Performance Anxiety, more commonly known as Stage Fright is
a common phobia that affects an individual before appearing in front of an
audience.
Even the most successful of performers struggle with stage
fright in some stage of their careers. However, the majority of them have used
certain tools in alleviating the symptoms, much like the flu.
In order to combat Stage fright, you need to understand the severity
of the phobia and the trick to finding the solutions you need.
I found an article on the publication, Psychology Today,
where Author Lybi Ma, defines the types of Stage fright and tips on how to
better understand them, in order to combat it. Here is what she had to say on
the matter, starting with a definition of performance anxiety and who suffers
from it.
Performance anxiety – Lybi Ma
Common and Treatable
Performance Anxiety in its various forms is the most common
phobia in the United States. It's often called "stage fright", but it
doesn't have to involve a stage. Anyone whose activity brings them to the
attention of an audience, however large or small, can experience performance
anxiety. I use the terms, stage fright and performance anxiety,
interchangeably.
Performance Anxiety is most commonly experienced as a fear
of public speaking. However, people whose career or other interests require
them to take the "stage" for other purposes, i.e., actors, musicians,
athletes, etc., will experience stage fright as an impairment of their own
particular activity. A mime, for instance, can experience performance anxiety,
looking timid and arthritic, even though no speaking is involved.
Performance Anxiety is very treatable. However, many people
just suffer with it, with all the limitations and negative emotions it imposes.
They either don't realize help is available; they fear they can't be helped; or
they think it will be too hard.
While everyone's situation will vary in some ways, I find
that there are four general ways in which people experience stage fright.
Four Types
Some people go to great extremes to avoid any possibility of
being "on stage". I've worked with clients who carefully chose all
their college classes to avoid any presentations, and picked a career which
wouldn't ever include any public speaking. These people usually succeed in
avoiding presentations, but often have regrets about the way this fear
controlled their life choices. If you belong to this group, you are probably
troubled by both fear and regrets.
There are others whose performance anxiety is less extreme.
They don't let the fear dictate their major career and life choices. But they
do strive to avoid the occasional presentation at work, the wedding toast, and
the leadership of a civic group. They usually keep their fear a secret, and try
to find ways around it. As a result, they never feel secure. The problem hangs
over their head for lengthy periods of their life, even though they rarely
actually give a presentation. If you belong to this group, you probably suffer
considerable anticipatory fear and shame.
Then there are those whose professional success has led them
to the necessity of public speaking, even though they would rather avoid it:
the attorneys, engineers, architects, authors, doctors, teachers and others
whose work has become so successful, so much in demand, that they are
increasingly requested and pressed to present their talents and knowledge
before an audience. If you belong to this group, you must either develop the
ability to face an audience, or cut short the successful arc of your career.
And finally, there are people with a passion for creative
expression. In this group we find performing artists, musicians, singers,
actors, comedians, professional speakers and athletes. None of them are immune
to performance anxiety. If you belong to this group and develop stage fright,
you face a dilemma which cannot be avoided. Your spirit urges you to seek out
the audience, even as your body warns you to stand back, and >b> you must
choose.
The good news is that performance anxiety is common and
treatable. If you want to overcome this problem, you can! But in order to
overcome it, you must first understand how it works.
The nature of stage fright
Performance Anxiety is what happens when you focus on
yourself and your anxiety, rather than your presentation or performance. It
stems from a tendency to resist and fight your anxiety, rather than to accept
and work with it.
It's the result of thinking of the performance situation as
a threat, rather than a challenge.
How Intended Solutions Backfire
Stage fright is like being heckled mercilessly during your
performance, and getting into an argument with the heckler, except that it's
your own mind doing the heckling. You get so involved in your internal struggle
that you don't get involved with the actual performance.
Most people with performance anxiety fright get tricked into
focusing on themselves, struggling against anxiety in a vain effort to get rid
of it. To illustrate this point, here's an excerpt from a consumer review I saw
on amazon.com which reviewed a book about the fear of public speaking.
The reviewer wrote that the tips in the book aren't helpful
because
...the tips actually are for speakers who are ALREADY
fearless but just need to improve their speech skills: For example: Get
immediate response from audience. You know, the last thing I want to do in a
presentation is further prolong it by asking what they think of it. My plain
goal is just to complete a mediocre if dull presentation WITHOUT anxiety, not
get responses from my audience and so forth.
