ADHD and piano competitions

Education Strategies • Andrew Eales
Clinical Expertise • Louise Eales RMN, NMP

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Continuing our series exploring the challenges and opportunities faced by pianists with ADHD, this article unpacks the issues faced when taking part in competitive piano events, which range from local festivals and school competitions to major international competitions.

This article aims to foster understanding, encourage players who feel confused by their reactions to competition, and promote discussion about how we can create a healthier, more inclusive performance culture.

As ever, I extend my gratitude to my wife Louise for sharing her extensive clinical expertise, offering important editorial suggestions across this series of articles. This article arose from our many conversations about the topic of how ADHD has impacted my own piano journey.

For an in-depth introduction to ADHD, outlining what it is, how it is diagnosed and treated, and how it impacts piano players more generally please refer to our article ADHD • A Pianist’s Guide.

Competitive performing

Piano competitions are ostensibly about music, artistry, and communication. And yet they are also highly structured exercises in comparison, ranking, and judgement. For those of us with ADHD, they can be uniquely difficult. While some thrive on stimulation and high stakes, others find they amplify our difficulties with attention, emotional regulation, organisation, self-criticism, and social comparison.

We are not alone in these struggles. Many neurotypical pianists similarly face mental health challenges rooted in their experience participating in festivals and competitions since childhood. Recognising this wider perspective, we hope this article supports all readers who are recovering from negative or traumatic experiences in piano competitions.

Research specifically examining ADHD in music competitions is still limited. However, when evidence from ADHD studies is combined with research on music performance anxiety, performance psychology, perfectionism, and emotional regulation, a coherent picture begins to emerge.

We will explore the issues sequentially from initial organisation, motivation and practice, through the challenges of performing on the day, to receiving feedback and moving forward after the competition itself.

1. Consistency and organisation

The decision to perform in a competition, be it a friendly local festival or a major event, sets in motion a number of quite significant challenges for the pianist with ADHD, because the condition affects the systems responsible for planning, prioritising, sequencing, and sustaining effort over long periods. This can impact our ability to organise an effective schedule, plan travel to and from events, or even maintain regular eating patterns.

Pianists with ADHD often struggle with uneven practice, shifting between intense focus and distraction. This inconsistency doesn’t mean we lack commitment, but without continuing encouragement and support the challenges can become psychologically draining. Pianists with ADHD can distrust our own ability, and find it difficult to reliably predict how well we might play on any given day.

These challenges apply to performing in general, but with the added pressures of the competitive environment, pianists with ADHD can sometimes feel as though the competitive environment has been designed around strengths they do not naturally possess.

2. Motivation and stimulation

While some pianists with ADHD find taking part in competitions can trigger periods of hyperfocus and unusually sustained concentration, the excitement of the event energising preparation and sharpening attention, for many others they can become emotionally overwhelming.

If competition feels forced, socially threatening, or overly critical, our motivation can collapse into anxiety, avoidance, or paralysis. This points to a common conflict in ADHD performers: we might enjoy the challenge and excitement while also fearing the negative effects of judgment.

Success can equally prove problematic. ADHD pianists might feel relief and a strong emotional high when we win a prize or award, but the excitement quickly fades. This creates a cycle where each achievement feels inadequate, and brings pressure to prove oneself again.

As a child, I often performed in piano competitions, and experienced these swings from exhilaration to self-doubt. As a student at University and then at the Royal College of Music, the pattern continued. I won distinguished prizes, but looking back I can now see that I often mistook competition results for evidence of my worth as a musician.

Gradually, I began avoiding performance situations that had once brought me genuine pleasure.

I now perform with much greater happiness, but learning to enjoy performance again has been, and continues to be, a journey. My focus in performance has shifted towards creative spontaneity, which for ADHD pianists can be a more positive route.

3. Performance anxiety

Under pressure, players often experience a heightened awareness, and this can sometimes interfere with the smooth flow of a good performance. Minor issues can quickly escalate; a small mistake leads to anxiety, which then disrupts concentration, causing more errors. The cycle just keeps repeating.

