Managing Performance Anxiety: The Strategies That Work
Written by Clinical Psychologist, Katie Dobinson
Performance anxiety, often referred to as ‘stage fright’, is a common experience of nervousness that can occur when we have an upcoming event where we’re anticipating being judged in some way. Most people experience performance anxiety because the event they are thinking about is important to them, and they’re nervous about failing or being judged in a negative light.
This fear of judgement is often called a ‘fear of negative evaluation’, as we might be stuck worrying about being perceived as ‘inadequate’, ‘boring’, ‘foolish’, or not ‘up to scratch’.
Performance anxiety is closely linked to ‘imposter syndrome’, and can activate these kinds of worried thoughts. Performance anxiety is a normal part of the human experience, because we are social creatures and we all have a deep need to belong.
We all experience performance anxiety in some form, but for some people it can be much more pervasive, intense, and impairing than for others. For the majority of people, pre-event anxiety is common before doing the following activities:
- Attending a job interview
- Performing, presenting or speaking to a group
- Competing in an event (e.g., sports, creative arts)
- Going on a date
- Meeting a new group of people (e.g., starting a new gym class, starting a new job, joining a new sporting team, attending a new social or community event)
Performance anxiety is a core feature of social anxiety, a common mental health difficulty experienced by many folks. In Australia, 8.4% of the community meet criteria for Social Anxiety Disorder at some point in their lifetime. If you’re struggling with social-based worries, you’re not alone!
Features of performance anxiety
The nervous jitters, worried thoughts, and increased heart rate are a direct result of the body’s fight-or-flight response kicking into gear. When this happens our stress hormones are released, preparing the body to respond to perceived danger. What we experience is adrenaline and cortisol being released into the body, which can cause increased heart rate, shallow breathing, temperature changes, shaky hands, and a tensing of our muscles. These are all the elements of the body’s natural ‘alarm’ system, which is triggered when we are anticipating some form of threat.
When we have an important event, meeting, date, or other situation where we value performing well – and fear that we may not – we perceive the potential threat as other’s judging our performance, which can trigger this fight-or-flight response.
Luckily, we can learn skills to notice, mange, and reduce this response so that it doesn’t stop us from engaging in these important activities.
Tips to calm the nervous system and manage performance anxiety
The first step is to name the response. Try to talk to yourself as you would a loved one, with a calm and reassuring tone. You could try and label your response with something like this:
“I’m noticing my heart is beating really fast when I think about that group meeting I have next week. That’s ok, it’s just my body’s fight-or-flight reaction because I care about the meeting, and these sensations aren’t going to harm me. I’ll take some calming, slow breaths and make some time to prep for the meeting this week.”
Controlled breathing
The flight-or-flight response usually involves changes to our breathing that can maintain nervousness and anxiety. To reduce this unpleasant sensation, try to practise ‘controlled breathing’, a skill that requires you to take slow, gentle breaths in through your nose, and out through your mouth. On the in-breathe, imaging filling up your diaphragm with air (rather than your upper chest), and on the out-breathe, imagine your stomach/diaphragm is slowly releasing air like a balloon deflating. Try breathing in this way for 3 minutes to help you relax.
Self-help tips to overcome my performance anxiety
Overcoming performance anxiety requires overcoming a fear of the anxious sensations that you experience, and overcoming the fear of the situations that trigger the reaction in the first place. To manage the anxiety symptoms, you can practise relaxation skills (such as controlled breathing listed above), and try to challenge unhelpful, catastrophic thoughts about the situation. To overcome the feared situation, the key is practise and exposure. Rather than avoiding the situations that bring on performance anxiety, try to think of performance anxiety as an indication that you just need a little more practise in doing the particular activity.
Try breaking down the activity into smaller steps, and gradually complete these one at a time. Once you feel confident mastering the first step, you can move up to the next. This is a skill called ‘graded exposure’ and is very effective at treating performance anxiety.
For example, if you’re often anxious about talking to a group of people, you could try breaking this down into smaller steps that give you a chance to practise the skill of talking, and slowly add in more people as you gain confidence speaking to people one-on-one.
Dealing with anxious thoughts is another important skill when it comes to overcoming performance anxiety.
In the this new clinical resource, see some examples of how you can adjust your thinking to more helpful thoughts, rather than trusting the unhelpful anxious thoughts that may arise. Unhelpful thoughts can maintain performance anxiety, but with practise you can reframe your thinking for a more helpful mindset to overcome your fears!
Quick tips to manage unhelpful anxious thoughts about performance-based situations can include
- Label and normalise the thought: “This is one of my unhelpful ‘stage-fright’ thoughts, these are really common for lots of folks when they’re being evaluated. It’s ok that I’m having this thought.”
- Reframe your thought to something more helpful, realistic, and compassionate: “I’m human, and I’m not expected to be perfect. I’ll do some preparation and do the best I can, but I’m worthy irrespective of how my speech goes.”
- Write down your helpful, reframed thought and use this as helpful self-coaching and motivation to approach the task.
Remember that we all experience performance anxiety from time to time, and it’s likely that with practise and exposure, you can engage in the activities that are important to you, even if you feel a little anxious. ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ is a great slogan to encourage bravery when overcoming these fears. We believe in you!
If you’d like to learn more about overcoming anxiety when it comes to performance, you might find our Social Anxiety Program helpful.
