I didn’t feel good enough (and I still don’t)

I was knocked over by all the accompanying emotions from excitement to outright panic.

My original plan was to start the new season of The Bed Perspective in the last week of April, but I got side-tracked working on my music and knocked over by all the accompanying emotions from excitement to utmost panic.

Photo by Caught In Joy on Unsplash

There was a lot to do to prepare all my tracks for the mixing engineers. First, I had to listen to every single track and check that everything was there and remove any excess noises. Then I had to remove all the breaths from the vocal, flute and choir or harmony and place them on a separate track so the mixer doesn’t have to spend precious time doing this grunt work. It’s important that the breaths are on a separate track as they need different processing than the vocals in order to sound natural. 

Then I had to check all the stems through again and I could finally export them all. But that wasn’t the final step either: I had to place all the tracks into a Logic project again and check they all start at the same time. THEN, I could send all the tracks, organised by song. 

I could only work for about twenty or thirty minutes a day, not because it’s complicated brain work, but because it requires a lot of concentration, and I could only work on two songs at a time. The whole process took me about two weeks. Luckily, it was possible due to new medication that has given me a tiny bit more brain (nothing miraculous, though).

But the most taxing of the whole process were the emotions that followed. While I definitely felt a lot of excitement for having come this far, a lot of difficult emotions that I thought I had dealt with surfaced. 

At first, I had a small panic attack. I feared that I had recorded everything wrong, pressed the wrong buttons, so to speak, that everything was out of tune, that my voice wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t good enough, that I shouldn’t be allowed to make music when I can’t even sing through a whole song in one go, that I suck, and once again that I’m just not good enough.

Phew! A lot of old stuff came up for me. One of the reasons I had quit music in my teenage years was because I didn’t feel good enough. That feeling was so uncomfortable I had decided to quit something I loved. 

I was soaked in sorrow and regret for all those years I could have practiced and worked on my musical skills before I became sick. And now I’m too sick to actually work on it and make progress, as I said, I can’t even sing through an entire song, and most days I can’t sing at all.

 As some of you who’ve followed me for a while already know, I got back in my music seat and started writing songs when I got sick. It was like I finally found myself musically and knew what I wanted to do with it. But as I got sicker, more and more of my voice disappeared and it's near impossible to learn and retain new stuff because of the cognitive aspects of this illness — I even have trouble remembering simple chord progressions. 

I still find it ironic that what brought me back to my music is also what took it away. 

I also felt a lot of grief for not being able to pursue a musical career, with everything that entails: Playing with others, practicing your craft, performing live, effortlessly being engulfed in the creative process and much more.

All that emotion wiped me out mentally, physically and spiritually and I needed to take a week where I wallowed in my grief and regret (while still being excited that I had reached a milestone in my music by sending it all to the engineers) and allowed myself to feel it all with no pressure.

 I tried all kinds of techniques to get out of the ‘not-good-enoughness’ spiral, from EFT tapping, affirmations, inner child compassion, soothing self-talk and lots more. None of it helped.

Then I decided to take a page out of Tara Brach’s book on Radical Compassion. I twisted her language a bit and asked myself: “What would your music sound like if you felt good enough?” and “What choices would you make if you felt good enough?” 

I listened to all my music again while pretending I felt good enough and I could finally, once again, hear what I’ve heard before during better mental states: It’s perfect, just as it is. And I was making the right choices. 

The question, What would you do/what choice would you make if you felt good enough?, has become my new guiding light. Never again will I make life altering choices based on the feeling that I’m not good enough.

 Tell me…

When did you last feel ‘not good enough’?

Have you ever made a choice based on the feeling that you weren’t good enough? What was the outcome?

What would you do differently if you felt good enough?

Thank you so much for reading this post. If you know someone who could benefit from this, then please share this page with them. You are also more than welcome to share it in your Facebook or other patient support groups.

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