(This blog was originally posted on May 14, 2014)
Have
you refused to participate in an activity because you didn’t want to look bad
or ruin your current performance record? Have you ever refused to participate
in an activity in which you were likely to succeed? Both of these examples are
potential causes of performance anxiety, and recognizing what triggers this
anxiety is the first step to successfully managing and treating it.
Fear
of success is often more difficult for people to imagine feeling, because who
doesn’t want to succeed and to be the best at something, right? But success
comes with its own kinds of pressure and stress, including responsibility. Suddenly,
it does not matter to that newly minted executive that he or she has years of
training and experience to validate this promotion. It does not matter that the
person has a proved track record of being able to execute profitable
negotiations in the boardroom and is willing to make tough decisions about that
will benefit the company. Once you get the big promotion that you have been
working so hard to receive, you have to do more work and probably take on more
roles than you previously had, to earn the new title and salary that you now
earn. You will have to use the skills you have honed during your tenure in your
previous role and put them to a real test in a leadership position. Like it or
not, when you make a decision the buck will start and stop with you.
Or, imagine an
honors student at high-school student who has received two letters of
acceptance from two different universities. He or she may decide to accept a
place in the state university because he or she feels intimidated by the
anticipated course demands and his or her family’s expectations about what it means
to be a student at Harvard. It doesn’t matter that you have earned academic
letters or were the captain of your sport or debate team. It doesn’t matter how
many awards you have received for community service or other extracurricular
activity. Once you leave the security of high school (and childhood) where you
were the top-ranked student of your class, you will be starting over in a new
environment that is populated by hundreds of young adults just like you. You
may well become the head of your class and set a new standard of academic
achievement, or not. Whatever you do academically, high-school graduation and
attending college are a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.
The
physical manifestations of performance anxiety take many forms, including
trembling or shaking, feeling nauseated or “blanking out” (forgetting) the
lines or music you are going to perform or the information you are supposed to
present. Hypnotherapy and therapeutic guided-imagery techniques can help you to
manage these symptoms and overcome this anxiety so you can do the performance
or presentation.
- Systematic desensitization to the stimuli that trigger the anxiety/fear response
- Creating hypnotic scripts that reinforce the client’s recent achievements to boost his or her self-confidence about ability to achieve the stated goal.
- Use guided-imagery techniques to help the client re-experience those previous successes and further reinforce his or her self-confidence about being able to achieve a new goal.
- Teach the client how to practice diaphragmatic breathing and to activate an “anchor” to help relieve symptoms of anxiety.
- Educate the client about the relationship between nutrition and anxiety; specifically, the correlation between drops and spikes in blood-sugar level and feeling anxious or afraid.
- Instruct the client about using the Emotional Freedom Technique (tapping) to reduce anxiety and replace negative responses with positive/desired responses to achieve a goal.
Performance anxiety affects most people at some time in their lives. As John Kappas, Ph.D. explains in his book Success Is Not an
Accident: The Mental Bank Concept, every person has the ability to
achieve success. You do not have to be afraid to fail or to succeed to achieve your goals. Now is the perfect time for
you to turn your dreams into reality.
Sara R. Fogan, C.Ht. is a
certified hypnotherapist based in Southern California. She graduated with
honors from the Hypnosis Motivation Institute in 2005. For more
information about Calminsense Hypnotherapy®, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.
© 2014
