February 3, 2025 • 27 mins
Performance anxiety can act as a major barrier to achieving personal and professional goals, often stemming from physiological responses and past experiences. Throughout the episode, we dive into the definition, symptoms, risk factors, and effective management strategies for performance anxiety, ultimately empowering listeners to conquer their fears.
• Explanation of performance anxiety and its characteristics
• Discussion of physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms
• Insights into risk factors such as genetics and personality traits
• Overview of various treatment options, including therapy and coaching
• Practical tips for managing performance anxiety through relaxation techniques, preparation, and physical activity
• Importance of mental rehearsal and visualization for success
• Encouragement to seek help and prioritize mental well-being
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:13):
Are you feeling stuck , trapped by barriers holding
you back from reaching your fullpotential?
Well, let's bust through thosebarriers so that you can live
your best life.
Hi, I'm Matt Brooks, founder ofMatt Brooks Coaching, and I'm
passionate about helping peopleovercome barriers to achieve
success.
Join me for insights,strategies and inspiring stories
(00:35):
as we explore practical tipsand powerful tools to unlock
your true potential.
This is the Barrier BustingPodcast, and we're going to do a
(01:00):
couple of episodes on this.
I think we all experience thisin some degree at some point in
our lives.
Right?
Some nervousness before we haveto do something in public.
All that.
It can even really freak us out, make us not sleep so well the
night before, for instance.
But for some people,performance anxiety can be very
severe, even debilitating.
(01:22):
Research shows that roughly 40%of people suffer from
performance anxiety in one wayor another, and I have a feeling
that number's soft.
I have a feeling that it's abigger number than that.
Now, the term performanceanxiety doesn't just refer to
performing on a stage, you know,like a dancer or musician or an
(01:43):
actor.
No, this could be anythingwhere you're put on the spot, so
it could be an officepresentation you have to make.
You can get performance anxietybefore making a speech or
interviewing for a job, orperforming in a school play.
Of course, even giving a toastat a wedding, it might be.
It might happen to anythingwhere you're going to be put on
the spot.
(02:03):
Okay, and you know what itfeels like, right?
Your palms get sweaty, yourheart races, you feel anxious,
maybe you have a pit in yourstomach, right?
Truth is, most people wouldrather get a root canal than get
up in front of people and speakor perform.
Right?
There's nothing unnatural aboutthat.
Most of us do feel a degree ofnervousness or discomfort when
(02:24):
put in situations where we needto stand out in some way.
However, when it becomespersistent, when it interferes
with your quality of life orreaches the level of dread and
panic, then it's full-onperformance anxiety.
So what is performance anxiety?
How is it defined?
Well, performance anxiety issimply an outsized stress
(02:46):
response one can experience whenbeing put on the spot.
It's strong, excessive fear orworry that one won't be able to
successfully accomplish aspecific task, causing emotional
and physical distress.
It's excessive and sometimesdebilitating feelings of
nervousness and dreadsurrounding the completion of a
(03:06):
specific task.
Now, performance anxiety fallsunder the umbrella of anxiety
disorders, but the Diagnosticand Statistic Manual of Mental
Health does not recognize itspecifically.
Performance anxiety typicallyfalls under a category called
social anxiety disorder, whichis diagnosed when someone
(03:27):
experiences persistent, intensefear or anxiety regarding
specific social situations dueto self-conscious concerns about
being judged negatively,embarrassed or humiliated.
So it's pretty much the samething performance anxiety,
social anxiety disorder.
So it falls under that category.
Thing.
Performance anxiety, socialanxiety disorder.
(03:47):
So it falls under that category.
Now, what happens inside of uswith any anxiety is something
called a physiologicalsympathetic activation.
This is our body's immediatereaction to stressors.
We have a part of the brainwhich is meant just for this.
It's called the amygdala.
It's a very small part of ourbrain and it goes into what we
all know as fight or flight moderight, which is when our body
(04:08):
releases cortisol or adrenaline.
Now cortisol, often called thestress hormone, is also our
body's alarm system.
Okay, it prepares us to face adifficult situation.
Cortisol increases our heartrate and breathing, heightens
our eyesight, strengthens ourimmune system and slows down our
digestion.
It's meant to steal us forfacing some type of challenge.
(04:32):
It's natural, and a little bitof anxiety is actually a good
thing.
A little bit of cortisol fromtime to time is a good thing.
It's healthy.
It's what often propels us toachieve things in our lives.
However, chronic stress andanxiety can cause our body's
alarm system to be overworked,resulting in negative and often
(04:52):
severe ramifications, oftenmanifesting in physical problems
like gastrointestinal problems,cardiac problems and a weakened
immune system, all because oftoo much pressure from chronic
cortisol.
This is when it goes beyondsimple butterflies or jitters
but creates a heightened levelof apprehension and can get in
(05:13):
the way of achieving your goals.
A heightened emotional statethat has you on edge.
In other words, instead ofhelping you, as your
physiological sympatheticactivation is supposed to do, as
in keep you safe, it actuallymakes it harder to deal with the
situation at hand, and oftenyou screw up the situation at
hand because the anxiety takesover.
(05:35):
In all of this, fear is theprevailing force Fear of
judgment, fear of humiliation,fear of failure.
But performance anxiety is alsoenhanced by a number of other
things, like memories of pastexperiences.
Something bad happened in thepast.
You remember it.
You don't forget that right?
(05:56):
Maybe overly high expectationsor perfectionism.
If you're a perfectionist,you're going to have a lot of
anxiety, and it comes from evenbiological factors.
Sometimes this can be genetic.
You might have some geneticsthat make you more prone to
anxiety.
There are actually, though,good reasons to fear.
(06:16):
I'm not saying the fear isstupid or bad.
There's real reasons to fearwith performance anxiety.
