Pallas My teacher gives me the best praise I can think of. She says I'm a very hard worker,
Pallas With piano, it's like my heart is in my throat all the time, and yes, I'll find out I'm unworthy.
I meant to write more last night, but fell asleep. Apparently I pressed "Post Reply" before conking out. 🙂
I meant to elaborate on what I think makes an amateur pianist, with a very nice and good teacher who is not a superstar virtuoso or teaching at a university, 'worthy' of taking lessons. I think a lot of people believe that they have to have a certain (and overly high) level of "talent" and be constantly showing significant progress in every lesson, in order to be worthy of being taught. If you're in a conservatory or university program, then I think that's probably approximately right. But for the vast majority of teachers and amateur students pairs, I think that's far too high a bar.
Really, most good teachers I've met are quite pleased if a student has enough raw materials to start with and if they're reasonably diligent. I'm guessing that you could work 1/10 as hard as you currently do, and your teacher would think that you're still worth her time. (If you doubt this, I'm happy to discuss. My experiences with my own teachers, observing my children's lessons, and my experience teaching others (in non-musical subjects) make me very confident that I'm first-order right on this, and if you think it'll be helpful, I'm more than willing to make my case.)
Re: raw materials, if a student - usually a child - comes in unable to sit, unable to listen, and unable to focus, then that's a sign that the raw materials aren't there yet. If someone is one of the relatively uncommon truly amusical people in the population, then that's probably a sign that piano lessons are going to be fairly fruitless, too. If someone struggles to know whether one pitch is higher than another, not a great sign. (Though for the piano, it's not actually a deal-breaker.) I've watched and listened to enough of your videos to know that you cross the bar of "enough raw materials" with room to spare, because people who don't cross that bar simply can't get to where you are, in the amount of time that you've taken, no matter how hard they work.
And as far as constant and observable progress goes - most experienced teachers I've met aren't the least surprised or perturbed when a student appears to backtrack/go sideways/completely fall off the rails for extended periods of upwards of a year. It seems to be a normal part of development that happens to most people eventually, as far as I can tell. I hate it when it happens to me, and I loathe watching it in my children - but apparently it's just par for the course. So please don't be surprised if it happens to you, and I hope that you won't think that it's a reason to quit.
I don't think that your feeling that you're one bad lesson away from being deemed unworthy will dissipate just by me writing all this here, but I do hope that it will help you create a little more mental space from the anxiety. For me, creating that brief moment between a mistake and the ensuing paralyzing cascade is critical; if I can catch it, it's like getting my toe in the door. A tiny opening leads to the possibility of me incrementally wedging the rest of myself in, until there's enough space for me to actually be present, be able to work, and move on.
This is a little facile, but I wish you could go into every lesson and think (and believe), "As long as I'm not a jerk or an a**hole to my teacher, then I'm worthy". Because you are.