Are You Afraid to Lose...or Win?

(This blog was originally posted on May 14, 2014)

Photo by Rick Hustead

Have you ever 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.

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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/.

© 2019

Schadenfreude

(This blog was originally posted on March 14, 2016)

Photo by Rick Hustead

There is a scene in International Velvet when a horse on a rival Olympic team knocks down a pole and incurs a points-error. When the protagonist’s aunt Velvet sees the error on television, she shouts, “Good!” The opponent’s error has made a little more room for her niece, Sarah, to secure a team gold medal if she can get around the course without making any mistakes. (Of course, she does.) But that doesn’t happen before Velvet’s partner, John, raises an eyebrow and comments, “That’s not very sporting of you!”

Schadenfreude.

I came across this word in the context of the plot in A Trick of the Light, a novel by Louise Penny, which I finished reading a few weeks ago. Basically, it means “deriving pleasure from someone else’s misfortune.” In the book, one of the characters is finally enjoying the critical recognition of her talent at a private show for her paintings, followed by a celebratory barbecue at her home. However, her husband and some friends discover the body of a former friend/enemy their garden the following day. The artist wants to celebrate the success of her show and budding career, but she feels guilty about wanting her art to be lauded even after the crime that happened in front of her home. Perhaps more disturbing to her is the eventual realization that her husband, a successful artist, has actually been jealous of her talent for many years and secretly hoped that the murder might derail her success a little bit.

In addition to the scenarios described above, Urban Dictionary lists several common examples of this experience: hearing someone shout “Hold the door!” while running for an elevator, only to reach the lift just as the door shuts. Or, a straight-A student missing one question on a five-question quiz to bring the test score down to a B (80 percent). How about when the quarterback on the opposing team gets sacked after preventing your team from scoring a touch-down? Another example might be watching the value of a company’s stock shares plummet right after you have been fired. And so on.

It is not uncommon or even unnatural to feel happy about or want to get a small bit of compensation for our own misfortune. But, how “good” does it really feel? Does it make you feel happy? Relieved? Or, do you scramble for all of the reasons why the other person deserved this misfortune or inconvenience so you can justify feeling good about it? Human emotions can be very tricky things. They can be accompanied by physiological sensations such as palpitations, change in breathing, trembling, etc. Sometimes censorial thoughts from the conscious mind (and conscience) intrude on these celebrations, too: Why do I feel good about someone else feeling bad?

Try this simple technique to get a different perspective about what is going on inside and around you: Draw a deep, calming breath and hold this air in your lungs for four seconds. Do not think about the situation, your emotions or why you think/imagine you felt the way you do or did when the situation first occurred. Instead, focus your attention on your breath and someone or something that brings you a lot of love and joy. Perhaps it is your spouse, or your kids, a pet, your job, a hobby, etc. Then, as you exhale, release the breath on the word love. Repeat this exercise several times to reinforce this positive direction of your attention.

In his book, Success Is Not an Accident: The Mental Bank Concept, Hypnosis Motivation Institute founder John Kappas, Ph.D., explains how the mental scripts we program into our subconscious mind determine the outcome of our actions. Whether we imagine a positive or negative result, the SCM follows that subconscious mental script to actualize the goal you “want.” When we focus on enjoying the negative outcome another person is experiencing, we may also be reinforcing a subconscious desire for a similar negative event to happen to us. Conversely, when we send out positive, encouraging energy to celebrate another person’s success, we are also telling the subconscious mind, I want success, too! Whether that success includes getting into an elevator before the door closes or celebrating your partner’s triumphant art show, wishing another person well is more likely to attract good things to you than the temporary pleasure of schadenfreude ever could.

For more information about the Law of Attraction, I invite you to read my blog titled Intuition and the Law of Attraction and check out the book resources on this topic in Suggested Reading.

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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® and to set up an appointment, please visit http://www.calminsensehypnotherapy.com/.

© 2019