Performance anxiety, colloquially called stage fright, is not limited to a handful of professions. Anyone who feels extremely anxious about their performance before or after completing an uphill task could suffer from high-performance anxiety levels.
The intense fear stems from the worry of accomplishing a task as per set standards or the challenge of setting a high benchmark. Public speaking is a typical example of performance anxiety.
Other examples include dining in restaurants, meeting many people in public, anxiety about exam failure, playing a musical instrument, and more.
Sometimes, the fear of failure is so intense that you may feel it would invite a lot of shame, humiliation, and criticism. It can further exacerbate performance anxiety issues causing social phobias.
This disorder is commonly observed in professional artists, especially musicians and sportspersons. But with the increasingly competitive landscape and the need to stand out from the crowd, the prevalence of performance anxiety is gradually spreading across other demanding professions too.
Do you feel your performance anxiety is like a never-ending pit that haunts you? And this has caused you to second-guess your abilities every time you take a task? It is time to end this vicious cycle.
How? We will explore effective ways in this article.
Causes and Symptoms of Performance Anxiety
Before we learn how to break the cycle of performance anxiety, let us quickly go through the causes and symptoms to understand how to deal with this situation better.
Causes
There can be various causes of performance anxiety in individuals. I have listed some of them here. Understanding the causes would help you greatly in breaking the cycle.
- Negative self-esteem – It’s a feeling that projects how you feel about yourselves when you do not have enough. You might become mired in a rut of defeatism. So, you restrict yourself from experimenting or taking calculated risks.
- Stress hormone – Cortisol is a major contributor to performance anxiety, released when you are super anxious or stressed. It’s known to impair learning, cause a general decline in your performance, and even result in partial memory loss.
- Inherent negativity within you – Unfortunately, the human brain prioritizes negative emotions, making focusing on important things difficult. If your mind becomes a feeding ground for negative thoughts, it is bound to flare up performance anxiety issues.
Anxiety prevents you from thinking clearly and keeping your attention longer, which are crucial for success. It might decrease productivity due to increased nervousness and the pressure to perform well.
- Paranoia over making mistakes – The fear of failure consumes much of your time, contaminating your positive thoughts with negative ones. You are too worried about messing up and disappointing others. So, you lose confidence in yourself and concentration on the task.
- Amygdala dysfunction – It’s another major causative factor that makes it hard for you to overcome performance anxiety.
The amygdala in the brain helps with the recognition of potential dangers and the development of appropriate responses. Anxiety, fear, and terror are the primary emotions processed in this region of the brain.
However, a defective amygdala can cause you to experience unwarranted worry and panic, even in harmless situations. It’s counterproductive and can lead to the beginning of a never-ending cycle of performance anxiety.
Worse, it can even set you on a downward spiral of self-sabotage and self-doubt, which is fairly hard to overcome.
- Misplaced hopes – This emotionally painful situation leads to extreme discontentment when your hopes are dashed due to unrealistic expectations.
Sometimes, your overenthusiasm can result in you setting unattainable goals for yourself. And your performance anxiety is triggered when you fail to meet these lofty standards.
Symptoms
Performance anxiety symptoms can differ for different people, but here are the most common signs to know if you are experiencing it.
- Total withdrawal from social situations or interactions and other bothersome behaviors
- Intense negative emotions and lack of self-confidence
- Excessive focus on failure and self-criticism
- Excessive social isolation affecting interpersonal relationships
- Excessive sweating and palpitations
- Significantly increased blood pressure
- A constant fear of the repercussions of a perceived failure
- A sense of helplessness
- Lack of ability to consider alternative perspectives
- Frequent problems with bladder control
- Regular headache and dizziness issues
- Constant nervousness and digestive issues
How To Break the Cycle of Performance Anxiety?
In this section, I will discuss the different ways to help you break the cycle of performance anxiety.
The steps that I have mentioned aren’t a one-off solution. You have to follow it diligently if you wish to see results.
1. Set Attainable Goals
Suppose you consistently fail to achieve your expectations. In that case, you may panic over it, causing you to experience intense performance anxiety.
