Performance Anxiety Part 1: How to shine in performance and presentation

As a coach and facilitator, I support people who feel uncomfortable with being seen and heard. People who might panic or freeze when the stakes are high and they’re required to give a performance in front of others, whether on stage, in the board room or on a conference call. In this post, I will offer some suggestions, points to reflect on and tools that could help you to feel calm enough to really shine in a performance, interview, audition or presentation. This is not a comprehensive list, because everyone is different and an approach tailored to each individual is far more effective than a generic one. Rather, I’m offering some tried and tested methods to get you started.

Part of what led me to this work was my own experience of performance anxiety as a young person. Some of my earliest memories are of myself as a young child, assembling any adults who happened to be around to watch me put on a show. It might have involved singing, dancing, acting or doing gymnastics all over the furniture, and it might have been a solo show, an ensemble piece with friends or a full-on cabaret in several acts. The adults in my life patiently indulged my high energy and regular requests to be seen and heard, and provided a safe environment in which to develop my performance chops. When I ventured further out into the world and had to audition for parts and places in the music world, I discovered what a less nurturing environment could do to my ability to give my best performance. From a fairly young age, I noticed the difference between performances where I felt comfortable and those where the fear of judgement or failure took over and had me shaking, losing control of my breath and sounding timid. Auditions, exams and competitions had wildly inconsistent outcomes for me as a result, and there wasn’t much in the way of support with managing ‘nerves’. This was just something young performers were supposed to be able to figure out by ourselves if we wanted to succeed. Things worked out well for me in the end though – I discovered performance psychology and a range of resources to help people to stay calm and grounded enough to deliver a great performance, whether it’s a work presentation or pitch, an audition, a show or a public speaking engagement. I’ve seen and experienced the difference that getting performance anxiety under control can make – most of us know what we’re capable of when we believe nobody is watching or listening, compared to what can happen when we’re in the spotlight. That speech was word perfect in the mirror this morning, but now that you see everyone watching, your mind’s gone blank. You’d give Whitney Houston a run for her money when you sing in the shower, but you believe you could never reproduce that performance for an audience. And that’s why I want everyone to be equipped with the tools they need to show people what they’re really capable of. So, here are some tips and points to reflect on as you prepare for a presentation or performance situation that’s causing some anxiety.

-Ground yourself:

Being grounded means connecting with your body to help you re-regulate your Autonomic Nervous System and prevent you dissociating (feeling disconnected from your body, spaced out, losing contact with ‘here and now’ reality) or freezing. Top tips to support this include pushing your feet into the floor, diaphragmatic breathing and taking a moment to get into a stance that feels open, upright, solid and moveable. Connecting with your environment also helps with grounding – you might want to do something like taking a moment to find three things in the space that are a specific colour, for example.

-An interview/audition is a two-way street:

You may have done your research and concluded that this organisation and role are perfect for you, and this may or may not turn out to be the case. Situations where things look ‘great on paper’ but don’t feel quite right when you meet and check each other out apply equally to those being assessed and those doing the assessing. If, beyond the discomfort of feeling nervous about the process itself, something feels a little ‘off’, it’s worth paying attention to your gut feeling, reflecting on what might be behind it, and – if possible/appropriate – asking questions to see if the answers reassure you. In some industries, most notably in highly competitive ones such as performing arts, people can be made to feel powerless until they reach a level of success that allows them to make choices and demands. For competitive roles, a sense that ‘if you don’t like the way things are done, there are thousands of other hopefuls for us to choose from’ is an old adage that needs to be consigned to history. There is increasing pressure on leaders to improve working conditions and recruitment practices or face difficulties in filling roles and pushback from the workforce further down the line. No matter what the industry or environment, abusive, humiliating or discriminatory behaviour are unacceptable. We all have more power than we are led to believe, and I’d argue that it’s usually worth holding out for a place where you feel welcome, valued and listened to.

