Performance anxiety is the most common of all the different types of anxiety. If you find yourself with shaking hands, trembling knees and a dry throat before presenting at work or accepting an award you’re definitely not alone. In fact, many people will commiserate with you. But for some people it can be a real struggle to even speak up in an office meeting.
Performance anxiety can affect anyone
In the last few weeks several celebs have spoken out about their battles with anxiety including Cheryl Cole, Ed Sheeran, Jess Glynne, Katy Perry and K-pop star Mina. The level of pressure these stars feel is can be understandable. Their decisions to cancel performances can affect and upset up to 10,000 people a night. But often it’s the smaller and more intimate social engagements that cause them crippling anxiety. While the level of scrutiny these stars come under is not something that most of us ever need to worry about the feelings can be the same.
Anxiety disorders aren’t just about everyday worries that come and go. They can seriously impact your day-to-day life when it comes to school, work, and personal relationships. Anxiety related mental health conditions can feel completely overwhelming and more people are looking for ways to cope.
There’s still a stigma around mental health issues which stops people discussing them.
Being open about mental health issues like stress and anxiety is important. Mina and her pop group have been praised on social media for being honest about her performance anxiety. By talking about her struggles she has helped to remove stigma around the condition. For many stars, clinical hypnotherapy has been a popular choice to help them quickly and effectively deal with their anxieties and resume their lives.
In a recent interview Cheryl Cole said “No one could make me feel worse about myself than I did, and that was a massive problem.” The messages that we unconsciously send ourselves shape our experience of life. During hypnotherapy we can learn to change those messages, replacing them with more helpful thoughts and more accurate statements.
Working with a hypnotherapist may help you feel more confident and more at ease about things which have previously been challenging for you says the NCH. A qualified clinical hypnotherapist can help you to better understand anxiety and change your relationship to your anxious thoughts and feelings. For example, a simple reframe might be to understand that anxiety and excitement often feel the same in the body. Perhaps when you’re about to go on stage you’re actually excited. That changes the feel of the situation.
To contact your nearest NCH-registered therapist and start the process of shedding your anxieties, simply click here.