Music against burnout

Felicitas Sigrist - Pressure to perform, stage fright, competition, job insecurity: everyday life as a musician brings together working conditions that are well-known risk factors for burnout. With regard to such factors, working hours are less relevant than unfulfilled expectations, a lack of recognition and interpersonal disagreements. An accumulation of professional and private stress often triggers decompensation.

As a snapshot, burnout manifests itself as exhaustion with unspecific symptoms on an emotional, mental, physical and social level - for example listlessness, difficulty concentrating, susceptibility to infections, social withdrawal or irritability. This condition often leads to psychological or physical secondary illnesses, usually depression. This is preceded by a process of interaction between work-related and personal factors. The external demands are accepted with the self-request "I can do it" - often without reflection. Interpersonal conflicts are avoided.

Once a challenge has been successfully overcome, the next, perhaps bigger, task is entrusted to you. If relaxing activities are reduced, this cycle inevitably leads to excessive demands. This is not recognized as self-protection against insult - inner conflicts are avoided here. Instead, the reduction in performance is met with an increase in commitment - in other words, more of the same. With dwindling energy, the task increases in the subjective perception. As new strategies become less and less likely with increased stress, this burnout spiral can hardly be stopped.

Self-confident, emotionally unstable people who experience the outside world as difficult to influence and react inflexibly to increasing stress are particularly at risk. As these personal risk factors are often linked to previous relationship experiences, burnout can be explained as a resonance disorder. Individuals have little direct influence on framework conditions. This makes it all the more important to deal with them confidently.

Music is effective against burnout in many ways. The health-promoting aspects of music are scientifically well documented. Music is doubly important for musicians: for self-care and for teaching music. Music has a direct influence on mood and the autonomic nervous system. It can be used specifically for both relaxation and activation - but only if the individual music biography is taken into account. By consciously listening to music, the level of arousal can be specifically influenced - to relax, promote concentration or activate - and thus serve to regulate emotions. However, if music is misused, for example as a stimulant, it can also lead to a burnout spiral. Music as medicine is usually used therapeutically as a relaxation method to create islands of calm. Relaxation and a mindful attitude are prerequisites for neurological learning processes - also in psychotherapeutic treatments.

Active music-making is a good way to compensate - as long as it is not performance-oriented but remains experience-oriented. In addition to the multiple biological effects of making music, the social aspects are particularly important in preventing burnout. Playing together enables encounters outside of the working environment, regardless of professional role or identity. The experience of self-efficacy and belonging as well as the improvement of social skills strengthen the personality. Music education, especially in the amateur sector, is therefore not only justified for the sake of art, but also as an effective prophylactic measure.

Finally, music is used as a medium in music therapy, which is a proven psychotherapeutic method in the treatment of burnout. The key point here is to deal constructively with interpersonal and inner conflicts, in musical terms with dissonances.

Dr. med. Felicitas Sigrist

... is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy FMH, music psychotherapist MAS/SFMT, head physician at the private clinic Hohenegg, Meilen near Zurich, specializing in burnout and stress crises.

Literature reference

Sigrist F. (2016) Burnout and music therapy. Basics, state of research and praxeology. Reichert-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2016.