-Develop a system that works for you:

Most people who often or occasionally struggle with performance anxiety develop an awareness of how that shows up for them and what’s most likely to happen if they get overwhelmed. A common example is forgetting words or lyrics, or ‘drawing a blank’ when asked a question you’d usually be able to answer. There may be physical discomfort in the form of shaking, nausea, feeling faint or muscle tension, and the realisation that some of these are visible to the audience can send you into a spiral of worry, shame and self-criticism about how they are being perceived. You might find that your mouth gets so dry, you can barely speak. So, the first step here is to spot any patterns – you might want to document your various performance experiences in a journal, where you note how you felt, what the environment was like, how you were responded to and your overall sense of how it went. If you were so overwhelmed that there are parts of a performance or presentation you don’t remember, this is useful information to note too. Once you have built up a sense of any patterns, triggers and insights, you can start to match your tools to your needs. It might be helpful to do this with the support of a coach, but otherwise, you can develop systems that help you to jog your memory, stay hydrated, keep your blood sugar stable etc. according to your needs. I sometimes like to write words or lyrics out ahead of a singing performance to remind myself of them, and because the physical act of writing them seems to help me connect with them. What would work for you? Treat it like a scientific experiment.

-Reasonable adjustments:

Where possible and necessary, don’t be afraid to ask for what you need. That might involve letting an interviewer know you need a moment to settle yourself before you respond to a question, developing a backstage ‘ritual’ with a friend to help you get calm or letting an organisation know about any accessibility needs you may have. Bear in mind that any reasonable adjustments related to disability, neurodivergence or diagnosed mental health issues legally have to be met in a workplace context. If you anticipate feeling overwhelmed by a presentation or interview in the workplace, consider scheduling before and after the event – is there anything you can do or request in order to give you some calm time and space to prepare and to decompress?

-Harness the adrenaline:

It’s become a cliché to say ‘use the nervous energy to your advantage’, and that’s not helpful when the fight/flight/freeze response and stress hormones seem to have taken over your entire being… But if you can learn to calm your system, you’ll be able to think clearly, connect more effectively with your audience and perhaps experience the nervous energy as excitement, rather than terror. Often, different but related emotions have similar physical sensations attached to them. How we interpret those sensations makes a difference to how our emotional state develops. There’s a symbiotic relationship between thoughts, physical sensations and emotion – we can influence our thinking and emotions by tuning into and adjusting our body’s responses (e.g. by slowing our breathing), and we can influence our emotional and physical response using our thoughts (e.g. by realising that some of what we’re calling ‘anxiety’ might be ‘excitement’). Learning to tune into what our bodies are telling us and developing ways of soothing the body and mind gives us a whole menu of options to help us deal with a stressful, scary or exposing situation like trying out or interviewing for our dream role. Crucially, practicing techniques that help you to re-regulate your nervous system when you don’t need them means that you’ll respond more quickly and effectively in the moment when you’re heading towards overwhelm. So, incorporating grounding and calming techniques into your regular routine means that they’re much more likely to work if and when you find yourself in front of an audience or panel with a sudden feeling of panic.

Good luck, and I’d love to hear how you get on with these tips. You can let me know, or set up an exploratory call by contacting me here.

My new embodiment teacher - Covid-19

After eighteen months of following guidelines and agonising over what was safe, within my ethical framework and worth/not worth risking, I finally enjoyed playing my first post-lockdown gig at a festival recently. And unfortunately, in spite of various risk reducing measures, I tested positive for Covid-19 soon after. It’s not been much fun, but could have been far worse – no doubt, thanks to two rounds of vaccination. The thing that was most discombobulating was the loss of my sense of smell or ‘anosmia’. This has really got me thinking about the embodied approach I now instinctively bring to my work, my emotional wellbeing and life in general.