Making things worse by
Trying not to feel anxious
See what's happening here? The goal this reviewer sets for
himself is to get through the presentation without anxiety. That's almost
certainly not going to happen, because even people who love public speaking get
some anxiety when they present. (I really like to get in front of an audience,
but one time, offering a toast at a friend's wedding, I found my arm shook so
much I couldn't keep the champagne in the glass).
So, when he does feel anxiety, he's going to think he's
really in trouble, and will struggle more...only to make himself more nervous.
How does he make himself more nervous? He tries not to
involve his audience, because he doesn't want them to slow him down. So he
hurries through it, keeping it dull, maybe even just reading it and not looking
at the audience.
This means he doesn't establish any connection with his
audience, which will make him feel more lonely and isolated up there. It means
he won't get any encouragement or show of interest from them, which would help
him calm down. It means he's just up there by himself, struggling with his own self-criticism.
One of the keys to mastering stage fright is to become truly
involved in, and focused on, your material.
Not on yourself.
In a complete program for stage fright, you'll need to work
with the anticipation you experience in the hours, days, and weeks (maybe
months!) before a presentation. You'll need to work with the anxious symptoms
you experience during the presentation. You'll need to know how to defuse the
Panic Trick. And you'll need practice with the performance situation itself.
Here are a few tips that can help you during the actual
presentation. Compare them to what you usually do when you have to perform. You
may find that these tips are the opposite of what you usually do when you have
to get in front of an audience. That was true for the consumer book review
mentioned above. If that's the case for you, as it generally is for people who
struggle with this phobia, it will hopefully suggest a direction for you to try
something different.
And different is what you need. If you keep doing the same
thing, you can only expect the same result.
Tips for Coping With Stage Fright
1. If you want to talk (or sing, act, etc.), you have to
breathe. And if you want to do these things calmly, you'll need to breathe
diaphragmatically. This won't always come naturally, and you'll probably need
to practice. You might think you already know everything there is to know about
breathing, and if you're a professional singer you probably do. But everybody
else, be sure to take a look at the breathing material.
2. Remind yourself that they're not here to see or hear you,
unless you're a very famous person, or your mother's in the audience. They're
just here to see the person who's playing this piece or talking about this
topic. Today that happens to be you. That's not really important to them in
most circumstances.
3. Expect, and accept, that you will feel anxious,
especially at first. That's OK. If you allow yourself to work with the anxiety,
not against it, you'll be able to calm down and proceed. If you resist the
anxiety, you'll make more trouble for yourself.
4. Take the emotions and passion you feel for your subject
or artistic expression and channel it into your performance. Don't try to
"hold it down". If you try to suppress it, it will work against you.
Express it!
5. Establish the right focus for your task. What do I mean
by focus? I mean what you're paying attention to as you engage in your
performance. This, unlike the other four tips above, will vary depending on
what kind of performance you're engaged in.
* If you are giving a talk, your focus should be your
material and the audience reaction to it, because your task is to inform or
persuade them. You therefore want to be aware of how they are responding, so
that you can connect with them in various ways.
*Establish contact with the audience through eye contact and
talking directly to them. Ask them questions to get them involved in your talk
(i.e., How many of you here have ever had this experience...?) While your
natural instinct will probably be to avoid the audience as much as possible,
just like the reviewer cited above, you will actually feel less anxiety once
you get the audience involved with you.
*If your task is a performance art, your focus will be
different. It's not your job to persuade or inform the audience. You want to
perform a piece for their enjoyment. In this case, you can ignore the audience,
and turn your focus to your music, or your character, and leave the audience to
enjoy your performance on their own.
*Where you don't want your focus to be is on yourself and
your anxiety. This is why it's so useful to develop an accepting attitude
toward the anxiety, to take a few steps to calm yourself a little, and then
shift your focus to the task at hand.
In conclusion, it doesn’t matter your profession or how big
your audience is, everyone can suffer from this condition. It’s now up to you
to not let it become you. Shift your gear, engage and enjoy.
X
Romy
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