhale before you can inhale again. This is one of the most challenging parts of the instrument actually is timing of the breath, the needing to expel all that’s in your lungs before you can breathe again. The whole dream I kept having that stale air feeling like I was drowning in carbon dioxide.
So eventually I wake up, thank the LORD because it was a very bad dream. Took a big sigh of relief when my eyes opened.
The interesting thing about the timing of this dream was, I can honestly say, that I was not stressed when I went to sleep. I actually had just come off a big break from oboe-ing while I was working on my book, and still had two weeks to get back in fighting shape for some performances. But that feeling of all those obstacles in my way, all that I had faced in my dream, it was visceral. It followed me for days afterwards. You know how you often forget your dreams immediately? Well this one happened almost a month ago and I remember it VIVIDLY as I make this podcast.
As I work my embouchure muscles back into shape, recounting this dream to myself as I practice, it got me thinking, we tend to think of stress in the creative life as a bad thing. We tend to think that stress kills, our heart, our blood pressure, our mood, and that isn’t totally wrong, I’ve learned. But something new I learned this week, there is actually good stress too. It is through the stress I am putting my muscles of my lips and face through, that I am able to play a whole orchestra rehearsal and shape the phrases of each melody just like I hear it in my head. Stress, in other words, when used correctly, when monitored and managed, is actually the main way we grow.
I’ll share a podcast that I heard this week on these matters from Stanford neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman in the show notes, but he says that good stress, the type that leads to growth, strength, and progress is called eustress. He sites this study where people are exposed to very bad bacteria while they are under stress and amazingly their bodies were able to fight the illness because of the adrenal stress response actually strengthens the immune system. This is why we so often get sick when we go on vacation, because it was the stress that was giving us the ability to fend off illness.
Now, huberman says that bad stress, chronic stress, the kind that leads to high blood pressure and anxiety, scientists called distress. So instead of thinking we need to be stress free to be happy, joyful musicians, we need instead to monitor the stress levels, how long we are experiencing periods of stress, learn how to activate the parasympathetic nervous system which they tell me helps you relax and slows down the fight or flight response.
So when I awoke from the stress dream and fell down the biology rabbit hole, I realized that I had that dream because of the good kind of stress, the healthy obstacle overcoming-ness that every artist faces. There was growth that was happening and so my mind was playing out scenarios for me to overcome, and thankfully getting back into shape will be challenging but in a good way., and you bet I did double check that the upcoming concert is at 440 and not 415, lol.
And so how do you know if you are under good stress or bad stress? For me I think the answer to that question comes with how I act in response to it and how I transition out of it. Huberman states that every kind of stress, good and bad, has the same generic biological response. It quickens your heart rate, it alerts your sympathetic nervous system. You get a shot of adrenaline. And so if the stress is good for me, I am able to use the adrenaline to move through the work, to make the changes the stress is urging me to make. So in this way, stress makes me productive. The very real stress of a deadline, rehearsal, etc, it makes me act.
And so, the first question to ask yourself is maybe–does your stress make you act in ways that are sustainable and healthy? Are you able to turn the agitation to activation— to follow the impulse to grow and move and make progress? That is good stress. The goal is not a stress-free creative life, then, it’s actually monitoring whether or not the stress is making you move or making you freeze or hide or sleep. And the second question is, how good are you at alternating back from motion to stillness? How are you at transitioning from periods of stress to periods of rest? If you have trouble with that, you might be under distress, or the chronic unhealthy kind. In the last few weeks, have you ever had a very strong response to something that happened to you? That when you explained it to someone they don’t understand why you forgetting your password or being caught in a thunderstorm or there being a rubik's cube of a riddle to solve before you can go about your day…they don’t get why it was such a big deal? It was a big deal to you because the chronic stress has your baseline coping mechanism disabled. Strong reactions to small inconveniences, unexplained tears, these are all signs of chronic stress. A disregulated sympathetic nervous system, huberman says.
Miranda, my friend in publishing, didn’t even realize it but her work was beyond stressful, it was distressful. She often felt so anxious she wasn’t able to make decisions on her own, she wasn’t even fully aware of how bad the work environment was until her loved one over heard their meetings. But when her husband pointed it out, she realized how impossible it was for her to exit the stressful state once work was over. She didn’t work from home she lived at work. She would often need a glass of wine just to be able to feel relaxed enough to sleep, only to wake up in the middle of the night to toss and turn.
So let me ask you—if someone overheard the way people in your life speak to you, whether it be your director, conductor, teacher, spouse, anyone who is requiring of you some sort of action, if someone overheard your private conversations, would they think there is a healthy amount of stress being placed on you? Do you find yourself freezing in the face of difficult and stressful situations, unable to sleep or rest without ruminating on thoughts of what to do next, even when the stressor is over for the day?
I’ve felt the freeze before. I’ve been so afraid of failure that I dread working, writing, playing. When I think back to my days of studying or performing music in some intense environments, I see that there was an unhealthy amount of chronic stress on me as a student and a lot of times the people in charge, those who had power over me did not model good relaxation or stress relieving activities. They lived in a state of chronic distress too and anxiety and while they were often very successful, they created an unhealthy creative environment. And we all thought that that was just how it was. That was just what was required. That was the price we paid for greatness.
