Don’t fear the setback: the spiral of personal growth

How growth and healing happen in spirals – not straight lines – and the benefit of knowing this on your musical journey.

Every so often, life presents me with a ‘new’ idea that’s so true, and so seemingly obvious once it has entered my awareness, that I’ll wonder why I never thought of it before.

Such was the case when a dear yoga teacher of mine, Mel Skinner, said this:

“Healing, spiritual and personal development – and maybe just life itself – is a spiral of discovery, not a linear process.”

“Wow, that’s it,” I thought. Viewed through this lens of the spiral, different aspects of my personal evolution – from developing my vocal technique, to creating better relationships, to growing as a performer – suddenly began to make more sense.

I don’t simply get better and better at something, more and more skilled, or more and more confident. The progression isn’t that straightforward. It’s more the case that as I grow, I loop through different states of being, which sometimes creates the sensation that I’m backtracking.

One of the greatest gifts of this ‘spiral awareness’ is that it has helped me to reframe my setbacks. So this summer, when the high of my first-ever solo performance at a festival was immediately followed by an emotional tumble, I accepted it as part of my process. Whereas earlier in life I’d probably be down on myself for being down on myself, I didn’t get stuck in that rut. I recognised that I was turning through an arc of the spiral – moving forward, even as I seemed to be falling back.

In today’s post, I want to let you in to the full festival story. But first, let me explain more about this underlying pattern I seem to spiral through. If you experience similar twists and turns in your own journey, I’d love to know.

Hitting those highs: the breakthroughs

First up in the spiral journey: the high points. These are the breakthroughs, the golden moments when the best of who you truly are – that buried-away being that’s grounded, calmly courageous, and brimming with love – rises up to split the skin of how you’ve been showing up in the world.

Be it holding a boundary you’ve always trembled to set, standing up to a bully, or performing your song with a new-found groundedness in your system – there’s a sense of bursting through to the next level. A defining moment that changes everything that’s to come. A visceral feeling of expansion. The excitement and relief of having shed that old snakeskin once and for all.

And then, sometime later, the inevitable happens.

You contract.

Back comes the self-doubting self that caves in in response to an unwanted demand, or loses her voice in the presence of that bully, or suddenly thinks her song isn’t good enough to be heard.

“Oh nooooooooo!” You think. “Not this again – I thought I’d left this version of me behind!”

Back again? What turning the curve really means

As you turn through a curve of the spiral, you’re deflated to find yourself back here, back where you were before.

Or are you?

The place you’ve landed in seems familiar, but in reality your location has shifted. Because you did taste freedom, and it has left you altered. Healing isn’t a straight line of progress, but nor is it a perfect circle.

My experience has been that from this new set of co-ordinates, the Higher Self I’m longing to step into is somehow more within my reach, even as I spiral through the layers of my being I’d hoped to leave behind forever.

With this awareness I can take a big breath, regroup, and carry on – spiralling onwards and upwards, towards the light of new possibilities. The possibilities that my courage and my commitment to myself have created.

This is exactly what happened to me in August of this year, in the aftermath of my first-ever solo performance of my songs at a little festival near Bath.

Countdown to performing at Connect

“Nine months of prep,” commented Claire Housego, my piano teacher and ever-supportive friend. “It’s like a pregnancy!”

Ha! I’d had the exact same thought myself.

Instagram post publicising my performance at Connect 2025 – photo by Claire Waddell

After nine months of countdown, my appearance at the little festival Connect 2025 was like giving birth to my performing-artist self. Nine months from the moment I knew in my gut I was doing this and ‘asked’ the festival organiser if he’d have me, to the experience of being in that marquee, in front of that audience, sharing my songs.

Make no mistake, this was a big deal for me.

If you’ve followed my previous posts, you’ll know that I am the very same person who once froze mid-song during an impromptu open mic performance and had no voice or functioning fingers to carry on. I am the same Danielle whose body used to react to performance situations as if I were in mortal danger. When I think back to this previous reality, I can truly appreciate how huge it was for me to reach this milestone: to perform a 40-minute solo set which included my own original songs.

I’d got there – through intention, focused effort, supportive relationships, a powerful toolkit of techniques, and a state of being utterly in love with music.

Thank God I’d managed to cross that line. Because just over 24 hours before I performed, the possibility of reaching this personally momentous milestone had teetered like a house of cards on the brink of collapse.

Big bumps in the road

2025 has been a challenging year for me. At the end of 2024 I was diagnosed with severe deficiencies in vitamin B12 and iron (the root cause of which is complicated, and not because I was vegetarian or vegan, nor because I was neglecting my diet).

A deficiency in vitamin B12 can cause damage to the nervous system which is slow to heal, and in some cases may not ever heal fully. It left my nervous over-sensitive in a very specific way, which kicked in with a vengeance the day before I was due to arrive at Connect.