A failure could affect yourcareer, it could affect your
standing in the community, itcould affect your self-esteem,
your self-confidence, et cetera.
It's hard to make a goodimpression or be at your best
self when you're suffering froman episode of performance
anxiety, and so it can reallyget in the way.
(06:41):
Performance anxiety rears itsugly head in a number of
different ways.
There are physical symptoms,there are emotional symptoms,
there are cognitive symptoms andthere are behavioral symptoms.
The physical symptoms are moreobvious.
Right, you get a racing pulse,you have heart palpitations, you
have excessive sweating orsweaty palms.
(07:01):
You have dry mouth or drythroat.
You may have nausea or astomach disturbance.
Your muscles may become tense,your hands, legs and voice may
shake.
You might be short of breath.
You might have sleeplessness.
You might even experiencechanges in vision.
Those are physical symptoms.
Emotional symptoms like fearand worry, which negatively
(07:23):
affect one's ability to focus,are also heightened when you
have performance anxiety.
In terms of cognitive symptoms,it's basically negative thought
patterns, where we continuallyimagine the worst outcomes.
Right that, coupled withself-criticism and doubt,
unrealistic expectations andperfectionism there's that
(07:44):
perfectionism thing again orobsessing and ruminating on
failure.
Those are all cognitivesymptoms of performance anxiety.
There are also some behavioralsymptoms, as I mentioned.
That's like withdrawing fromsocial interaction, you know,
hiding out, essentially avoidingsituations that can trigger
performance anxiety or actuallydoing the thing but displaying
(08:06):
impaired performance during youknow you doing the thing.
It can happen.
It's happened to me, I'm sureit's happened to many of you who
are listening.
Where you're, you have thatanxiety, you're given the speech
anyways and somehow thatanxiety actually made it worse.
Sometimes, actually, though,you don't even feel it.
(08:27):
Sometimes you can feel totallycalm and that performance
anxiety can still get in the way.
I remember a time in collegewhere I had to give a
presentation and it was a nobrainer for me.
I knew the stuff cold, I wastotally prepared for this
presentation.
I practiced, I was ready to gofor this presentation.
(08:49):
I practiced, I was ready to goand I was completely calm day of
and at the event, totally calm.
I had no indication whatsoeverthat I was under any type of
anxiety until about a minute inmy right leg started shaking,
and I mean noticeably shaking,not just to me but to everybody
in the room.
It wasn't just a little tremor.
My leg was shaking and I wastrying to stop it.
(09:10):
I kept pounding my foot on thefloor.
Didn't work.
I felt calm through the wholething, though, despite the fact
that my leg was shaking.
I got anxiety over that, but Iwas fine with the speech.
I don't know what happenedthere, but I do know that there
was performance anxiety lurkingunderneath the surface and it
came out in that way.
(09:32):
Are there risk factors forperformance anxiety, things that
can make one more prone toexperience it more severely, say
, than others?
Yes, there are Genetics, ofcourse, is one.
There's something callednegative trait, affectivity
right, this is a personalitytrait that places excessive
focus on negative emotions.
(09:52):
If you have that, you're moreprone to performance anxiety.
Neuroticism this is aninability to manage urges or
stress, emotional instability oroverreaction, especially,
especially to perceived threats.
Also, this is someone with atendency to complain a lot.
Pessimism, envy, anger, fearand guilt also come into play
(10:14):
with neuroticism.
That will make you more proneto performance anxiety.
And, of course, introversion,which is a tendency to avoid
social interactions and focus onone's own thoughts and feelings
rather than those of sharedexperiences.
People that are introverts likethat will have a tendency to
suffer a little more anxietyover performance or being put on
(10:36):
the spot.
Also, I have to say, persistentthoughts of failure, in which
one mentally plays out orruminates on potential negative
outcomes.
If that's something you do,you're more likely to have
performance anxiety, becauseyou're going to play this out in
a really negative way with noreal proof that that's what's
going to happen.
It's just your habit.
(10:56):
Whatever the case, performanceanxiety can come in varying
degrees of severity, fromapprehension to all out
crippling fear in which one'smind can go blank.
That happens too.
Your mind can go blank.
Has that ever happened to you?
It's never happened to me, butI know that that's something
that people have happenedsometimes when their anxiety
(11:17):
gets too much.
We're going to take a quickbreak here, and when I return
I'm going to talk abouttreatment options and share a
bunch of tips for dealing withperformance anxiety.
Hang tight.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Feeling overwhelmed, Struggling to find balance in
your daily life?
At Matt Brooks Coaching, we getit and we can help.
With over 25 years of nonprofitexecutive experience and an MSW
with a clinical focus, MattBrooks offers personalized
coaching designed to help yourise above your challenges and
live your best life.
(11:56):
Whether you aim to advance yourcareer, enhance your skills or
simply find more clarity andpeace, Matt is here to be your
partner and ally.
Visit mattbrookscoachingcom tobook your free discovery session
today.
Take the first step towards abrighter tomorrow.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
All right, I'm going to share some tips for reducing
and managing symptoms ofperformance anxiety in a minute,
but if your performance anxietysymptoms are severe and I mean
really severe and they'renegatively affecting your
quality of life, your job, yourrelationships, et cetera, then
you may want to considertreatment options.
Okay, there are some optionsout there.
There's therapy and there'scoaching.
(12:41):
There's both, and coaching willchallenge beliefs and drill
down for clarity and will worktogether to come up with
solutions that will help youovercome your anxiety, which is
not altogether different frommost common therapeutic
approaches.
In therapy, there's a fewdifferent things you could
consider.
There's cognitive behavioraltherapy, or CBT.
This is empirically proven andit's commonly done.
(13:04):
It's not hard to find atherapist who does CBT.
In CBT, you'll identify andchallenge negative thoughts,
you'll visualize a positiveoutcome and you'll take action,
thereby learning to redirectnegative thoughts, beliefs,
images and predictions.