For pianists with ADHD, these mechanisms will interact with pre-existing attentional vulnerabilities. We are not necessarily anxious because we are underprepared, but rather because emotional arousal itself interferes with attentional control. Well-meant suggestions to “relax”, “enjoy yourself”, or to “be confident” don’t adequately address the underlying cognitive and emotional mechanisms involved.

Music Performance Anxiety (MPA) is a common issue that affects as many as 60% of musicians. It goes beyond simple “stage fright” and involves a mix of anxiety, self-evaluation, focus, and physical responses.

This should give us pause for thought: if MPA impacts such a large proportion of musicians, we need to question whether our current performance culture, with its emphasis on competitions, is serving young musicians well and preparing them for a lifetime of confident performing.

4. Performing under pressure

One of the defining features of piano competitions is pressure. A performer is expected to execute highly complex motor and cognitive tasks in front of adjudicators, judges, teachers, and audiences, often believing that a single lapse in concentration could affect important future opportunities.

Successful competition performance places considerable demands on working memory, the cognitive system responsible for temporarily holding and manipulating information during complex tasks. ADHD is commonly associated with reduced working memory capacity and efficiency, which can result in challenges maintaining concentration, recovering after slips, suppressing intrusive thoughts, and playing from memory.

Research on ADHD similarly highlights difficulties with executive functioning and emotional regulation, both especially important in competitive situations. Many with ADHD experience emotional responses that are more intense, more rapidly triggered, and slower to settle, although the precise mechanisms remain an active area of research.

At the piano, these issues can manifest in several ways. A small memory slip or wrong note can trigger an immediate emotional response that disrupts concentration, and once attention becomes locked onto one mistake, others might follow in rapid succession.

In her bestselling book Choke: what the secrets of the brain reveal about getting it right when you have to, cognitive scientist Sian Beilock discusses how pressure can impair working memory and disrupt skilled performance. For pianists with ADHD, whose attentional systems are already more vulnerable to disruption, this effect may be amplified.

At the same time, competition pressure can occasionally produce the opposite effect. Some ADHD pianists perform well in stimulating environments because urgency and novelty increase engagement and motivation. This may explain why some report highly inconsistent experiences: brilliant performances on one occasion, severe breakdowns on another.

The issue is therefore not simply anxiety, or lack of preparation. Rather, it is variability. Competitive settings often expose the unstable interaction between stress, attention, and emotional regulation.

5. Social issues, personal identity

Competitions are more than just musical events; they are social environments in which we interact. Performers learn to compare ourselves with our peers, recognise each other’s achievements, and deal with hierarchies of teachers, judges, institutions, and prestige.

Many people with ADHD find this environment especially challenging. They may have trouble making good impressions, networking, or understanding social cues. In a competitive culture, this can lead to feelings of loneliness and isolation.

A pianist with ADHD may interpret another competitor’s success as evidence of their own failure. Conversations that other players experience as routine may feel emotionally loaded. Social comparison can become extreme, especially in places where performance rankings are obvious, like local festivals or conservatories.

For serious musicians, piano playing is rarely just an activity. It becomes part of our identity, a central part of who we are. Criticism easily turns to self-criticism. Evaluations of our playing might be experienced not merely as assessments of a performance but personal evaluations of ourselves.

Many pianists find themselves replaying performances mentally for days or weeks after an event, obsessing over particular mistakes or comparing themselves relentlessly to other competitors.

This can again be especially severe for those with ADHD, because we grow up receiving inconsistent feedback: praise for talent alongside criticism for disorganisation, inconsistency, lateness, or unrealised potential. Over time, this can produce a fragile relationship with achievement.

6. Criticism and rejection sensitivity

The term Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) refers to a strong emotional reaction to criticism, exclusion, or failure. While it is not a separate diagnosis or disorder, RSD is seen as a serious type of emotional dysregulation associated with ADHD, due to brain differences that make handling strong emotions more difficult. However, not everyone with ADHD experiences RSD.

In piano competitions, rejection is built into the structure itself. Most participants do not win, and in larger competitions few even advance beyond early stages. Feedback is often brief, subjective, or absent altogether.

