Performance Anxiety and How Hypnotherapy Helps

This page is part of my guide to anxiety therapy in Glasgow. If you’re looking for help, start there to see how I work, what a session is like and how to book a free consultation.

You’ve prepared. You know your stuff. And then the moment comes and your mind goes blank, your voice shakes, and your body behaves as though you’re in danger.

That’s performance anxiety. It’s very common, it can happen to people who are confident in almost every other part of their life, and it responds well to the right kind of help.

What is performance anxiety?

Performance anxiety is fear that shows up when you have to do something in front of other people, or when the result really matters. It’s sometimes called stage fright, but it reaches far beyond the stage. It can show up when you’re:

For some people it’s one specific situation. For others it spreads into anything where they feel watched or judged.

What it feels like

Performance anxiety is your body’s threat response switching on at the wrong time. Your heart speeds up, your hands or voice shake, you sweat, your mouth goes dry and your breathing gets shallow. Your mind can go blank, or race with thoughts about everything that could go wrong.

Often the dread starts long before the event itself. Days or weeks of worrying can be just as exhausting as the moment.

What sits underneath it

On the surface, performance anxiety looks like a fear of the presentation, the exam or the stage. But in my experience that’s rarely the real fear. Underneath, it’s usually something more personal. A fear of being judged, of getting it wrong in front of people, of being found out as not good enough, or of being embarrassed.

That matters, because it’s why tips and tricks on their own often don’t last. You can learn to breathe through the nerves, but if the fear underneath is still there, it keeps coming back. When we find where that fear comes from and change how you respond to it, the performance itself usually gets a lot easier.

How hypnotherapy helps

Hypnosis is a relaxed state of focused attention. You’re awake and in control throughout.

In that state, we can work on the automatic response itself. We can take away some of the charge from the moments that set you off, and rehearse the situation in your imagination, calmly and in detail, until your mind starts to treat it as familiar rather than threatening. Many people find that when the real moment comes, they feel noticeably different.

I use hypnotherapy alongside other approaches, including NLP and psychotherapy, so we can work on both the feeling in the moment and the fear underneath it. Most people I work with come for between two and four sessions. If you’d like to know what that looks like, I’ve written about what happens in your first hypnotherapy session.

Things that help on the day

Alongside therapy, a few simple things can take the edge off:

• Slow your breathing. Breathing out for longer than you breathe in helps settle your body’s alarm system.
• Move. A short walk or shaking out your arms and legs can use up some of the adrenaline.
• Prepare, then stop. Know your material, but don’t rehearse right up to the last minute.
• Expect the nerves. A bit of adrenaline is normal and can even help. The aim isn’t to feel nothing, it’s for the nerves not to take over.

If you have an event coming up

If you’ve got an interview, an exam, a performance or a big presentation on the way, get in touch in good time rather than the week before. It gives us space to work on the fear properly, without the date adding extra pressure.

Common questions