It's kind of like rewiring yourbrain or your thought process.
(13:24):
There's also psychodynamictherapy, or better known as talk
therapy.
For some people, just havingthat safe space where you can
talk to an ally who's not apersonal friend, family member
or coworker can make a hugedifference.
It's also where coaching comesin, or where coaching is similar
(13:44):
because your coach will be anally.
That's the primary role of acoach, or at least how I do it.
So if you want to have thatally, you can find one in
therapy or in life coachingwhatever works best for you.
There's also a variety of othertherapy approaches, like
interpersonal therapy, rationalemotive behavior therapy,
(14:05):
dialectical behavior therapy andsomething called acceptance and
commitment therapy.
These are all versions oftherapeutic approaches that will
help you with anxiety ingeneral and, in particular, if
you have severe performanceanxiety.
There are medications, too, thatcan help you.
Now, this, of course, is adiscussion you need to have with
(14:26):
a doctor.
I'm not going to promotemedication here.
In fact, I typically, for me,try to avoid it.
Unless it's really important,unless I really need to do it, I
don't recommend it.
I'm just mentioning that thereare medications that can help
with performance anxiety ifreally appropriate for your
situation Again, somethingyou've got to talk to your
(14:46):
doctor about.
The most common of these, ofcourse, are beta blockers, and
the reason those are used oftenis because it lowers your heart
rate and blocks the effects ofadrenaline.
So if you're having thatchronic cortisol, chronic
adrenaline, the beta blockershelp with that.
But again, there can bedownsides to medication.
I'm not promoting it.
(15:06):
I just want you to know thatthere are options you can visit
with your doctor about if yourperformance anxiety is severe.
Now, the good news is that, justlike our body has a sympathetic
nervous system which preparesthe body for acting in a
stressful situation, we alsohave something called the
parasympathetic nervous system'srest and digest response.
(15:28):
This is responsible for calmingour body down after a stressful
situation.
There is a rest and digestsequence that follows when the
(15:50):
stressful situation ends.
All right, so you can think ofit as there is light at the end
of the tunnel.
But we can, however, cut all ofthis off at the pass with a few
techniques designed to releaseor relax the tension we feel in
advance of and during thestressful moment when our
performance anxiety kicks in.
Essentially, an anxietyresponse is a pressure cooker of
(16:12):
tension.
Somehow we need to dischargethat tension.
So here's some proven ways todo that, and these are not in
any particular order ofimportance.
Okay, number one.
Yes, of course I'm going to sayit Exercise, eat a healthy diet
and get enough sleep.
I know you're sick of it.
I say it all the time,everybody says it all the time,
(16:32):
but there's a reason for that.
These things really do make adifference in everything and, in
particular, our response tostress.
So exercise, eat a healthy dietand get enough sleep.
Second is deep breathingexercises.
You know we always hear that.
We hear it it's kind of funny,but in through the nose, out
through the mouth.
Well, these things are reallyhelpful.
(16:55):
And do you know why it's inthrough the nose and out through
the mouth?
By the way, when you breathe inthrough your nose, you breathe
deeper, you breathe to thediaphragm, not to the lungs, and
more oxygen gets into your body, into your bloodstream.
When you breathe out throughthe lips, you're actually
releasing tension.
So doing it in that sequence isreally important to calming
(17:20):
down stress.
There's a couple techniques Iwant to tell you that you can do
.
If you're close to the moment,if you're like, say, right
backstage before you got to givethat TED Talk or something and
you're starting to feel it.
If you're like, say, rightbackstage before you got to give
that TED talk or something andyou're starting to feel it it's
kicking in, try something calledbox breathing.
This is something that Navyseals you.
So, like you know, it works.
(17:40):
Those folks have to keep prettycalm in some really stressful
situations.
So here's what box breathing isOK, it's into the nose, to the
count of four, a slow four.
You breathe in through yournose, then you hold your breath
for that slow four.
Then you release through yourlips that slow four and then you
(18:01):
hold for a slow four and repeat.
So you're counting four slowly.
You're breathing into the nose,so you're counting fours slowly
.
You're breathing in through thenose, then you hold your breath
for four.
You release over a count offour and then you hold for four
and you do this several times.
That's why they call it boxbreathing.
It's going to help you.
It doesn't take much time to dothis.
Now there's another one that Ido if I have the time and the
(18:24):
space, if I'm alone in a room,and I can do this.
This one's really spectacularand it works for me every time.
But again, this one's a littlemore time-consuming.
It's essentially the same idea,only you count to 10.
And when you're breathing, yousit in a chair and get your body
as limp and relaxed as possible.
Okay, then you breathe inthrough your nose, to the count
(18:49):
of 10.
And you're doing that, youtense up your muscles, in
particular your fists, so thatby the time you get to the 10,
you're really tense and you holdthat tension and that breath
for a count of 10 and then yourelease the breath slowly and
the tension slowly over a countof 10.
Try that sometime, just once.
You'll notice a big difference,okay.
So deep breathing's reallyimportant to relieving the
(19:12):
anxiety and stress Always goingto come into play.
There's other methods out theretoo.
If you want to Google, you canfind them, but those are two
that I think are really helpful.
And again, if box breathingworks for the Navy SEALs, that's
going to work for you, okay.
Another tip is for dealing withperformance anxiety or any
anxiety really is relaxationtechniques, meditation.
(19:35):
Now, I'm not a meditation guy,it's not my thing, but I know a
lot of people who are, and theseare some pretty calm people,
people that do this every day.
They can really react to stresswell.
So meditation is a strong whatdo you say?
A strong help in fightingstress and anxiety.
So is yoga.
(19:55):
People do yoga.
There's something calledprogressive muscle relaxation,
and there's other relaxationtechniques.
You can look those up on Googleas well.
