How the Banjo Became My Escape
Music, Anxiety, and Finding the Courage to Speak
When I was thirteen years old, I had a full-blown panic attack in my high school drama class.
It felt like oblivion. Like the world was ending.
My body locked up completely. My mind retreated somewhere deep inside itself and no force on earth was going to get me to perform in front of that class. A few weeks later it happened again in history class when the teacher asked me to read a paragraph out loud. That same wave of terror consumed me and I froze. Fight, flight, or freeze — I froze.
I knew right there in Year 8 that something was wrong with me.
Or at least that’s what it felt like at the time.
From that moment on, I developed a sixth sense for situations where public speaking might happen. I became incredibly good at avoiding them. I quit my favourite hobby, golf, because there was a requirement to give a speech at the end of match games. I dropped out of college at Bury College because I was asked to give a presentation. Even when I started my apprenticeship with Network Rail as a track maintenance engineer, I very nearly walked away when presentations became part of the training.
Avoidance is easy when fear runs your life.
But it never actually fixes anything.
The Banjo Enters the Story
When I was eighteen, during my apprenticeship, I bought my first banjo with my apprentice wage.
I didn’t buy it because I thought music would help my mental health. I had absolutely no idea that it could.
I simply loved the sound.
Back then, when my head felt crowded with anxiety or self-doubt, I used to escape by blasting heavy music through headphones. Bands like Slipknot and System of a Down were my go-to therapy. Loud music could drown out a lot of thoughts.
But the banjo introduced something new.
When I sat down to practice in my bedroom, or sometimes in the front room while my mum was working night shifts at the casino, something interesting happened. My mind would completely zone out from everything else. All my focus went into solving the next technical problem.
Where does my finger go next?
How do I make that note sound cleaner?
Can I play that phrase a little smoother?
The sound of the banjo itself was like taking a deep breath of relief.
It didn’t cure my anxiety. It didn’t magically erase my fears. But for that moment in time, when I was playing, those fears simply didn’t exist.
The banjo became my safe space.
Tiny Steps Back Toward Confidence
Around the age of nineteen something subtle started to shift.
I began bringing my banjo into work occasionally during breaks. People started asking questions about it. They were curious. Interested. Some even said they wished they could play like that.
For the first time in my life, I felt like I had something that made me worthwhile.
That feeling of being “less than” other people slowly started to fade. The banjo gave me something to talk about, something I cared about, and those small conversations helped rebuild my confidence in tiny increments.
Not giant leaps.
Tiny steps.
Answering questions in meetings.
Speaking up a little more.
Occasionally volunteering for a small part of a presentation.
Each step felt like exercising a muscle that had never been used before.
Turning Fear Into Butterflies
Years later, that same path eventually led me to share my playing online.
Uploading my first TikTok video of myself playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in 2021 felt like standing on the edge of a cliff. When people started watching and commenting, it was terrifying… but exciting too.
Then in November 2025 I uploaded my first full-length YouTube lesson.
I was shaking while recording it.
But something fascinating had changed.
The feeling of doom and terror that I used to feel in classrooms had been replaced with something else entirely — the butterflies you get when you're about to ride a great rollercoaster.
My fear hadn’t disappeared.
It had transformed.
Banjo Music as a Form of Therapy
I don’t believe the banjo “cured” my anxiety.
What it gave me was something just as important: a place where the anxiety couldn’t reach me for a while.
An hour of focus.
An hour of progress.
An hour of breathing room.
That space allowed me to slowly rebuild my confidence in the real world.
The real progress came from tiny moments of exposure:
Answering a question.
Speaking in a meeting.
Telling people I struggled with public speaking.
When you tell people the truth, something surprising happens.
Most people support you.
Looking back now at my thirteen-year-old self sitting in that classroom with my head in my hands, feeling completely broken, I wish I could tell him one thing:
You’re not broken.
You just haven’t learned the skill yet.
Public speaking, confidence, self-expression — these are muscles. And like any muscle, they grow slowly through repeated use.
Avoidance might feel safe, but it keeps the fear alive.
The only way forward is gentle, gradual exposure.
Turn terror into nerves.
Turn nerves into butterflies.
One small step at a time.
Why the Banjo Helped
The banjo gave me something incredibly powerful.
A safe place to focus.
A daily sense of progress.
And eventually, a voice.
What used to be filled with loud headphones and heavy metal became an hour of quiet concentration and music.
I no longer felt worthless.
And years later, that same instrument helped me build a community of people learning together through Banjo Adventures.
If You're Struggling
If you’re reading this and you struggle with anxiety, confidence, or speaking in front of others, you’re not alone.
And you’re definitely not broken.
Find something that gives you that same kind of focus and escape. For me it was the banjo. For you it might be another instrument, art, writing, or something else entirely.
Use it as your safe space.
Then slowly, gently, start stepping outside that space.
Tiny steps.
Because those tiny steps eventually turn into something you never thought possible.
Sometimes they even lead to sharing your music with the world.
