Performance Anxiety

Performance Anxiety is a consciousness that instead of helping holds back performance. Due to this type of anxiety our performance suffers. Performance anxiety is a kind of phobia that is practiced by a performer at the time of or before his performance. Performance anxiety varies from person to person. Mostly every person experiences it, the type may be different. Before giving a performance, some people have a light “butterfly” feeling in their abdomen. [1] Some people start feeling jumpy. Others start vomiting. Some other symptoms of performance anxiety are shivering, perspiring, lack of concentration, dry mouth etc. Performance anxiety is a widely known problem. Following are some of the prominent causes of performance anxiety.

Performance Anxiety

Reasons of performance anxiety:

• Phobia of failure
• Performer’s psychological settlement
• Social conditioning prohibitions
• Lack of preparedness
• Inadequate knowledge about the performance

Practical methods for treating performance anxiety:

Consider a room for practicing: In this room you can experiment with different types of "intrapersonal chats," by visualization methods.[1]

Learn to let go: At the time of performance, if you make a fault you should let it go and concentrate on the present. In order to check performance anxiety, you should understand that this is not your last performance and there is always room for improvement.

Allow yourself to fail: A performance is not the end of the world. If you feel that faults would not kill you, and try to give yourself the freedom to take risks in your performance, you may be surprised and realize a new independence in your performances.

You will have to experiment with a lot of methods to find the solutions to your own situation. These methods may help you in overcoming performance anxiety.

Reference:

1. Blair Tindall, Better playing through chemistry (October 17, 2004).