Studying music and switching to psychology

[Lovesdogs67]

Hi everyone-

Hopefully you'll be able to shed light on my potential career shift. Right now I am a very experienced classical musician. I studied at the New England Conservatory for both my undergrad and masters degrees, and I've gone to the Tanglewood music center for two summers now. (If you know what that is- sweet! But I understand if you don't.)

In order to get a job as an orchestral musician, you need to "win" the job. There are preliminary, semi-final, and final rounds, and I believe it's a fairly broken system. People with performance anxiety are left at a disadvantage despite perhaps being a better musician than the "winner" of the job.

My plan: I would like to look into studying sports psychology/clinical psychology in order to figure out ways to help musicians overcome performance anxiety and help them reach their full potential despite this broken system.

Because I have only ever studied music (besides a music and the brain class at the conservatory) I was wondering what kind of programs I should look into.

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[deleted343839]

I know what Tanglewood is.

Interesting question! There are people who work with these issues clinically, and there's even a scientific literature on performance enhancement in highly trained performers (athletes, musicians, etc.). So clearly people are doing this work, but it's a narrow niche. Perhaps through some networking in your professional community you could find mental health professionals who work with these issues and interview them. It may be that a master's type degree (eg, professional counseling) would fit your training needs, although if you are more academically inclined then a Ph.D. would be the way to go.

Just as a shot in the dark, I would look broadly into clinical/counseling psychology, counseling, and educational psychology programs that have faculty who specialize in anxiety disorders and look for people who have published on performance anxiety, test anxiety, etc.