But friend, let me tell you. Chronic stress is not a price worth paying, no matter how much quote unquote success it may bring you in your creative industry. let me just tell you what happened to Miranda when she quit that toxic job. She started losing the extra weight she’d been carrying around, she reversed her type 2 diabetes, she started sleeping. And here’s the kicker–she did open her own literary agency and started writing again herself. All that was and is not easy, in fact sometimes it is stressful, a certain amount of activation can come from stress, but here’s the things creative joy and thriving cannot be born of distressing situations.
So what can you do to get better at transitioning from stress to rest? To stop the chronic stress cycle in its tracks. Well I’m so glad you asked because it turns out as an oboe player, as a wind player, this is my speciality. The answer is simple—exhale more than you inhale. Or the scientific name, physiological sigh. Your breath is something you can control and when you do two inhales through your nose and long exhale through your mouth, it activates the parasympathetic nervous system, that restful relaxing non adrenaline side of your body. So let’s do a few oboe breaths..two short inhales through the nose and long exhale through the mouth. There now you’re ready to play some oboe and de stress at the same time..
Here’s to naming cycles of chronic stress when we find them in our creative lives. To leaving toxic work environments, to experiencing stress and release in healthy quantities. To exhaling more when we close the computer or wash the brushes, to channeling your inner oboist that way…singing your life’s song until your done for the day and then allowing yourself to release everything that left in your lungs without a second thought.
I’ll be right back.
Listener question
Today’s listener question is: “Merideth, I noticed registration for your artist’s way group just re-opened! Can you tell me why I should join? What does it require time wise each week? Can you say more about it?
And to answer this one, I called up one of our newest co facilitators, Sara McMahon, actor, teacher, paper artist, all around amazing human.
INTERVIEW
Thank you Sara for coming on today. I facilitate this free course with a team of amazing artists who come from a variety of artistic disciplines and faith backgrounds and have so much to offer in the ways they create community and if you’ve done the group before I hope you’ll come back and join us again because there’s always more to be experienced and it truly is a different book every time I read it. You can learn more at our website which you can find in the show notes or visit Artist’s for Joy dot org /theartistsway
Now for Today’s coda
The dominant seventh chord in music theory is a group of stacked thirds built on the 5th scale degree, or the dominant. Ok I’m going to try really hard to dumb this down so even if you have zero experience with music the meaning comes through, let me know if that’s you if I accomplish this. So a chord is just a group of notes played at the same time and the dominant chord is a group that’s built on the 5th note of the scale. The reason why the dominant or dominant seventh chords matter so much is because that chord is the center of western classical music as we know it. At the center of the chord is a Tritone, the most dissonant and uneasy sounding interval in the diatonic scale, in other words, western classical music the precursor to jazz and rock and pop by the way, it hangs on the relationship of this chord, this central dissonant interval, and how it resolves back and forth to the tonic. Once in graduate school we had to go through a score of Brahms requiem and highlight every single dominant seventh chord and mark how it resolved to the tonic. It was this music you’re hearing now. It may sound so beautiful and placid but it is chock full of dissonance followed by consonance. Stress followed by release.
turns out everything you ever loved about music, everything you hear and think, wow, that’s so satisfying that’s so beautiful, I would say that what you are hearing as satisfying is the dominant resolving to the tonic, stress resolving to release. Stress without release is painful. Release without stress is boring. The stress release continuum is what makes I would go so far as to say, literally almost every single type of music, it’s this that makes it beautiful.
And so my question for you today is this..what is the balance of stress and release in your creative life? Isn’t it incredible that even though composers have been using the dominant seventh chord to make music go somewhere, using it to let the listener experience stress and release, they’ve been doing that since the invention of tonal harmony. And yet some songwriter who finished their song yesterday, was likely still using that same chord or same phenomenon to satisfy the listener, because we know that we are built for balance, the balance between stress and release or between chaos and order between sweet and salty. And so how are you doing? What boundaries do you need to set to stop the constant stress without release? How might this movement of Brahms sound without release?? And flip it—Maybe you aren’t even letting yourself be healthily stressed because you’re too scared to take a risk, too worried to feel the stomach flip of caring about an outcome? What would Brahms sound like with no dissonance? It would be flat, and nowhere near as lovely. Life is all about stress and release my friend, and art mimics life in that way. May we be like Brahms , masters of balancing the dominant dissonances in our life with the sweet return of the restful tonic.
That’s it for this week’s episode of artist’s for joy. It was written and produced by me, Merideth Hite Estevez. This podcast is possible by the generous support of Kirk in the Hills Church in Bloomfield Hills Michigan and listeners like you. This show is sponsored by Artists for Joy, LLC where we offer workshops, classes, and one-to-one coaching for artists looking for a more joyful creative life.
Today’s music features our theme song by Angela Sheik, plus works perofrmed by the University of Chicago orchestra, Raphael Angelini, and yours truly on oboe.
Todays sounds of joy is a 20 second tutorial I made for you with some dominant 7th chords resolving. I used to teach music theory and ear training to freshmen but that was many years ago, anyway this piano is a little out of tune but hopefully you’ll hear the power of the stress release phenomenon