For the ADHD pianist, this can feel devastating. A disappointing result may not be experienced as “this performance was unsuccessful”. Instead, it becomes “I am rubbish, and might never play the piano well”. Worse, it can even be taken as a personal rejection.

Performers without ADHD appear better able to dismiss such thoughts as irrational (although they may be masking their true feelings). I have often heard players relate experiences of “coming second”, reasoning that the winner was successful due to their connections, that their piece was much easier, or simply that the result was wrong. And they may have a point!

Studies on emotional regulation in ADHD show that negative emotions are felt more intensely, and can be harder to contextualise or explain away. In practical terms, this means that a competition result, or apparently critical feedback from a judge or adjudicator, can occupy a disproportionate psychological space long after the event has ended, and feed performance anxiety thereafter.

I have personally found RSD perplexing. I am genuinely happy to celebrate the success of others, but struggle when sensing that I have myself been overlooked. To give a recent example, I enjoyed presenting awards at a ceremony a couple of years ago, but found competing for an award myself a far less positive experience, and one which exposed deeper trauma linked to my ADHD and RSD.

Performers with ADHD should be given support in consciously separating self-worth from competition results. A prize can be meaningful. So can an unsuccessful performance. But neither defines us as musicians. For many pianists with ADHD, recognising this distinction can be profoundly liberating.

At the same time this is an issue for the wider music establishment to consider with more care. With greater understanding and emotional intelligence, the piano playing community could become a more inclusive one that welcomes and provides for neurodiverse musicians.

Positive alternatives

Based on my experience in British piano education and classical music, I believe we need to do much more to create appropriate, positive performance opportunities for all learners, including ADHD pianists, and to foster the wellbeing of musicians.

For many, competitive events remain the main or only way to develop public performance skills. We need to think creatively about how we can balance this provision. So what might work for ADHD pianists?

Researchers have suggested that traits commonly associated with ADHD can contribute positively to a player’s ability to give an original, creative interpretation, play with spontaneity, and emotional immediacy. Many musicians with ADHD flourish in settings that play to these strengths while reducing comparison.

Collaborative music-making, chamber music, community performance projects, improvisation, composition, recording work, and teaching can all provide meaningful artistic fulfilment, without the constant ranking systems associated with competitions.

Here are a few ideas that we might embrace in our desire to provide inclusive, joyous performance events. Imagine if every local music community offered performances:

• without public ranking or critique
• centred on musical communication
• where players choose their repertoire rather than follow a syllabus
• celebrating creativity, improvisation and individuality
• where spontaneity is valued
• that encourage collaboration rather than competition
• built around duets, chamber music and shared music-making
• welcoming players of every age, level and background

Is it really so unreasonable or unrealistic that such events could exist in your local community? Will you be proactive in campaigning for them?

Our aim should not be to abolish competitions, but to ensure they are no longer the main or most respected pathway to meaningful public performance. Every pianist deserves opportunities to share music in environments that nurture confidence, creativity, and a genuine sense of personal belonging. ADHD pianists should not be excluded, should not avoid performance, and should not lack ambition.

Rather, we should remember that the history of music is filled with artists whose greatest contribution came not from winning competitions, but from discovering and sharing their individual, creative musical voice. Our challenge is to ensure that every pianist has the opportunity to do the same.

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SELECTED REFERENCES

• Barkley, Russell A. – Executive Functions: What They Are, How They Work, and Why They Evolved (2020)
• Barkley, Russell A. – Taking Charge of Adult ADHD (2021)
• Beilock, Sian – Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have to (2010)
• Brooker, Elizabeth – Taking the ‘angst’ out of music performance anxiety (2021)
• Brown, Thomas E. – A New Understanding of ADHD in Children and Adults (2013)
• Casanova, Oscar (et. al.) – The role of music performance anxiety in musical training (2025)
• Clickstein, Gerald – The Musician’s Way (2009)
• Fernholz, I. (et al) – Performance anxiety in professional musicians (2019)
• Green, Barry – The Inner Game of Music (1986)
• Kenny, Dianna – The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety (2011)
• MacDonald, Raymond; Miell, Dorothy; Hargreaves, D.J. – Musical Identity (2008)

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