Pop Band

Proving myself wrong AGAIN…

CBT teaches that when you’re depressed or anxious you tend to see the world in an irrational bleak way and that you may find yourself making inaccurate crystal ball-like predictions about how things in the future are going to turn out. It’s difficult to see how your thoughts are irrational when you’re depressed because they seem perfectly rational at the time. But the depression really does impair your judgement. As difficult as it is to accept, being depressed is almost like being temporarily insane.

Recently I’ve done lots of things I would have avoided at one time because of the negative predictions that automatically run through my mind about how they’ll turn out beforehand. Yesterday was another case in point: I had a band rehearsal with this folk/blues-inspired pop band – well, it’s actually a singer who is trying to get a band together to perform her material.

I’d gone along for an “audition” last week, turned up late after trying on about 20 different outfits and once again been pleasantly proved wrong. The assumptions going through my mind on that occasion were that the band was going to be made up mouthy scruffy-haired whiteboy muso types clad in pointed shoes and skin-tight jeans spouting mindless garbage punctuated by the excessive use of “yeah” and “maann”. I assumed they would look down on me as some kind of shy styleless anomaly, that I’d play badly and ultimately be rejected, and that I’d possibly get mugged on the way home. As it turned out the singer was a bit like that but not anything like to the degree predicted. In fact she seemed nice and accepting, possibility even respectful of my individuality. The rest of the band weren’t there, just her guitarist, and he was a friendly guy, a good musician, wore loose jeans and seemed possibly even a little geeky.

So yesterday I was proven wrong again. I very nearly didn’t turn up to this second rehearsal predicting that it would be horrible, that I wouldn’t be able to fit in, that I wouldn’t know what to play, that the band would be shit, that the other musicians would dislike me etc.. But as it turned out I ended up really enjoying it. The main thing that swung it was the appearance of a new trombone player who was “auditioning”. He was actually really good and a nice guy – another prediction I made was that he would be a dipshit and we wouldn’t get along. And not only that, he was black and American and therefore definitely NOT the carbon whiteboy pointy-shoed muso but a man with a jazz and blues background and a good creative instinct for funky horn lines. In fact up to the very moment of meeting him I was still making negative predictions. I saw him loitering around the entrance to the rehearsal studio as I parked up and thought, “uh oh, who’s this guy? This isn’t a gospel band, mate… we won’t get along… he won’t like me.” But as it turned out I had a lot of fun playing the lines he came up with and the band really sounded good! We really gelled and the singer and the other regulars seemed to be genuinely buzzing at us being there.

So once again I was proven wrong. I love it every time this happens because the more incorrect assumptions I chalk up the more potent my CBT thought records are when I write ‘jumping to conclusions’ as the cognitive distortion and ‘this is a guess, you’ve been wrong many times in the past…’ as a rational response.

Other interesting factoids: I was new last week and the trombone guy was new yesterday. It was interesting to compare how we both handled the situation of being new. I was kind of efficient and focused, kept comedy and small talk to a minimum and allowed them to do all the talking. This guy was super-relaxed, wasn’t overly talkative but when he did talk he had short little anecdotes and stories from the ‘I’ perspective to tell mostly about what he’d been doing since moving to London and how he was coping. Every time he told one he demonstrated personality and made himself more human somehow.

Note to self: sprinkle more light-hearted little stories into interactions.