Soothe Performance Anxiety with Hypnotherapy

By Abba Anderson

Abba Anderson offers Hypnotherapy for creativity.

We humans are an anxious species. And with fear of being in front of an audience coming in way ahead of fear of death or disease in the surveys, it seems that the thing that makes us most anxious is each other. Fear of being embarrassed in public can produce the same panic as running into a tiger did for our ancestors.

We've all experienced performance anxiety of some kind or another. When we are frequently troubled by performance anxiety, or if it's keeping us from doing things we'd otherwise do, hypnotherapy can help. Hypnotherapy is a guided meditation designed to help you tap the wisdom of your subconscious mind to make positive changes in your life.

While our imagination is responsible for conjuring up all the things we get anxious about, we can also use our imagination to train ourselves to be calm and collected under the spotlights.

Studies show that you can actually improve skills by merely imagining performing an activity. Your subconscious mind doesn't differentiate between things that actually happen, and things that you imagine. You can program yourself for success by imagining more positively. Imagine your next performance going really well, instead of imagining it going really badly (which is what most of us do without realizing it). Most of us have hypnotized ourselves with some pretty negative programming. The goal of hypnotherapy is to choose better programming.

Top athletes and professional musicians commonly use hypnosis to improve their skills and performance. Using hypnosis, you can train your brain to circumvent anxiety, stop the adrenalin surge, and tap into your subconscious creative center, so that you can really perform your best.

Our bodies haven't changed much since our ancestors mostly worried about tigers, and we respond to modern stresses with the same physical symptoms that our ancestors experienced when they met up with meat-eating beasts. When we're under stress, whether it's due to a tiger or a traffic jam, our bodies make adrenalin, which kicks off a cascade of physical changes in our bodies that are more helpful for running from ferocious tigers than for facing a well-mannered audience.

The symptoms we associate with nervousness — the racing heart, the butterflies, the sweating, the shaking – all come from that release of adrenalin. Adrenalin fills our body with tension, making us hyper-alert and interfering with judgment, so we are less able to rationally assess what is going on. Our heart pumps more blood to our body. Our breath quickens, perhaps making us feel dizzy or lightheaded. Our senses sharpen: Our pupils dilate so we can see more clearly, and our hair stands on end. Our liver releases glucose into our bloodstream, giving us a surge of energy. The blood vessels to the kidney and digestive system constrict to shut down non-essential systems, which also reduces saliva and causes dry mouth. Sweat glands open to cool our over-worked system, giving us a cold, clammy sweat. Needless to say, these symptoms can significantly hamper our ability to perform, both mentally and physically, and at the very least, make performing quite unpleasant.

Hypnosis is a relaxed state, much like meditation or daydreaming, in which you have easier access to the information and wisdom stored in your subconscious mind. We all experience hypnotic, trance-like states many times each day, for example, while driving, reading, or daydreaming.

Hypnotherapy is a guided meditation designed to help you tap the wisdom of your subconscious mind to make positive changes in your life. A hypnotherapy session is a relaxing, meaningful and fruitful dialogue with the wisest part of you.

In a typical hypnotherapy session, you begin by closing your eyes and noticing your breathing while the hypnotherapist talks you through progressively relaxing your body. Once you are relaxed, the hypnotherapist may invite you to imagine a special place where you can easily contact your subconscious wisdom, and to invite that wisdom to be with you.

From there, you might have a conversation with the part of you that is anxious, to find out what that part of you needs to feel more comfortable with performing.

You might explore a memory of a time when you performed very well, anchoring all the sensations and emotions of that success into your body to remember during your upcoming performance. Or you might imagine stepping into the body of a performer you admire and experiencing performing as them, knowing that you can bring that experience to your performance as well.

It's usually enlightening to revisit any particular incident that may have triggered the anxiety, and it's always helpful to imagine the upcoming performance unfolding pleasantly and easily. By imagining an upcoming performance, you are in a safe place to allow the anxious symptoms to arise, and practice reversing them with the helpful images and phrases that have come up during the hypnotherapy session. From this relaxed state, you can enjoy watching the whole performance unfold, fully experiencing the excitement and fun of performing, and the satisfaction of feeling good about your performance when you're finished. And it's always fun to visit the control room, where you can adjust the levers and switches that run you! Turn up that fun knob!

Following a hypnotherapy session, people typically report feeling relaxed, at peace, and pleasantly surprised by the insights they've had. After a performance, people typically report having less anxiety and more fun! While being in front of an audience gives almost everybody trouble at one time or another, hypnosis can help turn that trouble way down.