All those are going to help you, especially if you do them
daily, not just when you'regoing to feel some performance
anxiety.
Here's a big one On the day ofthe event that you have to be
put on the spot and maybe for afew days leading up, limit your
(20:18):
caffeine and sugar intake.
Seriously limit your caffeineand sugar intake.
Another one is visualize yoursuccess.
Now I know some of you are like, oh yeah, he's saying visualize
, come on, but really actually,this kind of works all right.
Fantasize about succeeding.
Play it out in your head whatit looks like to succeed, what
it feels like after the fact.
(20:39):
Visualize it, it will help.
Here's a big one, and thisone's very hard to achieve, but
it's really gonna help you ifyou can do it.
Stay present.
Stay in the present moment.
Don't let your mind race aheadand focus on made-up scenarios
that aren't grounded in reality,but rather are grounded out of
(21:00):
fear.
Don't do that.
It's important to know thatoften, anxiety is caused by fear
of anxiety.
Let me say that again.
A common cause of anxiety isfear of anxiety.
Something happened to you.
Once it stays with you, youworry about experiencing that
again, and that worry escalatesinto full-blown anxiety.
(21:20):
Bring your focus back to thepresent moment.
What's happening right now?
What do you see, what do youfeel, what can you touch, what
do you hear?
Use your.
You feel, what can you touch,what do you hear.
Use your senses to get out ofyour head and experience the
moment you're in.
Now here's one that I love.
This one's going to sound crazy, but I love it.
Shake it off, seriously.
(21:41):
I'm not talking about like youfall and you skin your knee when
you're in fifth grade and youget up and somebody says, no,
shake it off.
I'm not talking about that kindof shake it off.
I'm talking about literallyshaking your body.
Flail your arms, wiggle yourbody, jump up and down, try it,
it works.
Shake, shake, it works.
In fact, I remember an operasinger I knew once who would
(22:02):
jump up and down like a prizefighter backstage before a
performance.
It gets tension out, it works.
So do whatever will work foryou, but seriously shake it off.
Another one here that I thinkis helpful is to shift the focus
from yourself to what or whoyou are serving.
(22:22):
Don't make it personal.
See yourself playing a role.
It's not you, it's the role.
Now, in my old life I worked fornonprofits and I had to raise
money, and there were timeswhere I was in situations that
were quite uncomfortable, whereI was with people who were
(22:43):
saying things that reallybothered me or had very
different political beliefs thanme.
Whatever, I had to keep quiet,I had to smile and nod because
in that moment I was there toraise money for the cause that I
was working for right.
So in that situation, I wasn'tMatt Brooks.
I was the guy who was afundraiser for the nonprofit
(23:04):
that I was representing and Ireally tried to make a shift in
my mind that way that I wasrepresenting and I really tried
to make a shift in my mind thatway that helped me stay focused
on my goal and stay calm in theface of things that normally
would really, frankly, piss meoff.
Here's another technique.
I love this one and this reallydoes work.
You're gonna roll your eyes,but it really does work.
Smile and laugh, even if youdon't want to.
(23:26):
Research has proven thatsmiling and laughing when
experiencing stress can lowerthe intensity of the body's
stress response.
So, seriously, smile.
And lastly, this is the mostimportant tip I can give anyone
for overcoming performanceanxiety.
This is the big one Be prepared, fully prepared, practice,
(23:49):
practice, practice.
Know your stuff so well andpractice it so often that it
becomes muscle memory andtherefore will work, even if
you're suddenly experiencingstrong anxiety.
Think about it.
Why does people in the military, why does the military drill so
often?
They're drilling all the time.
Why it's so that soldiers canspring into action, based in
(24:11):
part on a kind of muscle memoryand mental muscle memory, even
when they're in highly stressfulsituations.
That's why they drill.
I'll give you a more pleasantexample.
When my son was in fifth gradehe had to give a TED Talk.
All the fifth graders in theschool had to do this.
It was like six minutes, Ithink, and he's not the
(24:32):
get-up-in-public-speaker kind ofguy.
My son, he's a quieter, youknow, introvert, not totally
introverted, but a little moreintroverted than that.
He's not really one to puthimself at the front of the pack
.
He's one to work his butt offfor the pack, but he's not
really want to put himself atthe front of the pack.
He's wanting to work his buttoff for the pack, but he's not
really one to put himself frontand center.
(24:54):
So he was nervous about this.
So I worked with him on that.
And first thing is, I workedwith him on certain memorization
techniques, how he couldmemorize his speech and memorize
it well, and then we drilled itevery day.
We drilled it every day becauseit was only six minutes.
We could do it several timesduring the day.
We could just call a quickdrill and he would get up and do
(25:16):
it for his mom or for me orwhatever.
So we did it every day and hereally did it.
We did it a lot.
So now time for the speech atschool, the TED Talk, and we
couldn't go to that.
It was just an in-school thing,but they did video it for us.
So we got a video over email.
This kid was cool as a cucumberI mean.
(25:37):
He was so poised, he nailed it.
He nailed it.
Oh my God, I was so proud.
And I asked him later.
I said were you feeling nervous?
He said, oh yeah, I was feelingreally nervous.
He didn't show it.
It's because he prepared sowell that it was on muscle
memory.
So that, above all the othertechniques, that's the one that
I can't stress enough.
(25:57):
The better prepared you are,the calmer you're going to be
okay, but all these techniquesseriously are great for helping
calm performance anxiety, butnothing compares to being fully
prepared.
Have I hammered that homeenough?
Do you think if I made thatpoint.
I think so.
So that's all it is and that'sall I got for today.
That's a lot of stuff.
I hope you found this helpfuland interesting.
(26:20):
Next week I'm going to havewe're going to continue this
topic, but I have aninternational opera coach coming
on, someone who used to be anopera singer who now trains
opera singers, works with peopleat every level of the business,
including the highest levels ofthe business.
