Keeping his heart rate steady for a good recital

“Under that success was a lot of spiralling anxiety and worrying about losing my job, all the time,” says Ms Chan, who is single, over a video call from London. “I had performance anxiety all the time.”

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Jin Ta, principal flute of the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, says being a perfectionist can lead to performance anxiety.

(ST PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG)

She did not tremble or blank out, but she did worry about people talking behind her back.

She had a tendency to replay the events of each day at night, thinking about how she could have done better.

“Money is a big part of my insecurity. It’s always been a big thing for me to show that I live well,” she says.

This also relates to her father’s death when she was 13 years old. Her mother ran her father’s carpentry business for a few years after that, but Ms Chan knows that times were hard.

Another contributing factor to her anxiety was the global tendency to conflate stress with career success.

“People think you're doing better in your career if you say you haven't slept well,” she says.

She began talk therapy sessions in her 30s, but the real change came around 2018, when she was let go from her interim COO role without warning.