Life on the road isn't easy, but with psychotherapist Tamsin Embleton's new book Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual, readers are now getting a glimpse of just how hard it can be.

After a worldwide pandemic hiatus from live music, it seemed that returning to the rhythms of life on tour proved difficult for some. Artists like Shawn Mendes, the band Wet Leg and Arlo Parks among others canceled shows and even whole tours in order to focus on their mental health.

Embleton's new book aims to help musicians and those working in live music to identify and cope with the difficulties that can occur during or as a result of touring. She joined host Elamin Abdelmahmoud, along with one of her interviewees — Radiohead's Philip Selway — to talk about her findings.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow the Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud podcast, on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Philip, we saw a number of young musicians and artists throughout the pandemic make the choice to completely cancel tours in order to focus on mental health. I'm thinking here of people like Shawn Mendes, the band Wet Leg, Arlo Parks … As someone who's been touring for decades now, how would you say you've seen the music industry change the ways that it talks about mental health?

Philip: I'd say where we are at the moment is far more positive than when I first started touring. The attitude was very much "put up or shut up" when I started touring, and to see somebody like Arlo Parks be able to just state that, "I'm not in a good place. I need time to step back from this, to continue growing as an artist." And actually, taking that kind of time for yourself, taking that care of yourself — be that on tour, in recording or in finding a workable schedule for yourself — I think what it means, then, is that you can carry on and become a much more developed, more powerful artist. And actually, you stand a good chance of being a fairly decent human being as well.

Elamin: I like that idea of having this information makes you stand a better chance of being a decent human being, because of course you can't really be that when you are experiencing the distress that comes with tours all the time. Tamsin, Philip mentioned there a culture of "put up and shut up." A lot of people you consulted with spoke of this idea of the culture of silence on tour. What did people tell you about it?

Tamsin: Absolutely. No matter what role you're in on the road, the stresses build — and they build just by being out on the road and away from the usual people, places and practices that keep you stable. Then, there's the role-specific stress on top. And what that means is that a few weeks in, everybody's in a stressed state and they're responding in different ways, and they're trying to keep their heads above water.

You're living in close confines, living and working together with people in this really intense experience — and emotions can spread like wildfire through the group. So one of the ways of trying to protect against that is that people may not address some things that are kind of in the room, so long as the show goes on, essentially … There is that feeling there that so long as you're not being a complete nightmare and the show is continuing, you're doing your job, you're showing up, then things get unaddressed or get pushed underground, which can then lead to secondary difficulties — things don't get resolved, there could be tensions, there can be cliques, there can be gossiping, there can be all these other ways that affect group dynamics, too.

Elamin: Most fans who attend shows, their interaction with the tour is the two hours on stage. But the tour is not that, right? The tour is everything before and after — the tour is the travel schedule, the tour is what time that you have to get up in order to make your next flight or be back on the bus, and all these stresses do end up adding up. Philip, I've got to ask you: you met all the members of Radiohead in school. How would you say the dynamic has changed between all of you on tour, especially as you started to become more successful, would you say?

Philip: Well, it's interesting. We were at school, but [the band] didn't grow out of the friendship at school. It grew out of seeing each other and thinking, "We could be a good band together." There is that commitment to the professional side of it, I guess, from the outset. But as the band grows — as you do more touring, do more records, you reach more people — there are different pressures which appear at each stage of it. And so, you end up feeling that you did go through these very, very intense experiences together. I mean, I think all of us have said at some point it's almost like a sibling relationship, right? Where you have this common experience of being part of that family — you might be very different people, you bring very different skills and personality traits to the thing, but because you've been through this very intense experience together, there's a richness to it.

Elamin: Tamsin, you touched a little bit on how performers can lose their sense of self on the road. What strikes you about this kind of identity crisis you think that musicians were talking about?

Tamsin: I do hear it a lot in my work with artists. Especially if you're touring very intensely, you may be surrounded by people who are doing their very best to make you as happy as possible — and on top of that, you're meeting a lot of people who have elevated you. They have this particular relationship with you, which we call parasocial relationships, which can be dazzling sometimes. Some of the artists that I work with realize they have this effect on people — people are so delighted to see them, and are hanging on their every word — and I think that can be quite surreal. It can go a number of ways. Either your sense of self can become inflated; you can start to believe that you're superior to other people because you're being treated like you're special. Or, you may become quite mistrustful because something in you knows that actually that's not quite the case … you may be very skilled and have talent in certain areas, but you're also an ordinary person with flaws and things like that.

One of the interviews I had that touched upon this was with Taylor Hanson from the band Hanson, and he was saying that artists are surrounded by people who lionize them and [are] constantly telling them that they're special in some way. You have to find ways to stay grounded, whether that's with contact with friends and family that you knew before you got famous if they are healthy relationships, or connecting with other parts of yourself or the roles that you have outside of this one that is so celebrated.

Elamin: I've also got to ask you about romantic relationships, Tamsin, because in the book you talked a little bit about how artists share that their romantic relationships tend to suffer on tour.

Tamsin: I guess what I hadn't thought about was that of course if you're touring internationally, you're not just physically unavailable to people at home and vice versa … there's this psychological distance as well that's created which can be very threatening. Actually, we talked about that, I think, in our interviews, Philip.

Philip: I had a moment reading the book where there was one of these quotes going, "It's my relationship with my wife which is my grounding in this tour — makes it all doable. But the more I do it, I feel that the more it takes me away from that at points." And at home I was thinking, "that speaks to me so much." And I got to the end of the quote and it said, " - Philip Selway."

Elamin: What a relief that it was you. That's great. Tell us a little bit more about that; I want to know how your wife became this sort of touchstone for you while you're on tour.

Philip: We've been together since the touring really took off. We'd known each other before the band really took off. Particularly in the early days where we'd be away for months at a time — it'd be like 11 months out of the year at points — that can be a very difficult situation to keep building a relationship. We knew how important that relationship was to the two of us. We did everything we could to make sure that we talk every day, as much as we could.

Even at those points where it felt like it was feeling hard, where the temptation might have been to think, "Let's not talk for a couple of days." We didn't do that because I think we felt that actually once you start to break down that daily contact, then everything else starts to unravel around it because you're both living quite different experiences. Your heads can be in different places ... And so, actually finding ways that you can step into each other's worlds when you're not together, I think that is vital. My relationship with my wife has been a wonderful experience in my life, and it's also been, I'd say, the most important element of my longevity in making music as well.

Elamin: Philip, I would say that the next step is for you to write a marriage self-help book. That sounds fantastic. I think that's a wonderful way to put it.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.