He's been doing this fordecades, so he's seen and
experienced a lot of performanceanxiety and he's got a lifetime
(26:41):
of experience and knowledgewith this.
So I think he's going to beable to shed a lot of light on
this for us from a practicalstandpoint.
So I hope you'll check it outnext week.
Thanks for tuning in today.
I hope you found this episodehelpful.
Please like or subscribe tothis podcast so you can be
notified each time I drop a newepisode.
For now, thanks for listening.
(27:02):
Be well, and I'll catch younext time on the Barrier Busting
Podcast.
Thank you.
Are you feeling stuck , trapped by barriers holding
you back from reaching your fullpotential?
Well, let's bust through thosebarriers so that you can live
your best life.
Hi, I'm Matt Brooks, founder ofMatt Brooks Coaching, and I'm
passionate about helping peopleovercome barriers to achieve
success.
Join me for insights,strategies and inspiring stories
(00:35):
as we explore practical tipsand powerful tools to unlock
your true potential.
This is the Barrier BustingPodcast, and we're going to do a
(01:00):
couple of episodes on this.
I think we all experience thisin some degree at some point in
our lives.
Right?
Some nervousness before we haveto do something in public.
All that.
It can even really freak us out, make us not sleep so well the
night before, for instance.
But for some people,performance anxiety can be very
severe, even debilitating.
(01:22):
Research shows that roughly 40%of people suffer from
performance anxiety in one wayor another, and I have a feeling
that number's soft.
I have a feeling that it's abigger number than that.
Now, the term performanceanxiety doesn't just refer to
performing on a stage, you know,like a dancer or musician or an
(01:43):
actor.
No, this could be anythingwhere you're put on the spot, so
it could be an officepresentation you have to make.
You can get performance anxietybefore making a speech or
interviewing for a job, orperforming in a school play.
Of course, even giving a toastat a wedding, it might be.
It might happen to anythingwhere you're going to be put on
the spot.
(02:03):
Okay, and you know what itfeels like, right?
Your palms get sweaty, yourheart races, you feel anxious,
maybe you have a pit in yourstomach, right?
Truth is, most people wouldrather get a root canal than get
up in front of people and speakor perform.
Right?
There's nothing unnatural aboutthat.
Most of us do feel a degree ofnervousness or discomfort when
(02:24):
put in situations where we needto stand out in some way.
However, when it becomespersistent, when it interferes
with your quality of life orreaches the level of dread and
panic, then it's full-onperformance anxiety.
So what is performance anxiety?
How is it defined?
Well, performance anxiety issimply an outsized stress
(02:46):
response one can experience whenbeing put on the spot.
It's strong, excessive fear orworry that one won't be able to
successfully accomplish aspecific task, causing emotional
and physical distress.
It's excessive and sometimesdebilitating feelings of
nervousness and dreadsurrounding the completion of a
(03:06):
specific task.
Now, performance anxiety fallsunder the umbrella of anxiety
disorders, but the Diagnosticand Statistic Manual of Mental
Health does not recognize itspecifically.
Performance anxiety typicallyfalls under a category called
social anxiety disorder, whichis diagnosed when someone
(03:27):
experiences persistent, intensefear or anxiety regarding
specific social situations dueto self-conscious concerns about
being judged negatively,embarrassed or humiliated.
So it's pretty much the samething performance anxiety,
social anxiety disorder.
So it falls under that category.
Thing.
Performance anxiety, socialanxiety disorder.
(03:47):
So it falls under that category.
Now, what happens inside of uswith any anxiety is something
called a physiologicalsympathetic activation.
This is our body's immediatereaction to stressors.
We have a part of the brainwhich is meant just for this.
It's called the amygdala.
It's a very small part of ourbrain and it goes into what we
all know as fight or flight moderight, which is when our body
(04:08):
releases cortisol or adrenaline.
Now cortisol, often called thestress hormone, is also our
body's alarm system.
Okay, it prepares us to face adifficult situation.
Cortisol increases our heartrate and breathing, heightens
our eyesight, strengthens ourimmune system and slows down our
digestion.
It's meant to steal us forfacing some type of challenge.
(04:32):
It's natural, and a little bitof anxiety is actually a good
thing.
A little bit of cortisol fromtime to time is a good thing.
It's healthy.
It's what often propels us toachieve things in our lives.
However, chronic stress andanxiety can cause our body's
alarm system to be overworked,resulting in negative and often
(04:52):
severe ramifications, oftenmanifesting in physical problems
like gastrointestinal problems,cardiac problems and a weakened
immune system, all because oftoo much pressure from chronic
cortisol.
This is when it goes beyondsimple butterflies or jitters
but creates a heightened levelof apprehension and can get in
(05:13):
the way of achieving your goals.
A heightened emotional statethat has you on edge.
In other words, instead ofhelping you, as your
physiological sympatheticactivation is supposed to do, as
in keep you safe, it actuallymakes it harder to deal with the
situation at hand, and oftenyou screw up the situation at
hand because the anxiety takesover.
(05:35):
In all of this, fear is theprevailing force Fear of
judgment, fear of humiliation,fear of failure.
But performance anxiety is alsoenhanced by a number of other
things, like memories of pastexperiences.
Something bad happened in thepast.
You remember it.
You don't forget that right?
(05:56):
Maybe overly high expectationsor perfectionism.
If you're a perfectionist,you're going to have a lot of
anxiety, and it comes from evenbiological factors.
Sometimes this can be genetic.
You might have some geneticsthat make you more prone to
anxiety.
There are actually, though,good reasons to fear.
(06:16):
I'm not saying the fear isstupid or bad.
There's real reasons to fearwith performance anxiety.
A failure could affect yourcareer, it could affect your
standing in the community, itcould affect your self-esteem,
your self-confidence, et cetera.
