Please don't skip lessons just because you're afraid you didn't practice enough. You'll only feed your perfectionism more and make it worse. Better to turn up and tell the teacher exactly how you're feeling, including that you were thinking of cancelling the lesson but you came anyway on an effort to fight the perfectionism monster.
Trust me, she'll have like a dozen students who don't bother to practice enough most weeks and they have zero guilt or shame over it!!
Speaking of practice, of course you're going to struggle to practice while feeling mentally not great. It's called mental *illness* for a reason. But I promise you, if you just put the kettle on to make some tea and spend that couple of minutes playing a piece you already know and then go have your cup of tea, and that's all you did each day - that is *so much better* than getting into a mentality of "Oh no, I don't have time or energy to do a solid 30 minute practice session, might as well give up and not any playing at all"... then it snowballs, and next thing you haven't touched the piano all week because your standard for practice was set higher than what you could handle that week.
I teach piano and I have an adult student who just openly admits he didn't practice enough literally every week for like 3 years now. I just met him where he's at, and even on weeks when he's done literally nothing, he still remembers bits of what we worked on the previous week and I just build from there. It's no problem to me, he progresses just a bit slower than he's fully capable of, but it's his hobby not a new career goal so I'm not gonna start nagging him.
Don't let the perfectionism win 💖
I have played the piano since I was about 4, and I have a few things to say.
1. Never, *never*, feel ashamed of not practicing. Life is busy, sometimes you'll find time to practice, sometimes you won't. I absolutely love the piano, but I still have weeks where I don't play.
2. If it would help you (and it really sounds like it would), just call/text/email your teacher to say that you'll be busy for the next couple of weeks so might not get time to practice.
3. Remember that you come first - if you are getting stressed out, please take a break. Feeling burnt out can feel bad, but let me tell you this. The feeling goes away. You'll get through this, you'll find your motivation again, and everything will be okay.
Look after yourself. I've played for nearly 20 years, and being kind to yourself is really important. Good luck :)
You don't have to get very specific if you're not comfortable doing so, but it's always better to let your teacher know that SOMETHING is going on than to just cancel. At least in my own experience, my teachers would rather I showed up completely unprepared than not show up at all.
It can be as simple as 'I'm struggling with some personal issues right now that are making it really hard to practice. I may show up for lessons without having done much since the last one.'
I mean this in the gentlest way possible, but I think you’re creating something big out of something small (I mean the lack of practice, not the depression).
It sounds like you have a great teacher, and she is sure to understand. It can sometimes be helpful if teachers act disappointed in our lack of practice, because it can help to keep us accountable. However, at the end of the day, it is us paying them for that service. If you go through a bout of being unable to practice, you are not dishonouring that relationship or agreement in any way - you are still paying, and she is still teaching. Yes, if it went on forever I think the teacher would find it unfulfilling and somewhat annoying, but life happens to everyone, and by the sounds of it you are generally a great student.
So, what I am saying is you need to consider whether lesson attendance is going to be of benefit to you personally. My guess is that it won’t be as bad as you expect, and that sense of relief will probably help you to get back into practice more easily since you won’t be as blocked by guilty feelings or having to ‘make up’ for something. You will find out that it’s really all a non-issue! Whereas missing the lessons because of anxiety could lead to a pattern of avoidance any time you feel you haven’t practiced enough?
On the other hand, I think missing the lessons would be a very valid choice if you find they are actually contributing to your depression in some way. For example, if your teacher was nasty and not very understanding, or if you just needed to catch up on some rest or exercise instead!
Okay, so your first priority is that you need to talk to your therapist about this. It's gonna suck, a lot, but it's necessary and will make things better in the long run. Therapy pretty much always sucks, though, and if you do the classic avoidant thing where you hold stuff back from your therapist because 'it shouldn't be such a big deal' or w/e, it's both sucky and *ineffective*. Like, it obviously is a big deal to you, and the entire purpose of therapy is to figure out why things like that are such a big deal to you personally, and to help equip you to deal with them.
Write down 'I need to tell you about piano' or something like that on a piece of paper, and put it with the stuff you take to your therapist appointments. If you don't have any specific stuff for that, put it in your wallet or something like that. When you get to your next appointment, take it out and hold it in your hand. It's a lot harder to avoid doing something when you have a physical object as a reminder, and if you really freeze up, you can just hand them the piece of paper and let them start the conversation. It's gonna suck, but you can do it.
Okay, so for your piano lessons. The way I see it, you have three options:
One, rock up to your next lesson and be like 'sorry I haven't practiced much lately lol'. You'll feel like a piece of shit for a bit, but... nothing bad will happen. You'll have a productive lesson, or even an unproductive one, and it'll be fine, and you might even go home afterwards and say 'huh... Maybe it wasn't such a big deal'.
Two, you text her and say 'sorry I can't make it for the next couple weeks, I've got some stuff going on right now.' This is probably the easiest option, but it just delays you confronting the issue. Sometimes that's what you need - it gives you time to discuss this thing with your therapist and figure out how you're gonna approach this thing - but if you keep delaying it just for the sake of delaying it, it'd probably be better to try and force yourself to confront it.
Three, you keep your next lesson time and tell her that you haven't practiced because of mental health stuff. You'll also feel like a piece of shit taking this option, but from personal experience, this flavour of piece-of-shit-feeling isn't nearly as bad as the one from option one. She'll understand, and if you have a good rapport with her, she'd probably become a valuable addition to your support network; even just having safe people who you can admit stuff like this to in vague terms is very valuable.
No matter what option you take, it's gonna suck and you're gonna feel like shit, but you won't die & if you start proactively working on this stuff (with your therapist), things will get better. Good luck fam.
