Performance Anxiety

If you’ve ever heard of performance anxiety, you probably know that this is something that athletes can suffer; for example, the elite athlete competing in the Olympics may suffer performance anxiety before he or she runs track, and this may or may not hinder ultimate performance.

However, perhaps you did not know that performance anxiety is, in fact, very common for the general population as well, and does not limit itself simply to athletics. Performance anxiety can occur in any situation wherein you must perform to a certain standard.

For example, you can experience performance anxiety at work, before you have to give a presentation, or even simply in more innocuous situations, such as at a new job, where you are busy learning new tasks.

 For some people, however, performance anxiety in fact extends to their lives as a whole. With social anxiety disorder, for example, people are, in fact, experiencing “performance” anxiety even in the most innocuous of situations.

For example, they may see themselves in their mind’s eye stammering or embarrassing themselves even in such mundane situations as standing in line at the checkout when they’re getting groceries.

This type of “negative visualization” is really the reverse of what an athlete is trained to do, for example, when his coach tells him to visualize himself clearing the hurdles during his run.

While that is considered “positive visualization” and helps the athlete perform optimally, the person who suffers social anxiety disorder is actually subjecting him or herself to continual negative visualization by constantly seeing him or herself doing socially inappropriate or embarrassing things in social situations.

Another type of performance anxiety is test anxiety. Many students suffer this, and again, it usually involves a type of negative visualization, wherein a student sees him or herself doing badly on the test, either because he or she is not prepared; alternatively, he or she may actually be prepared for the test, but is unable to stop “living” the negative outcome visualization in the mind’s eye.

Therefore, the student may “freeze” when confronted with the test and not be able to perform up to standard, even though he or she is absolutely prepared for the test.

As you might guess, the best cure for performance anxiety is to practice behavioral techniques that gradually introduce the sufferer to the situation he or she fears most, slowly at first, and then more directly.

Therapists will often also confront the sufferer with the “worst outcome” scenario and then teach him or her how to handle it, so that they no longer have to fear the unknown “possible” worst outcome, but now have actually done so and have coping skills to deal with it.

This removes the terror of it, and often, this is all that is needed to make it possible for performance anxiety to dissipate. In extreme cases, or as a temporary measure, treatment such as antianxiety medications and even beta-blockers may be used.

However, these are generally used to alleviate the most acute suffering while behavioral techniques take hold and then are to be discontinued.

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