Cures for performance anxiety

5 Big Mistakes in Dealing with Performance Anxiety

1. Treating the symptoms instead of the cause

You’re about to take the stage and all you can feel is your racing heart, trembling hands, and shallow breathing. Maybe you even feel nauseous and you’re having trouble focusing your vision. How could anyone in this condition perform in a way that’s expressive…well, expressive of anything other than dread! It’s no wonder that overcoming performance anxiety is equated to eliminating these troublesome bodily sensations.

But sometimes attending only to the physiological symptoms of anxiety is like putting a Band-Aid on a more serious injury. These symptoms are a natural part of the body’s “fight or flight” response, which kicks in when a person perceives a threat. In the case of a real threat—say, coming across a wild animal trying to hurt you—these physiological responses are good. They help you to more effectively fight or take flight. So if your symptoms are not debilitating and you merely seek to ease them, then you may benefit from pre-performance exercises like deep breathing and progressive muscle relaxation.

It’s often more important to identify why performing is viewed as a threat, or what aspects of it are most threatening. Identifying the source of anxiety may be the key to performance becoming an activity in which you can be your musical best.

2. Viewing practice as the cure-all

Sometimes the task itself—playing or singing music—is in fact the source of anxiety. Additional practice is the solution if you find yourself taking the stage thinking, “I just don’t know if I can physically perform this music. I’ve hardly ever done it before.” For many performers, though, this is not the problem. They know that they can play or singing the music well, but they worry that they won’t be able to once on stage. In cases like this, simply preparing and over-preparing your music will not likely help. It may even signal a resignation to anxiety, almost like saying, “If I’m over-prepared, then when anxiety inevitably hits, the drop-off in my focus and control will still yield a decent performance.” If playing/singing is not the problem, but doing so for an audience is, then more time in the practice room is not the answer.

3. Overdosing on positive thinking

The term catastrophizing describes when a musician entertains fears of a horrible performance outcome. Catastrophizing is like a dark, agitating, ominous cloud out on the horizon. These negative thoughts are usually vague and exaggerated. Instead of realistically considering “what’s the worst that could happen?” the catastrophizing performer fixates on some nebulous feeling of disaster.

Jake Daniels The Stage Fright Cure: How to overcome stage fright and performance anxiety (coaching and psychology) in five easy steps
eBooks (Jake Daniels)

They only say 'performance' which is a catch-all

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