It's hard to make a goodimpression or be at your best
self when you're suffering froman episode of performance
anxiety, and so it can reallyget in the way.
(06:41):
Performance anxiety rears itsugly head in a number of
different ways.
There are physical symptoms,there are emotional symptoms,
there are cognitive symptoms andthere are behavioral symptoms.
The physical symptoms are moreobvious.
Right, you get a racing pulse,you have heart palpitations, you
have excessive sweating orsweaty palms.
(07:01):
You have dry mouth or drythroat.
You may have nausea or astomach disturbance.
Your muscles may become tense,your hands, legs and voice may
shake.
You might be short of breath.
You might have sleeplessness.
You might even experiencechanges in vision.
Those are physical symptoms.
Emotional symptoms like fearand worry, which negatively
(07:23):
affect one's ability to focus,are also heightened when you
have performance anxiety.
In terms of cognitive symptoms,it's basically negative thought
patterns, where we continuallyimagine the worst outcomes.
Right that, coupled withself-criticism and doubt,
unrealistic expectations andperfectionism there's that
(07:44):
perfectionism thing again orobsessing and ruminating on
failure.
Those are all cognitivesymptoms of performance anxiety.
There are also some behavioralsymptoms, as I mentioned.
That's like withdrawing fromsocial interaction, you know,
hiding out, essentially avoidingsituations that can trigger
performance anxiety or actuallydoing the thing but displaying
(08:06):
impaired performance during youknow you doing the thing.
It can happen.
It's happened to me, I'm sureit's happened to many of you who
are listening.
Where you're, you have thatanxiety, you're given the speech
anyways and somehow thatanxiety actually made it worse.
Sometimes, actually, though,you don't even feel it.
(08:27):
Sometimes you can feel totallycalm and that performance
anxiety can still get in the way.
I remember a time in collegewhere I had to give a
presentation and it was a nobrainer for me.
I knew the stuff cold, I wastotally prepared for this
presentation.
I practiced, I was ready to gofor this presentation.
(08:49):
I practiced, I was ready to goand I was completely calm day of
and at the event, totally calm.
I had no indication whatsoeverthat I was under any type of
anxiety until about a minute inmy right leg started shaking,
and I mean noticeably shaking,not just to me but to everybody
in the room.
It wasn't just a little tremor.
My leg was shaking and I wastrying to stop it.
(09:10):
I kept pounding my foot on thefloor.
Didn't work.
I felt calm through the wholething, though, despite the fact
that my leg was shaking.
I got anxiety over that, but Iwas fine with the speech.
I don't know what happenedthere, but I do know that there
was performance anxiety lurkingunderneath the surface and it
came out in that way.
(09:32):
Are there risk factors forperformance anxiety, things that
can make one more prone toexperience it more severely, say
, than others?
Yes, there are Genetics, ofcourse, is one.
There's something callednegative trait, affectivity
right, this is a personalitytrait that places excessive
focus on negative emotions.
(09:52):
If you have that, you're moreprone to performance anxiety.
Neuroticism this is aninability to manage urges or
stress, emotional instability oroverreaction, especially,
especially to perceived threats.
Also, this is someone with atendency to complain a lot.
Pessimism, envy, anger, fearand guilt also come into play
(10:14):
with neuroticism.
That will make you more proneto performance anxiety.
And, of course, introversion,which is a tendency to avoid
social interactions and focus onone's own thoughts and feelings
rather than those of sharedexperiences.
People that are introverts likethat will have a tendency to
suffer a little more anxietyover performance or being put on
(10:36):
the spot.
Also, I have to say, persistentthoughts of failure, in which
one mentally plays out orruminates on potential negative
outcomes.
If that's something you do,you're more likely to have
performance anxiety, becauseyou're going to play this out in
a really negative way with noreal proof that that's what's
going to happen.
It's just your habit.
(10:56):
Whatever the case, performanceanxiety can come in varying
degrees of severity, fromapprehension to all out
crippling fear in which one'smind can go blank.
That happens too.
Your mind can go blank.
Has that ever happened to you?
It's never happened to me, butI know that that's something
that people have happenedsometimes when their anxiety
(11:17):
gets too much.
We're going to take a quickbreak here, and when I return
I'm going to talk abouttreatment options and share a
bunch of tips for dealing withperformance anxiety.
Hang tight.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
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your daily life?
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(11:56):
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Speaker 1 (12:19):
All right, I'm going to share some tips for reducing
and managing symptoms ofperformance anxiety in a minute,
but if your performance anxietysymptoms are severe and I mean
really severe and they'renegatively affecting your
quality of life, your job, yourrelationships, et cetera, then
you may want to considertreatment options.
Okay, there are some optionsout there.
There's therapy and there'scoaching.
(12:41):
There's both, and coaching willchallenge beliefs and drill
down for clarity and will worktogether to come up with
solutions that will help youovercome your anxiety, which is
not altogether different frommost common therapeutic
approaches.
In therapy, there's a fewdifferent things you could
consider.
There's cognitive behavioraltherapy, or CBT.
This is empirically proven andit's commonly done.
(13:04):
It's not hard to find atherapist who does CBT.
In CBT, you'll identify andchallenge negative thoughts,
you'll visualize a positiveoutcome and you'll take action,
thereby learning to redirectnegative thoughts, beliefs,
images and predictions.
It's kind of like rewiring yourbrain or your thought process.
(13:24):
There's also psychodynamictherapy, or better known as talk
therapy.
For some people, just havingthat safe space where you can
talk to an ally who's not apersonal friend, family member
or coworker can make a hugedifference.
It's also where coaching comesin, or where coaching is similar
(13:44):
because your coach will be anally.
That's the primary role of acoach, or at least how I do it.
So if you want to have thatally, you can find one in
therapy or in life coachingwhatever works best for you.
