Performance anxiety, or stage fright, is characterized by feelings of stress, dread, and subconscious anxiety related to performing in front of an audience. People suffering from it may be unsure about their ability to perform and fear humiliation and rejection as a result of that failure.
Before exploring coping methods, let’s learn the physical manifestations of performance anxiety.
Common Manifestations of Performance Anxiety
If you’ve ever had stage fright at any stage of your life, you may remember experiencing some of the following symptoms.
- Dry mouth
- Clammy hands
- Increased heartbeat
- Hyperventilation
- Shaking hands, knees, and voice.
- Forgetting one’s line mid-sentence.
- Nausea
- Altered vision
For those of you suffering from chronic performance anxiety to the point where it harms your actual performance, here’s how you can deal with the sensation.
How to Treat Performance Anxiety
There’s no shortage of techniques to deal with a bout of performance anxiety. Here are some of them to help with mild to severe levels of the condition.
1. Acknowledge Your Vulnerabilities
Performance anxiety feeds on your negative thoughts and feelings of low self-esteem, making you imagine the worst-case scenario until all the work you’ve put in the days leading up to your performance doesn’t count for anything.
To counter these feelings, you need to first face your worst fears and weaknesses and try to accept them for what they are. When you already know your shortcomings, your anxiety can’t take you by surprise.
Read More: Some Easy Ways to Give Your Self-Esteem a Boost
2. Think Positive
Another way of countering negativity is by making a conscious effort to turn away from it to focus on the positive instead. While you can achieve this by envisioning a positive outcome, you could also assume positive intent.
To assume positive intent is to start by assuming the best in others when you don’t know better. When applied to the case of an anxious person’s audience, this means assuming your audience will cheer your performance and not cancel you for a blip in the same.
Read More: Assuming Positive Intent to Get Over Social Anxiety
3. Channel the Above Through Hypnosis
Hypnosis puts the recipient in an altered state of mind, making them highly responsive to suggestions.
It’s an effective method of treatment for anyone suffering from severe performance anxiety because it helps them achieve what they’re unable to through the conscious mind. It helps them assume positive intent, focus on their positives, recognize their weakness, and learn to accept them, among other things.
Read More: 3 Common Issues That Can Be Treated with Hypnosis
If you suffer from crippling performance anxiety, Rekha’s subconscious mind healing techniques may be just the thing you need to overcome it, once and for all. The therapist was mentioned in a local health magazine for her success in long-term weight loss, codependency recovery, smoking cessation, and more.
Book a free consultation with the therapist today.
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