Performance Anxiety

Many artists experience performance anxiety at some time in their career.  If you have, then you know it can be devastating. If you are suffering from performance anxiety, treatment can help.

We will take a close look at your  triggers, symptoms, thoughts, feelings and behaviors.  Then together we will devise a treatment plan, which might include

  • relaxation

  • focusing exercises

  • cognitive restructuring

  • working with anxiety as it emerges in session

  • gradual exposure to the challenging situation

  • a referral for a consultation about medication

We will  explore with how your body holds anxiety and trauma around performing. Sometimes performance anxiety emerges in the context of life transitions or career challenges.  This or other relevant parts of your life may also become part of the therapy.

I’ve helped artists of all kinds with creative blocks, too.  Creative blocks are like performance anxiety that happens when there is no one watching.

PERFORMANCE ANXIETY RESOURCES

For performance anxiety resources, try this Web MD article for some foundational suggestions on how to handle performance anxiety.  For information and ideas about performance anxiety treatment, try this article by an Aikido master, and two books by Eric Maisel, a psychologist who writes wonderfully on this topic:

Performance Anxiety (out of print, you might be able to find this at your local library)

Mastering Creative Anxiety: 24 Lessons for Writers, Painters, Musicians, and Actors from America’s Foremost Creativity Coach  (on creative blocks)

How I Work With Performance Anxiety

I practice gestalt therapy.  Gestalt is a creative and body-oriented modality which foregrounds awareness.  It is rooted in the present moment.

As we learn to stay more fully in the present, we discover more about our dilemma as performers.  We may find we want to push over the present moment into a future that is not quite here.  Each of us does this in our own subtle and characteristic way.  In the therapy session we can feel into and receive feedback about just what we are doing and how it is affecting the other and ourselves.

My office is like another studio.  In it, we explore what is and then experiment with other ways to handle the stressors that come up during the performance process.

If you want to know more about my approach to therapy, not specific to performance anxiety treatment, you can read more about me and also more about individual therapy and anxiety treatment elsewhere on my site.

There are many paths to conquering performance anxiety. Psychotherapy as a performance anxiety treatment offers the opportunity for an individually tailored approach that can go as deeply into your personal issues and your past.  This can help you to shift to a joyous, free and vibrant experience of performing.