4 Psychological Concepts for Coping With Performance Anxiety

Performance anxiety is commonly experienced but can be managed.

• Concepts of self-efficacy, visualization, normalization, and disidentification can ease performance anxiety.

• Renowned psychologists such as Bandura and Yalom offer valuable advice for coping with performance anxiety.

• Performance anxiety is experienced by celebrities and laypeople alike.

Remember back in school when you had to get up in front of the class and give a presentation? In that situation, most of us experienced anxiety not only about our actual performance but also about how we would come off to our audience, if things would go smoothly, and whether we would receive a good grade. But it often went deeper than that—many of us would even experience anxiety within anxiety: racing, unhelpful thoughts like “What if my voice gets shaky? What if I stumble over my words? What if I lose my train of thought? What if everyone can tell I’m nervous?” You can see how this can begin a spiral of worry that can distract us from the actual task at hand.

Fast-forward to adulthood: We are often still required to give presentations, to speak in front of others, and to, in essence, make ourselves vulnerable to an audience of our peers. Though we are at a different point in our lives, we can and often do still experience that old, adolescent anxiety. What can we do to fight this natural discomfort that occurs when we have to speak in front of others or perform for an audience? Outlined below are four ways based in psychological concepts that can be used to combat the anxiety that often comes with performance.

Self-Efficacy

The psychologist Albert Bandura formulated the psychological concept of self-efficacy, which, in summary, is the way we judge our personal capability. If we judge ourselves as incompetent, we are likely to struggle and to fall short of our goals. If, however, we view ourselves as competent and capable, we are more likely to succeed and to allow our personal sense of competency to carry us through difficult tasks. Bandura points out that “it is difficult to achieve much while fighting self-doubt.” What if, instead of an automatic assumption that things will go poorly we look at challenging tasks through a lens of competency? This simple yet radical mindset change, and valuation of the self can go a long way toward feeling that we can rather than that we cannot.

Positive Visualization

In his seminal text, Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control, Bandura posits that “numerous studies have shown that cognitive simulations, in which individuals visualize themselves executing activities skillfully, enhance subsequent performance.” The next time you are experiencing anticipatory anxiety related to an upcoming performance, visualize yourself executing the task well rather than fixating on visions of it going poorly. In a 2020 study (Watkins et al.), student athletes were asked to positively visualize themselves lifting weights during their training regimen. The results of the study revealed that “a directionality analysis demonstrated that, compared to athletes who did not, participants who positively visualized had a significant increase in weight moved during a lift. The positively visualizing group demonstrated a 10-15 lb. increase in weight moved, while the control group only demonstrated a 5 lb. increase.”

Normalizing and Humanizing

A 2015 article in The Guardian ranked “The Ten Best Stage Fright Sufferers.” Among them were such global talents as Adele, Ewan McGregor, Carly Simon, and Laurence Olivier. Viewing performance anxiety as a relatively commonly experienced feeling rather than as a mark of individual weakness or incompetence can be helpful in humanizing and normalizing occasions when we feel anxious about performance. When we feel humanized and our experience feels normalized, we are less likely to believe that we will fail or reveal our perceived incompetence, as we no longer feel alone and isolated with the discomfort. The psychological concept of humanization has the goal of making something less unpleasant for people. For example, a recognition that even a global superstar like Adele experiences anxiety before a performance can help make our unique experience less unpleasant as we feel less judgmental and unaccepting of our own emotional experience.

Disidentifying

Psychologist Irvin Yalom wrote of the idea of “disidentification,” wherein the anxious individual works to separate the feeling of anxiety from the perceived threat that it poses. According to Yalom, “many individuals become inordinately stressed…at threats to their career…they believe in effect, ‘I am my career.’” Yalom then describes that it is important for the individual to recognize that “you are your self, your core essence. Draw a line around it: the other things, the things that fall outside, they are not you; they can vanish and you will still exist.” In a way, this way of viewing a performance allows us to detach the anxiety that we feel from the event itself. The presentation or the performance is not you; it is something that you do. Therefore, to fixate or to ruminate on it is to give it an undue level of importance, which, in turn, increases our belief that it is a “do or die” situation. Through disidentification, we recognize that it is neither risky nor threatening, and this can calm our anxiety.

Phil Lane, MSW, LCSW, - Website - Blog -

References

Bandura, A. 1997. Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control. W.H. Freeman & Company.

Irvin, Y. 1980. Existential Psychotherapy. Basic Books.

Clapp, Susannah. “The 10 Best… Stage Fright Sufferers.” The Guardian, 26 June 2015.

Watkins, Janette & Turner, Zach. (2020). Positive Visualization and Its Effects on Strength Training. Impulse.