Small stress, large impact

Two days before my performance, I had a last-minute rehearsal with Claire and her husband Matt, who were going to be joining me to add backing vocals and cajón to the final song of my set – a cover of Island by French alt music project Roseaux.

I was excited for the chance to have musical playmates and a fuller sound! But during the first run-through, as Claire and Matt’s parts came in, I was momentarily thrown off-centre. Though I’d expected to take it all in my stride, I’d underestimated the additional mental load of hearing the extra vocals and percussion.

My performance wobbled.“Oh God”, I thought, “we’re performing this in two days, and I can’t hold it together.”

I felt a little spike of adrenaline to the head.

My flash of doubt was only momentary. The song came together quite quickly after that, and it was joyous and satisfying! But with the weakened condition of my nervous system, that little spike of stress (added to the mild panic of not having been able to find my camping kit for the festival earlier in the day) rippled out into something bigger.

Rehearsing with Claire and Matt two days before Connect 2025

I can’t get no sleep

That night, as I’d experienced many times over the course of my long-term illness, I hardly slept. Though my mind was genuinely calm by that time, as soon as I fully relaxed, my body broke into spasms.

When I’d described my nighttime struggles to my specialist doctor he’d said, “sounds like Restless Legs Syndome.” But that was a misnomer at best. My legs, arms, neck, and whole body were involved, violently jerking in fits and starts. I was wired with an energy that wouldn’t dissipate, until 5am, when I finally fell asleep for one hour.

Restless Legs Syndrome was a misnomer at best. My legs, arms, neck, and whole body were involved, violently jerking in fits and starts.

I’m quite a high-functioning insomniac if I sleep for four or more hours. But one hour? Forget it!

I got up the next morning knowing that there was no way I was going to the festival that day as planned.

It was Thursday, and my performance was tomorrow. My only hope was to get a better sleep that night at home, so I could power through the next day.

But if tonight I had a repeat of the insomnia I’d just experienced, it would be game over. I’d have to pull out.

Will it work out? Time to eat, pray, love (myself)

That day, I did everything I could think of to support myself. I breathed deep into my belly, I meditated, I prayed. I drank the last of a bottle of French mineral water given to me by my neighbours, which has naturally very high levels of muscle-relaxing magnesium. I felt the ground through my bare feet as I chilled in my garden. I ate good food. In every way I could, I tried to switch on my parasympathetic nervous system, and tell my whole being, “it’s OK, we’ve got this”.

In my zombie state, I methodically found and packed everything I needed to take to Connect, feeling as though I was moving through molten tar. I went to bed early.

By some miracle, I slept for a full ten hours.

It was happening!

(As an aside, if anyone else out there is suffering from Restless Legs Syndrome, I recommend you look into Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises (TRE). These have been a game-changer for me, as I discovered I could let my body ‘tremor off’ all of the energy I believe it was trying to release through my Restless Legs. Since regularly practising TRE, I’ve had far fewer nights of insomnia.)

How everything fell into place

Everything falls into place,
Like the flick of a switch.
Well my mama told me,
There’ll be days like this – Van Morrison

On Friday 15th August 2025 (my nephew’s birthday – auspicious!), everything flowed my way. It was just as if a celestial switch had been flicked to turn on all the conditions that would most support me to deliver my performance.

I arrived in a dry field bathed in glorious sunshine, bumped straight into Claire – who helped me unload my digital piano – and threw my tent up in two seconds (it’s a pop-up tent!)

Two events were programmed in the main marquee before my set. As Claire and I entered the space, we were met with a swirl of resonance – sounds that emerged, shimmered, ebbed and flowed, bathing us in vibrations that felt like a gentle yet powerful embrace. We joined the other participants lying down on the ground, as therapeutic sound practitioner Belle Humble painted the room with an array of instruments, including the singing of crystal and metal bowls, intertwined with the singing of her own beautiful voice.

Therapeutic sound practitioner, singer and multi-platinum songwriter Belle Humble – giving a sound bath

The scenario couldn’t have been more perfect. Those meditative sounds eased me into a state of deep relaxation and presence. What a way to get mindful and embodied before a performance!

As the sound bath wound down and we came back to sitting, Belle invited us all to add our voices in harmony to the soundscape of the room. “Yesssss!” I thought, “we get to sing!” My heart swelled as my body was soothed from the inside by the vibrations of my own voice, and met from the outside by other people’s. It was a shared moment of the most easeful and nourishing vocal improvisation. As a long-time collaborative vocal improviser, I honestly couldn’t have felt more at home.

Claire and I flowed right into the next session held in the marquee – a salsa class led by our newly made friend Jordan Berry. It was the best salsa class I’ve ever taken part in, so well structured, keeping my full attention without overstretching me. I was in the sweet spot for the flow state, and having fun!

I did it! Breakthrough and expansion

And so it was that I entered my 40-minute set at Connect from a foundation of relaxation, emotional warmth, groundedness, and positivity.

Sure, there were little butterflies in my stomach, but they fluttered lightly.

