If you’ve ever felt like you know what to do technically — you have the skills, the talent, the exercises — and yet something still feels blocked when you sing… this episode is for you.
In this episode of Vocal Tips in 10, Amber Mogg Cathey sits down with licensed hypnotherapist Katie Crooks to explore the connection between the mind, nervous system, emotions, and the voice — and why technique alone isn’t always enough to unlock the voice and artistry you’re capable of.
Katie shares how decades of working with singers and speakers eventually led her into hypnotherapy and subconscious work, helping performers move through fear, perfectionism, emotional holding patterns, performance anxiety, and nervous system responses that can directly affect vocal freedom and expression.
This conversation explores:
• performance anxiety + the nervous system
• emotional blocks in singing
• subconscious patterns that affect performance
• why some singers still feel stuck even with good technique
• creating more safety, confidence, freedom, and connection in your voice
And this is just Part 1.
Next week, Katie actually guides Amber through a Vocal Reset Hypnosis session that listeners can come back to over and over again as part of their own vocal practice and performance preparation.
00:00 Introduction and Personal Background
00:00 The Intersection of Voice and Hypnotherapy
01:49 Performance Anxiety and Its Impact
03:38 Understanding the Unconscious Mind
06:13 Addressing Trauma and Voice Blocks
07:43 Practical Techniques for Emotional Release
10:01 Resources and Upcoming Masterclass
11:14 Emerging from Hypnosis and Reflection
11:15 Resources and Masterclass Information
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Hello everyone and welcome to Vocal Tips in 10. I am so excited and feel so lucky to have a guest with me here today. I have Katie Crooks with me. Katie is a board certified hypnotherapist. She also has been working with professional singers, professional speakers, artists, performers for decades.
And what I love about Katie's work is she's always talking about how technique alone, vocal work alone, isn't going to get us fully to where we want to be as singers. I'm so excited to have her here today.
Welcome, Katie, and I would love it if you could talk to everybody a little bit more about what you do.
Katie Crooks (00:37)
my gosh. First of all, I love the fact that you framed that, what you just said about the way I talk about voice. You said it much more polite terms than I normally say it. So.
I'm getting a little more vocal these days, I'm on my soapbox. Yeah, so where do I begin? you know what, I think you can relate to this, that day one, it was back in about 2003 when I started teaching singing and I just, was supposed to be doing this work, working with voices. And day one, pretty much.
Lesson one, maybe lesson three, I suddenly thought, hang on a minute, there's something going on more than vocal technique here. This kid's not gonna say boo to a goose. How can I work with this? She's not able to get the sound out and it's got nothing to do with voice. She's got a voice, but there was something stopping her, right? And I thought...
what can I do to help her unlock something that I know how to fix technically, but I don't know at the time how to actually go deeper. And then, you know, 20 something years down the line, I decided to literally go deeper, which is why I became a hypnotherapist, shadow worker, energetics, voice witch, all the things,
amber cathey (01:49)
when you're kind of sharing your first experience thinking about this, my first experience thinking about this was when I was a young artist myself. I'd just moved to Nashville. I'd graduated from Berklee College of Music. I'd only been in Nashville a handful of months, and I got this really major opportunity to do some session work for Sony Music.
And I thought, okay, well, I know technically, artistically, musically, I can learn that and deliver, no problem. the problem was that for those hours I was working on it, I was getting myself keyed up thinking, this is it, Amber. If you knock this out of the park, you will do this for your life.
I put that much pressure on myself. So I go up to the mic. I am fully able to do this wonderfully. I go to sing and no sound came out, none. I'd never had that experience before. And I just, I got hot and sweaty and I was so embarrassed. I thought you're blowing this, which of course, what did that do? Made everything tighten more. Luckily
They had heard me sing, they knew I could do it. And after a few times, I relaxed enough, I got it out, it was fine. But I'd never had that experience before. And when I think about it years
later, I'm like, I fully did that to myself. I put
Katie Crooks (03:00)
Yeah.
amber cathey (03:01)
so much pressure on it and I wanted it so badly. Exactly.
