Top 3 ways to manage performance anxiety

Performance anxiety, stage fright, first-night nerves – whatever you call it, we’ve all experienced it. Whether it’s a racing heart rate, trembling knees or our brains feeding us unhelpful images of us falling over onstage, performance anxiety affects us all and can sometimes feel really unpleasant. But what if performance anxiety can actually be helpful? And if so, how can we best harness it so that it works for us? Find out more in this blog!

1.      Understand why you experience performance anxiety

We experience anxiety when we perceive an imbalance between our abilities and the demands placed upon us. For example, perhaps we have to do some notoriously tricky footwork that doesn’t always go well in rehearsal. Under the additional pressure of a live audience, our belief in our ability to perform can be seriously undermined.

It’s the job of our brain to protect us in these kinds of situations when we feel under threat, so it triggers the fight-or-flight response (e.g. releasing extra adrenalin and cortisol, raising our blood pressure, and narrowing our visual focus). This response is designed to help us deal with the threat, giving us the extra resources to either stay and fight it, or to run away. Our brains interpret a performance as a threat because we often believe it will negatively challenge our abilities.

2.      Consider how you view your performance anxiety

As performance anxiety is essentially a response to a threat, it perhaps makes sense that our bodies and minds respond the way they do. And in this context, we can see that nerves may actually help us. For example, an adrenalin surge can give us an energy boost, while a narrowed focus can help us to ignore unhelpful visual cues in the environment. However, we often tend to write stage fright off as something universally negative. This is self-defeating, because when we have a negative view of our performance anxiety (known in research as a debilitative interpretation), we are less likely to believe we can control it – and are more likely to experience its negative effects. On the other hand, if we have a more positive view (known as a facilitative interpretation), we are more likely to believe we can control our performance anxiety – and its effects are likely to be more helpful.

So, an important strategy is to recognise when we are experiencing performance anxiety, and reminding ourselves that it has a role to play. For example: it shows that we care; that this performance means something to us; it can give us extra energy; and we’re more likely to feel that amazing ‘high’ when we’re finished!

3.      Identify and manage your symptoms

A range of symptoms are associated with performance anxiety, which typically fall into one of two categories: somatic (to do with the body, e.g. racing heart rate, shaky legs, dry mouth, needing the toilet), and cognitive (to do with the mind, e.g. negative thoughts, worries, negative images, difficulty concentrating). We often experience both symptoms simultaneously, but they can have different effects, so we need to treat them accordingly. Below are some suggestions for managing each type of symptom:

Somatic	Cognitive
Good warm-up Deep breathing Relaxation techniques	Stopping negative thoughts and replacing them with more positive ones Positive images (e.g. imagine yourself being outstanding!) Experiment with being alone and being with others when backstage

Somatic anxiety symptoms tend to be both most helpful for performance, and easier to manage, so try starting with these. An important point here is that we’re not trying to get rid of somatic symptoms altogether, as without them our performance might feel a bit ‘meh’. We want to try and find our optimal amount, so you may need to adopt a trial-and-error approach with some of these somatic techniques to help you feel excited, rather than terrified, about going onstage.

It's a different story with cognitive anxiety – this is generally unhelpful, and too much can lead to a ‘catastrophe’, such as going blank onstage. Rather inconveniently, cognitive anxiety symptoms are also the most difficult to address, so it will take a bit more time and practice to manage these. Learning to replace negative thoughts and images is a skill, as it involves paying more attention to our thoughts and trying to change the narrative. Remember, your thoughts aren’t facts, so you don’t need to believe them! If you’d like to go deeper into this topic, have a read of this blog post.

In a nutshell

We experience performance anxiety for a reason, and if we can learn to view it as being something that can help us, we are more likely to feel we can control it.

Once you have changed your mindset, you can begin to experiment with different techniques and strategies to see what works for you. Add these into your pre-performance routine to help you optimise your performance. Good luck!

If you found this blog post helpful but struggle with more general anxiety, have a look at my Anxiety SOS course.