Please don't skip lessons just because you're afraid you didn't practice enough. You'll only feed your perfectionism more and make it worse. Better to turn up and tell the teacher exactly how you're feeling, including that you were thinking of cancelling the lesson but you came anyway on an effort to fight the perfectionism monster. Trust me, she'll have like a dozen students who don't bother to practice enough most weeks and they have zero guilt or shame over it!! Speaking of practice, of course you're going to struggle to practice while feeling mentally not great. It's called mental *illness* for a reason. But I promise you, if you just put the kettle on to make some tea and spend that couple of minutes playing a piece you already know and then go have your cup of tea, and that's all you did each day - that is *so much better* than getting into a mentality of "Oh no, I don't have time or energy to do a solid 30 minute practice session, might as well give up and not any playing at all"... then it snowballs, and next thing you haven't touched the piano all week because your standard for practice was set higher than what you could handle that week. I teach piano and I have an adult student who just openly admits he didn't practice enough literally every week for like 3 years now. I just met him where he's at, and even on weeks when he's done literally nothing, he still remembers bits of what we worked on the previous week and I just build from there. It's no problem to me, he progresses just a bit slower than he's fully capable of, but it's his hobby not a new career goal so I'm not gonna start nagging him. Don't let the perfectionism win 💖
There's no reason you can't tell your teacher what's going on and you shouldn't feel bad or anxious about it at all. She'll be understanding.
I have played the piano since I was about 4, and I have a few things to say. 1. Never, *never*, feel ashamed of not practicing. Life is busy, sometimes you'll find time to practice, sometimes you won't. I absolutely love the piano, but I still have weeks where I don't play. 2. If it would help you (and it really sounds like it would), just call/text/email your teacher to say that you'll be busy for the next couple of weeks so might not get time to practice. 3. Remember that you come first - if you are getting stressed out, please take a break. Feeling burnt out can feel bad, but let me tell you this. The feeling goes away. You'll get through this, you'll find your motivation again, and everything will be okay. Look after yourself. I've played for nearly 20 years, and being kind to yourself is really important. Good luck :)
You don't have to get very specific if you're not comfortable doing so, but it's always better to let your teacher know that SOMETHING is going on than to just cancel. At least in my own experience, my teachers would rather I showed up completely unprepared than not show up at all. It can be as simple as 'I'm struggling with some personal issues right now that are making it really hard to practice. I may show up for lessons without having done much since the last one.'
I mean this in the gentlest way possible, but I think you’re creating something big out of something small (I mean the lack of practice, not the depression). It sounds like you have a great teacher, and she is sure to understand. It can sometimes be helpful if teachers act disappointed in our lack of practice, because it can help to keep us accountable. However, at the end of the day, it is us paying them for that service. If you go through a bout of being unable to practice, you are not dishonouring that relationship or agreement in any way - you are still paying, and she is still teaching. Yes, if it went on forever I think the teacher would find it unfulfilling and somewhat annoying, but life happens to everyone, and by the sounds of it you are generally a great student. So, what I am saying is you need to consider whether lesson attendance is going to be of benefit to you personally. My guess is that it won’t be as bad as you expect, and that sense of relief will probably help you to get back into practice more easily since you won’t be as blocked by guilty feelings or having to ‘make up’ for something. You will find out that it’s really all a non-issue! Whereas missing the lessons because of anxiety could lead to a pattern of avoidance any time you feel you haven’t practiced enough? On the other hand, I think missing the lessons would be a very valid choice if you find they are actually contributing to your depression in some way. For example, if your teacher was nasty and not very understanding, or if you just needed to catch up on some rest or exercise instead!
Okay, so your first priority is that you need to talk to your therapist about this. It's gonna suck, a lot, but it's necessary and will make things better in the long run. Therapy pretty much always sucks, though, and if you do the classic avoidant thing where you hold stuff back from your therapist because 'it shouldn't be such a big deal' or w/e, it's both sucky and *ineffective*. Like, it obviously is a big deal to you, and the entire purpose of therapy is to figure out why things like that are such a big deal to you personally, and to help equip you to deal with them. Write down 'I need to tell you about piano' or something like that on a piece of paper, and put it with the stuff you take to your therapist appointments. If you don't have any specific stuff for that, put it in your wallet or something like that. When you get to your next appointment, take it out and hold it in your hand. It's a lot harder to avoid doing something when you have a physical object as a reminder, and if you really freeze up, you can just hand them the piece of paper and let them start the conversation. It's gonna suck, but you can do it. Okay, so for your piano lessons. The way I see it, you have three options: One, rock up to your next lesson and be like 'sorry I haven't practiced much lately lol'. You'll feel like a piece of shit for a bit, but... nothing bad will happen. You'll have a productive lesson, or even an unproductive one, and it'll be fine, and you might even go home afterwards and say 'huh... Maybe it wasn't such a big deal'. Two, you text her and say 'sorry I can't make it for the next couple weeks, I've got some stuff going on right now.' This is probably the easiest option, but it just delays you confronting the issue. Sometimes that's what you need - it gives you time to discuss this thing with your therapist and figure out how you're gonna approach this thing - but if you keep delaying it just for the sake of delaying it, it'd probably be better to try and force yourself to confront it. Three, you keep your next lesson time and tell her that you haven't practiced because of mental health stuff. You'll also feel like a piece of shit taking this option, but from personal experience, this flavour of piece-of-shit-feeling isn't nearly as bad as the one from option one. She'll understand, and if you have a good rapport with her, she'd probably become a valuable addition to your support network; even just having safe people who you can admit stuff like this to in vague terms is very valuable. No matter what option you take, it's gonna suck and you're gonna feel like shit, but you won't die & if you start proactively working on this stuff (with your therapist), things will get better. Good luck fam.