If you’ve read my posts online, attended workshops or heard me talk about my work, you’ll no doubt have heard or seen me mention grounding techniques and ways to connect with our bodies as a means to de-stress, feel more present and fend off things like panic attacks and responses to trauma such as dissociation (feeling detached from our bodies and disconnected from ‘here and now’ reality). I, and others working in this field, often encourage connecting with our environments and connecting with our own bodies as ways of getting grounded and present. This tends to rely on using our ‘five senses’ – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. Talking about our five senses seems to imply that we all possess a full complement of fully or partially functional sensory input and processing mechanisms – something which clearly is not the case for everyone. Although it hasn’t had an especially disabling impact on my life to be temporarily disconnected from one of my senses, it has reminded me that using sensory stimulation for grounding isn’t a ‘one size fits all’. Firstly, because not everyone has the same sensory capacity, and secondly, because we all connect with and feel soothed by our senses differently. Being neurodivergent, I have a lot of lived experience of sensory overstimulation, and sometimes what I need is less input, not more. But, like most people, I’m more tuned into some of my senses than others – these are the ones that can either serve as a fast-track to feeling calm and a quick way of connecting me with emotions and memories, or can cause overwhelm if the input is too much or particularly unpleasant. For me, these are hearing and smell – both of these are very important to me and very sensitive. This is why it was so bizarre spending two weeks sniffing at things that normally help to wake me up, relax me or make me feel excited about the food I’m about to eat, and getting nothing. I embarked on what seemed to be a pretty successful regime of smell training in an attempt to stimulate whatever olfactory nerves or mechanisms had fallen into an infection-related snooze. If nothing else, it was a helpful reminder after an oddly disembodied era of Zoom calls and remote connections, that I live in, and experience life through a body. And that bodies can be fragile, sensitive, wise, resilient and the recipients of so much mistreatment, whether intentional or otherwise.

I recently came across an article that vociferously argued against the traditional Cartesian theory of mind-body dualism and suggested we abolish the concept of ‘mind’ as separate from body altogether. It’s – ironically – a bit of a mind bender, but the more embodied work I do, the less I tend to think in terms of a separation between the mental and physical when I consider my own or others’ inner worlds. I look out for how thoughts, ideas and interactions and their resulting emotional responses are experienced in the body, and how physical experiences in turn might be shaping our psychology. There are specific physical signs that I’m pretty tuned into these days, and that serve to give me information perhaps even before my conscious mind has caught up. The one I tend to offer as an example most often is a vibrating or trembling at the back of my neck that kicks in when I feel vulnerable, exposed or threatened. Often, the threat is pretty benign – perhaps I’ve offered a gentle challenge to a client or received one from someone supporting me, and a small part of me is anxious about potential conflict. But sometimes, it’s an early alert that something isn’t right, and when I feel it, I know I need to respond. Alternatively, I can use an awareness of my physical responses to keep an eye on my list of resources that support my wellbeing, adding or deleting things according to how well they’re working for me… I’ll realise that certain practices, songs, smells, places, pictures or objects need to go on the list if interacting with them produces an instant release of shoulder tension, softening of the diaphragm, excited skin tingling or general feeling of ‘expansiveness’.

I’m excited to see the rise and rise of therapy, coaching, writing, retreats and training programmes using embodied or somatic approaches. It feels incredibly timely, and as if it might herald a much-needed sea change away from compartmentalising and intellectualising and towards a whole-person view of how we move through the world and interact with each other. In an age of rapidly developing technology, with seemingly endless opportunities to connect and express ourselves from ‘behind a screen’, it can be easy to forget that we are more than just our brains. Perhaps eighteen months of stark reminders that we are physical beings might offer an opportunity to bring about some balance in this area – here’s to more permission to rest when we need to, to tuning into what our body sensations might be trying to tell us, to remembering that we have the potential to be both vulnerable and resilient, and to offering our bodies some compassion. It might sound like a weird concept, but why not take some time to consider what your body wants to tell you, and what you might need to say to it? My message to mine right now is “thanks for keeping me alive through all of this, and for being strong enough to fight off a dangerous virus. I’ve been reminded of how grateful I am for the senses that I’m able to use to interact with the world and alter my state of mind. The simple joy of smelling the first coffee of the day, the garden after rain or a fragrant bath is one of those amazing “little” things that I’ll try not to take for granted any more”.