Katie Crooks (03:04)
I want to say it's shame, right? Because so many
people shame themselves when they go through that kind of experience, but it happens to people all the time.
amber cathey (03:11)
all the time. Yes. Or those singers
who are so unbelievably talented and go to hit the big money note and
Katie Crooks (03:17)
Yeah,
amber cathey (03:17)
it doesn't come out.
Katie Crooks (03:19)
yeah, I've seen that happen. mean, you and I will have seen that in our in the voice studio a thousand times, right? These people are talented, they're skilled, they're professional, they're gifted, they're hardworking, they know what they're doing. And still something squeezes and honestly, there are a million things. I mean, we could do 50 podcasts just from what you've just said.
But the one thing I've learned from you guys, I know you won't stop.
amber cathey (03:38)
Let's do it, Katie. Let's do it.
Katie Crooks (03:44)
The thing I will share instantly is your unconscious mind, I prefer calling it unconscious rather than subconscious, but I use the words interchangeably. Your unconscious mind will do everything in its power to keep you safe. And if it
amber cathey (03:58)
Yes.
Katie Crooks (03:58)
believes that what you're about to do is unsafe for whatever illogical reason, that makes no sense consciously, if it thinks it's unsafe, then it's gonna shut the voice down.
add to that the fact that the voice is the most emotional part of our body, right?
amber cathey (04:14)
Yes.
Katie Crooks (04:14)
Where we release what's inside into the outside world. So when people say, eyes are the windows to the soul, I believe that the voice is the transmission of our soul, because it's literally transmitting our frequency through sound waves. And people have a parasympathetic response to the sound that comes out of our voice, right?
amber cathey (04:33)
Absolutely.
Katie Crooks (04:34)
And so if we're, if we've got something and we're holding onto, people are going to feel that and they'll feel uncomfortable or they'll feel elated or they'll feel free or they'll feel whatever they'll feel is likely to be a result of the sound waves that are the frequency that's coming from you, which is why I do the work I now do. Because I don't want to, I just don't want to see people blocking their voices when I know how many powerful voices there are in the world and how much good we can do with powerful voices when the right people, the good people are opening up their voices, right?
amber cathey (05:04)
Yeah, preach it sister. You are so speaking my language. And I love how you
said that because I too work with professional singers, aspiring professional singers. I also work with a number of speakers, but I feel this strongly just for people having access to their voice, access
Katie Crooks (05:20)
Yeah.
amber cathey (05:21)
to who they truly are and the ability to express that and express that confidently. feel it in my bones.
Katie Crooks (05:30)
yeah.
amber cathey (05:30)
And so I love how you just said that because we need all of us to literally have access to our voice, to be able to communicate what's inside of
Katie Crooks (05:36)
Yeah.
amber cathey (05:38)
us and to feel good about it.
Katie Crooks (05:40)
my gosh, to feel good about it, not self-judging or thinking, what would they think of me or would they like me or did they want to give me this job and please give me the job and all those things. The fear of rejection and every, you know, every single time, nine times out of 10, I do a hypnosis session with someone.
something will come up in them. you know, most people will find themselves remembering something usually being teased on the playground or being shut down or shamed by a teacher, told to mime in the choir or you're
amber cathey (06:09)
yeah.
Katie Crooks (06:09)
too loud, you're too big for the other
kids
go and stand at the back.
And when you actually resolve those traumatic experiences right in the roots of where it happened, and I'm talking deep enough,
unconscious, our nervous system, it's suddenly we realize that we're actually safe to be messy, safe to be ugly, safe to mess up, know that we're always a work in progress.