While being ambitious is okay, the fall would be too hard if you aim too high and have unattainable goals you cannot reach.
Setting achievable objectives is a crucial first step in ending the performance anxiety cycle. So, set reasonable goals or targets to increase your self-assurance and confidence. And avoid undertaking a huge amount of challenging tasks all at once.
In the end, you could mess things up. It would affect your confidence and result in performance anxiety to peek through yet again.
Therefore, it is advisable to take baby steps and not put too much pressure on yourself running around to pursue unattainable goals.
2. Try Different Mindful Breathing and Relaxation Techniques
Performance anxiety can be alleviated using a wide range of deep breathing and relaxation techniques.
Dr. John Tholen, a retired clinical psychologist from California, emphasizes circular breathing and incremental muscular relaxation to manage rising performance anxiety.
He advises progressive mindful muscle relaxation to help you focus on your breathing, body, and general well-being instead of fixating on your anxious thoughts.
He recommends starting from the bottom, tightening and relaxing your foot muscles three times, and repeating it gradually in the upward direction relaxing every muscle from the bottom to the top of your body.
It enhances your mental health and improves your confidence and focus. Apart from circular breathing, you can also try out other popular breathing techniques, such as square and anchor breathing, for a significant amount of relaxation.
Square breathing can effectively activate the parasympathetic nervous system helping you to reduce performance anxiety to a great extent. Similarly, anchor breathing’s seven-step guided breathing meditation can greatly help fight off your heightened performance anxiety.
3. Improve Your Lifestyle
Many people turn to unhealthy food for mental satisfaction and comfort or as an escape from the symptoms of performance anxiety.
However, this can have negative consequences in the long run because it increases your dependence on junk food, which is neither sustainable nor good for your health.
Therefore, it is important to prioritize nutritional support and have healthy meals on time. It will also ensure your blood sugar levels are stable, as increased blood sugar levels are one of the major symptoms of aggravated performance anxiety.
Include more unprocessed, less starchy fruits and vegetables like lettuce, cucumbers, beans, asparagus, and broccoli. Also, ensure that your sugar, alcohol, and caffeine intake is strictly regulated. Too much of these can cause blood sugar fluctuations, producing intense anxiety.
Getting adequate sleep of at least 8 to 9 hours will also make a huge difference and aid in alleviating performance anxiety.
4. Focus on Settling Your Mind
Focusing on your mind will prevent your mind from wandering off and focusing too much on the chaos inside, which might be a result of excessive performance anxiety.
So, grounding yourself can help you stop worrying about the future and enjoy the present moment. This method encourages you to stay positive, live in the now, and promote sentiments of security and confidence, helping you break your performance anxiety cycle.
5. Seek Therapy
I would recommend seeking professional help if your performance anxiety cycle refuses to break despite all the best practices done right.
Suppose performance anxiety is causing significant problems in your life. You can opt for mental health support or counseling through CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy).
CBT has proven to be effective in battling anxiety as well as breaking the performance anxiety cycle. This approach distracts you from your flaws or difficulties. Instead, it encourages you to focus on positive thought patterns helping you concentrate on your tasks better.
The CBT approach helps you identify negative thought patterns, challenge them head-on, and try to picture a happy outcome by seeing yourself achieving the desired results.
You can neutralize the negative once the perceived positive outcome successfully boosts your confidence. It eventually helps you take the right action to achieve your goal.
Conclusion
Remember that you can break the cycle of performance anxiety by being consistent with the above tips, and nobody can stop you from crushing your goals.
The process might take some time. But train yourself to combat negative thoughts, practice positive self-talk, and give your best in every situation. You will then break the cycle of performance anxiety.
I hope you found the article useful. Let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
She is an experienced Clinical Psychologist and Mental Health Writer with a decade of expertise in psychology. Skilled in assessment, therapy, and patient care. Committed to helping individuals through clinical practice and mental health writing at Therapyjourney.co. Passionate about promoting mental well-being and awareness. Open to aligned opportunities.