There's also a variety of othertherapy approaches, like
interpersonal therapy, rationalemotive behavior therapy,
(14:05):
dialectical behavior therapy andsomething called acceptance and
commitment therapy.
These are all versions oftherapeutic approaches that will
help you with anxiety ingeneral and, in particular, if
you have severe performanceanxiety.
There are medications, too, thatcan help you.
Now, this, of course, is adiscussion you need to have with
(14:26):
a doctor.
I'm not going to promotemedication here.
In fact, I typically, for me,try to avoid it.
Unless it's really important,unless I really need to do it, I
don't recommend it.
I'm just mentioning that thereare medications that can help
with performance anxiety ifreally appropriate for your
situation Again, somethingyou've got to talk to your
(14:46):
doctor about.
The most common of these, ofcourse, are beta blockers, and
the reason those are used oftenis because it lowers your heart
rate and blocks the effects ofadrenaline.
So if you're having thatchronic cortisol, chronic
adrenaline, the beta blockershelp with that.
But again, there can bedownsides to medication.
I'm not promoting it.
(15:06):
I just want you to know thatthere are options you can visit
with your doctor about if yourperformance anxiety is severe.
Now, the good news is that, justlike our body has a sympathetic
nervous system which preparesthe body for acting in a
stressful situation, we alsohave something called the
parasympathetic nervous system'srest and digest response.
(15:28):
This is responsible for calmingour body down after a stressful
situation.
There is a rest and digestsequence that follows when the
(15:50):
stressful situation ends.
All right, so you can think ofit as there is light at the end
of the tunnel.
But we can, however, cut all ofthis off at the pass with a few
techniques designed to releaseor relax the tension we feel in
advance of and during thestressful moment when our
performance anxiety kicks in.
Essentially, an anxietyresponse is a pressure cooker of
(16:12):
tension.
Somehow we need to dischargethat tension.
So here's some proven ways todo that, and these are not in
any particular order ofimportance.
Okay, number one.
Yes, of course I'm going to sayit Exercise, eat a healthy diet
and get enough sleep.
I know you're sick of it.
I say it all the time,everybody says it all the time,
(16:32):
but there's a reason for that.
These things really do make adifference in everything and, in
particular, our response tostress.
So exercise, eat a healthy dietand get enough sleep.
Second is deep breathingexercises.
You know we always hear that.
We hear it it's kind of funny,but in through the nose, out
through the mouth.
Well, these things are reallyhelpful.
(16:55):
And do you know why it's inthrough the nose and out through
the mouth?
By the way, when you breathe inthrough your nose, you breathe
deeper, you breathe to thediaphragm, not to the lungs, and
more oxygen gets into your body, into your bloodstream.
When you breathe out throughthe lips, you're actually
releasing tension.
So doing it in that sequence isreally important to calming
(17:20):
down stress.
There's a couple techniques Iwant to tell you that you can do
.
If you're close to the moment,if you're like, say, right
backstage before you got to givethat TED Talk or something and
you're starting to feel it.
If you're like, say, rightbackstage before you got to give
that TED talk or something andyou're starting to feel it it's
kicking in, try something calledbox breathing.
This is something that Navyseals you.
So, like you know, it works.
(17:40):
Those folks have to keep prettycalm in some really stressful
situations.
So here's what box breathing isOK, it's into the nose, to the
count of four, a slow four.
You breathe in through yournose, then you hold your breath
for that slow four.
Then you release through yourlips that slow four and then you
(18:01):
hold for a slow four and repeat.
So you're counting four slowly.
You're breathing into the nose,so you're counting fours slowly
.
You're breathing in through thenose, then you hold your breath
for four.
You release over a count offour and then you hold for four
and you do this several times.
That's why they call it boxbreathing.
It's going to help you.
It doesn't take much time to dothis.
Now there's another one that Ido if I have the time and the
(18:24):
space, if I'm alone in a room,and I can do this.
This one's really spectacularand it works for me every time.
But again, this one's a littlemore time-consuming.
It's essentially the same idea,only you count to 10.
And when you're breathing, yousit in a chair and get your body
as limp and relaxed as possible.
Okay, then you breathe inthrough your nose, to the count
(18:49):
of 10.
And you're doing that, youtense up your muscles, in
particular your fists, so thatby the time you get to the 10,
you're really tense and you holdthat tension and that breath
for a count of 10 and then yourelease the breath slowly and
the tension slowly over a countof 10.
Try that sometime, just once.
You'll notice a big difference,okay.
So deep breathing's reallyimportant to relieving the
(19:12):
anxiety and stress Always goingto come into play.
There's other methods out theretoo.
If you want to Google, you canfind them, but those are two
that I think are really helpful.
And again, if box breathingworks for the Navy SEALs, that's
going to work for you, okay.
Another tip is for dealing withperformance anxiety or any
anxiety really is relaxationtechniques, meditation.
(19:35):
Now, I'm not a meditation guy,it's not my thing, but I know a
lot of people who are, and theseare some pretty calm people,
people that do this every day.
They can really react to stresswell.
So meditation is a strong whatdo you say?
A strong help in fightingstress and anxiety.
So is yoga.
(19:55):
People do yoga.
There's something calledprogressive muscle relaxation,
and there's other relaxationtechniques.
You can look those up on Googleas well.
All those are going to help you, especially if you do them
daily, not just when you'regoing to feel some performance
anxiety.
Here's a big one On the day ofthe event that you have to be
put on the spot and maybe for afew days leading up, limit your
(20:18):
caffeine and sugar intake.
Seriously limit your caffeineand sugar intake.
Another one is visualize yoursuccess.
Now I know some of you are like, oh yeah, he's saying visualize
, come on, but really actually,this kind of works all right.
Fantasize about succeeding.
Play it out in your head whatit looks like to succeed, what
it feels like after the fact.
(20:39):
Visualize it, it will help.