And if we tie ourselves in knots to be likable and pleasing and get them to like us or love us, care for us, then that usually comes along with a good dose of quietening our voice being seen
and not heard, it's quietening and shrinking. And then people wonder why they get their first Broadway audition and they freak out or they get their first lead role. They come to me sometimes, you know, they say, right, Katie, I've got my first lead role, it's Shakespeare, it's my first professional performance and I'm freaking out. I can't even make myself walk onto the stage. everything I've done has led up to this moment like you explained in the recording studio. And what happens was we once,
we find out what their unconscious mind is trying to protect them from, it was a past experience or a belief that they picked up somewhere that wasn't even theirs. It was somebody else's crap
amber cathey (07:23)
may I ask you for people who are listening to this, and I can
Katie Crooks (07:26)
Yeah.
amber cathey (07:27)
tell you while you were talking about this, and I still feel it now, I feel this like tightness in my chest, just thinking about that. So for artists who
Katie Crooks (07:32)
Yeah.
amber cathey (07:34)
are listening to this, I know we're going to make this a two-parter. So we're getting ready to actually go into a hypnosis practice.
that
you are going to lead me through, but for people who are listening to this right now, and think, okay, I resonate with all of this, anything that you would recommend just a starting point, anything
you can share on that?
Katie Crooks (07:56)
Gosh, there are a million things. The biggest thing I want to share, which isn't a starting point, isn't a right here, right now, is actually get brave enough to go deep enough to address the roots of what's causing it. Because, you know, I love affirmations. I love journaling. I do them all every day. I do my scripting. I do my stuff. But really deep down, if my unconscious is trying to protect me, I've got to actually address what's going on underneath. So I'm a massive advocate of finding out what the root cause is, what the belief, the pattern, the programming,
or what shadow is playing out in our system that actually caused that. And I have resources I can send you. got some freebies, I've got some masterclass, I've got stuff.
amber cathey (08:33)
Yes,
Katie Crooks (08:34)
I'd love to share that with you and your audience. What I will say right now is the most powerful thing I find is there's this thing called, I call it a 90 second biochemical flush.
And you know when something pushes your buttons, someone says something,
it just annoy you, really pushes your buttons and you feel the feeling in your heart. You feel a flush of adrenaline, cortisol, whatever the stress hormones are.
One of the most powerful things you can do in that moment is to know that it only actually takes 90 seconds for that flush of chemicals, that cocktail of chemicals to work its way through your system. The only reason that stress sticks around longer is if you feed it with a story. And so If you were to just, what I would do is put my hand on my heart and close my eyes if I can.
and I would allow myself to fully feel what's moving through me. And I don't suppress it, I don't push it away, I don't resist it. If I cry or sob, brilliant, that's a really good thing, because it comes out, it moves through me, my voice actually unlocks and releases it, which is great.
even if you yawn or just sigh and just be with it, with your hand on your heart or wherever it is you're feeling it in your system, and you let it actually move through your system without resisting or giving it a story, I can put my money on the fact that that's gonna shift through your system and you're gonna master the art of allowing it to move through you rather than holding yourself in this stuck place of resistance.
amber cathey (10:01)
I
love it. and I would love it if you could just share a little bit about the resources and for everybody, I'm going to put the resources that Katie mentions here in the show notes. And then we will wrap this up and then next week we will jump into the actual practice, which I'm so excited about.
Katie Crooks (10:16)
gosh, me too, me too.
What I'll share with you here, there's a freebie on my website right now called the Stardom Series. The Stardom Series is a playlist of specific audios. There's a morning one, an evening one. There's a pre-performance one.
there's about is it 10 11 11 of them I think
So that's that's that's the free thing but the thing that's good I would love to share is I'm doing a masterclass in a couple of weeks called Ignite Your Voice and what we're doing in the masterclass is actually I'm guiding you into a deep hypnosis where you actually get to address and begin to shift and move through some of
the traumatic stuff, that's been stuck in your system.
we're going to shift through that, to help you move out of that and actually get your voice into a place where it's able to open up freely.
amber cathey (11:04)
sold. I'm sold, sister. I will be there.
I will put that link down below. Thank you all for being here, and please jump on to next week's episode where Katie is going to be walking me through this work.
see you next week.
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