Panic or Pleasure: Performance Anxiety

Hundreds of eyes are on you and your mind shuts down

Post published by Julie Jaffee Nagel Ph.D. on May 13, 2011 in Music to My Ears

 

Can you imagine yourself in one of the following situations? You begin to sing, play an instrument, give a speech, swing a bat or golf club, take an exam, or offer comments at a meeting and you freeze up. You can’t remember anything. You are aware that your body feels “weird.”  You are shaking, sweating, hyperventilating, thoughts are swirling like a tornado, and to make it worse, you go blank altogether. You feel embarrassed and humiliated and exposed as a sham.  People are looking at you. They are judging you. Your mind shuts down and your body turns up its panic buttons. You know you have worked hard, are prepared, and are capable but you start to doubt yourself. But at a moment such as this, you are not incompetent, unskilled, or going crazy.  You are experiencing performance anxiety, also known as stage fright. 

Even if you are not a sports fan, you probably didn’t miss hearing about (or seeing) Christina Aguilera fumble the National Anthem on February 7 in front of millions of people at the Super Bowl. Maybe you’ve also read recently about Tom Durkin, the sports announcer for the Kentucky Derby. After miss-naming the Kentucky Derby winner in 2009, Durkin’s performance anxiety halted his 34-year stint as the Kentucky Derby announcer. Many famous people have suffered stage fright including Laurence Olivier, Barbara Streisand, and Carly Simon. There are many, many countless others both famous and everyday folks who experience performance panic rather than performance pleasure in their professional and, or, personal lives.

You will resonate and empathize with this Youtube video of teenager Natalie Gilbert singing the National Anthem. Don’t you wish everybody had a coach like Mo Cheeks on the sidelines?

Performance anxiety:

Is an unnerving and destabilizing experience

Privileges neither age nor experience nor occupation

Is experienced both physically and emotionally

Often impedes professional and personal fulfillment in relationships and careers

Performance anxiety is not a stigma or a personal flaw. The term stage fright, which often is used to connote performance anxiety, is a misnomer. Musicians (and others) are not literally afraid of the stage. Rather, anxiety is aroused about mishaps in a public performance. Mishaps, or “accidents,” symbolically or sometimes actually expose privately felt and feared inadequacies before an audience. Performance anxiety is labeled a social phobia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM IV, Diagnostic and Statistic Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association) indicating marked fears of exposure in social situations which provokes anxiety leading some people to avoid the feared situation altogether or endure it with extraordinary stress.  

Performance anxiety has both physical and psychological components.  I emphasize the word and in the last sentence. Threats to bodily competence (i.e. technique failures) and emotional security (i.e. memory slips), so commonly ascribed to performance anxiety, have significant and idiosyncratic meaning for each individual. Either-or questions regarding what is physical or psychological about performance anxiety is a moot issue. Performers themselves and those who treat them are best served with an also-and view of complex symptoms that can be chronic, debilitating, self-esteem deflating, and career threatening. 

Performance anxiety typically is presented as a negative, debilitating problem, which often is the case. But performance anxiety, or performance energy, can provide a positive source of excitement to improve performance. Consider the analogy of electricity and electrical energy. Electricity can be a positive force in heating your home and cooking your food, but too much electricity can cause a fire and burn down your house. So it is with the intensity of anxiety; think of anxiety on a continuum from zero (no anxiety) to 10 (debilitating anxiety). Some anxiety–say around 5–or mental energy will be facilitative in performance and give you spontaneity and excitement. Too much anxiety–around 10–burns the performer and the performance. 

Performance anxiety is a serious problem that can and should be addressed with a professional if self-help approaches are not working.  It has become clear that one size does not fit all. When performance anxiety becomes chronic and self-esteem- altering it is time to seek professional help. A good evaluation by an experienced professional, the first important step toward performance pleasure, will help define some core issues that contribute to your performance distress. Then a treatment that can offer insight into what motivates your uncomfortable emotions and physical symptoms can be recommended.
Future posts will discuss some of the underlying issues that fuel and perpetuate performance anxiety.
Julie Jaffee Nagel, Ph.D. is a psychologist-psychoanalyst in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is a graduate of The Juilliard School with a major in piano performance and a minor in stage fright.  She is also a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute. Nagel publishes and presents on the topics of performance anxiety and music and emotion. Visit her website at julienagel.net.