I’d told myself that I wasn’t aiming for perfection. The goal I’d set for myself was that any little mistakes would not interrupt my flow. Whatever happened, I wanted to keep on playing.

I did it!

My voice was so amplified that it reverberated around the whole festival field. With it, I had the sensation that my energetic self had also somehow expanded and was comfortably taking up more of the space around me.

Once my performance had finished, a couple of people approached me to feed back that they’d really enjoyed my music. “It was exquisite,” one woman said.

Earlier in life, my body had learned through challenging experiences – such as being bullied at school – that it was not safe for me to be seen and heard expressing myself in that way. The risk appeared to be that I could be hated for shining, or, at the other end of the scale, rejected and judged unworthy for not being good enough. I’d felt I had to walk an impossible line between this rock and a hard place, leaving me riddled with anxiety every time I ‘put myself on show’. Now I was receiving the message that my artist-self was welcomed. I could bring her out of hiding. It was safe.

My body had learned that it was not safe for me to be seen and heard expressing myself in that way. But now I was receiving the message that my artist-self was welcomed.

I was so elated, and proud of what I’d achieved.

The contraction came a few days later. The trigger was the videos.

Return of the inner critic

Claire had very kindly set up her video camera on a tripod to capture my performance.

On the Monday after Connect, she sent the footage through to me.

“Thanks so much Claire”, I messaged. “I’ll watch these videos later.”

I was dragging my heels. I didn’t want to watch them. Something in me had a knowing of what was about to happen.

Watching a video is so different to living the experience that it captures. When I eventually hit the play button, there was the image of me singing, playing piano, flat-packed into the screen of my phone. And there, recorded with clinical precision, were all of my mistakes. My moments of hesitation, my fingers landing on the wrong keys, and – ouch! – my waverings off pitch.

“Oh nooooo!” I said to myself over and over again as I watched. “I did that?” “I did that?”

All of those months’ and years’ worth of musical training, and the best I could produce was that?

Seeing the spiral

Shame erupted in me. I wanted to take it all back, shove the genie back inside the lamp and stop pretending to the world that I was a musician, because – look, there’s the evidence! – despite all my efforts to upskill, I still couldn’t deliver my songs in the way I’d imagined them.

In the very same moment, another part of me was just noticing.

It was the ‘witness consciousness’. The unchanging seer that’s always there, beneath the swirl of thought, emotion, and sensation.

“Look, there it is”, it told me. “The spiral”.

I had had a breakthrough, and now I was spiralling back into contraction. My inner critic, still clinging to the idea that I had to be perfect to be safe, was sounding the alarm in a desperate bid to shut me down, AKA protect me.

But its assessment was skewed. Yes, the imperfections and mistakes were there, but it had amplified them in my mind to eclipse all that was beautiful in my performance. It was reacting in a way I’d never respond to another person, and its ‘you’re not good enough’ message was simply not true.

It took me a couple of days of quiet processing to work that shame out of my system. Thankfully, I then popped out the other side, back in possession of my post-performance joy and pride.

Onwards and upwards: spiraling into 2026

Three months after Connect, I performed a couple of my songs at a private open mic held in a friend’s house. I felt relaxed and safe sharing my songs that night like never before.

Relaxed and enjoying performing at a private party in my friend Nina’s house: November 2025

This experience – and the festival performance itself – have really brought home to me how much more demanding it is to be in a performance situation than playing your songs alone in a familiar practice space. The presence of an audience, a new environment, and even subtle differences in the position of your body in relation to an instrument create an extra mental demand – even if you’re feeling relatively calm and relaxed.

So my task since Connect has been to simplify some of the complexity of my songs (a strategy I’ve written about before, which started with my song ‘Walking’). I’ve been focusing on the parts of my arrangements which have been stretching my piano skills to the limit, and tipping me into a zone where mistakes are quite likely.

I’ve been seeking ways to create a bit more ease in each song, while holding on to the spirit of what I really want to express.

I’ve been focusing on simplifying the parts of my piano arrangements which have been stretching my piano skills to the limit, and tipping me into a zone where mistakes are quite likely.

Now I’m looking forward to spiralling forward into 2026, creating new opportunities to share my music. I’m excited to discover what my learnings from Connect, and that experience of expansion, will make possible.

Watch this space!

Join me, Claire, and Belle in 2026 for sound-bathing, vocal meditation and improvisation!

The connection Claire and I made with therapeutic sound practitioner and songwriter Belle Humble at Connect festival has resulted in a very special collaborative offering.

Having experienced how much Belle’s sound bath and vocal meditation benefited my voice on the day of my first festival performance, I’m really excited to be offering a combined experience of sound-bathing, Collaborative Vocal Improvisation, and creative voice and piano exploration – co-facilitated between me, Belle and Claire.

The Awaken Your Voice: day retreat is happening on Sunday 1st February 2026, at the Wild Box yoga studio in Bristol. We’d love for you to join us there! Learn more here: Awaken Your Voice.