Here's a big one, and thisone's very hard to achieve, but
it's really gonna help you ifyou can do it.
Stay present.
Stay in the present moment.
Don't let your mind race aheadand focus on made-up scenarios
that aren't grounded in reality,but rather are grounded out of
(21:00):
fear.
Don't do that.
It's important to know thatoften, anxiety is caused by fear
of anxiety.
Let me say that again.
A common cause of anxiety isfear of anxiety.
Something happened to you.
Once it stays with you, youworry about experiencing that
again, and that worry escalatesinto full-blown anxiety.
(21:20):
Bring your focus back to thepresent moment.
What's happening right now?
What do you see, what do youfeel, what can you touch, what
do you hear?
Use your.
You feel, what can you touch,what do you hear.
Use your senses to get out ofyour head and experience the
moment you're in.
Now here's one that I love.
This one's going to sound crazy, but I love it.
Shake it off, seriously.
(21:41):
I'm not talking about like youfall and you skin your knee when
you're in fifth grade and youget up and somebody says, no,
shake it off.
I'm not talking about that kindof shake it off.
I'm talking about literallyshaking your body.
Flail your arms, wiggle yourbody, jump up and down, try it,
it works.
Shake, shake, it works.
In fact, I remember an operasinger I knew once who would
(22:02):
jump up and down like a prizefighter backstage before a
performance.
It gets tension out, it works.
So do whatever will work foryou, but seriously shake it off.
Another one here that I thinkis helpful is to shift the focus
from yourself to what or whoyou are serving.
(22:22):
Don't make it personal.
See yourself playing a role.
It's not you, it's the role.
Now, in my old life I worked fornonprofits and I had to raise
money, and there were timeswhere I was in situations that
were quite uncomfortable, whereI was with people who were
(22:43):
saying things that reallybothered me or had very
different political beliefs thanme.
Whatever, I had to keep quiet,I had to smile and nod because
in that moment I was there toraise money for the cause that I
was working for right.
So in that situation, I wasn'tMatt Brooks.
I was the guy who was afundraiser for the nonprofit
(23:04):
that I was representing and Ireally tried to make a shift in
my mind that way that I wasrepresenting and I really tried
to make a shift in my mind thatway that helped me stay focused
on my goal and stay calm in theface of things that normally
would really, frankly, piss meoff.
Here's another technique.
I love this one and this reallydoes work.
You're gonna roll your eyes,but it really does work.
Smile and laugh, even if youdon't want to.
(23:26):
Research has proven thatsmiling and laughing when
experiencing stress can lowerthe intensity of the body's
stress response.
So, seriously, smile.
And lastly, this is the mostimportant tip I can give anyone
for overcoming performanceanxiety.
This is the big one Be prepared, fully prepared, practice,
(23:49):
practice, practice.
Know your stuff so well andpractice it so often that it
becomes muscle memory andtherefore will work, even if
you're suddenly experiencingstrong anxiety.
Think about it.
Why does people in the military, why does the military drill so
often?
They're drilling all the time.
Why it's so that soldiers canspring into action, based in
(24:11):
part on a kind of muscle memoryand mental muscle memory, even
when they're in highly stressfulsituations.
That's why they drill.
I'll give you a more pleasantexample.
When my son was in fifth gradehe had to give a TED Talk.
All the fifth graders in theschool had to do this.
It was like six minutes, Ithink, and he's not the
(24:32):
get-up-in-public-speaker kind ofguy.
My son, he's a quieter, youknow, introvert, not totally
introverted, but a little moreintroverted than that.
He's not really one to puthimself at the front of the pack
.
He's one to work his butt offfor the pack, but he's not
really want to put himself atthe front of the pack.
He's wanting to work his buttoff for the pack, but he's not
really one to put himself frontand center.
(24:54):
So he was nervous about this.
So I worked with him on that.
And first thing is, I workedwith him on certain memorization
techniques, how he couldmemorize his speech and memorize
it well, and then we drilled itevery day.
We drilled it every day becauseit was only six minutes.
We could do it several timesduring the day.
We could just call a quickdrill and he would get up and do
(25:16):
it for his mom or for me orwhatever.
So we did it every day and hereally did it.
We did it a lot.
So now time for the speech atschool, the TED Talk, and we
couldn't go to that.
It was just an in-school thing,but they did video it for us.
So we got a video over email.
This kid was cool as a cucumberI mean.
(25:37):
He was so poised, he nailed it.
He nailed it.
Oh my God, I was so proud.
And I asked him later.
I said were you feeling nervous?
He said, oh yeah, I was feelingreally nervous.
He didn't show it.
It's because he prepared sowell that it was on muscle
memory.
So that, above all the othertechniques, that's the one that
I can't stress enough.
(25:57):
The better prepared you are,the calmer you're going to be
okay, but all these techniquesseriously are great for helping
calm performance anxiety, butnothing compares to being fully
prepared.
Have I hammered that homeenough?
Do you think if I made thatpoint.
I think so.
So that's all it is and that'sall I got for today.
That's a lot of stuff.
I hope you found this helpfuland interesting.
(26:20):
Next week I'm going to havewe're going to continue this
topic, but I have aninternational opera coach coming
on, someone who used to be anopera singer who now trains
opera singers, works with peopleat every level of the business,
including the highest levels ofthe business.
He's been doing this fordecades, so he's seen and
experienced a lot of performanceanxiety and he's got a lifetime
(26:41):
of experience and knowledgewith this.
So I think he's going to beable to shed a lot of light on
this for us from a practicalstandpoint.
So I hope you'll check it outnext week.
Thanks for tuning in today.
I hope you found this episodehelpful.
Please like or subscribe tothis podcast so you can be
notified each time I drop a newepisode.
For now, thanks for listening.
(27:02):
Be well, and I'll catch younext time on the Barrier Busting
Podcast.
Thank you.
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