The 2 Sides of Performance Anxiety
Have you ever had a time pre-game where you were in your warm up and then you saw the other team. And your mind suddenly hit the panic button. Your thoughts cycled through every what if in the book…what if I suck…what if they are better…what if I mess up…And your body felt so tense, even though you had just spent 15 minutes stretching. Then you started to get the feeling like you’re going to perform terribly.
If this has been you…don’t worry you’re not alone.
This actually happens in some form or another to a lot of athletes.
It’s called performance anxiety.
And even though performance anxiety is extremely common in athletes, I don’t always see it being addressed in an effective way.
Because there are two sides to performance anxiety that need to be addressed.
What’s going on in the mind.
What’s going on in the body.
Only addressing one will only solve half of the performance anxiety problem. And probably won’t be very effective because in order to actually manage performance anxiety both need to be addressed.
This is the work that I help athletes with when they are experiencing performance anxiety. We start with the mind, then move to the body.
Starting with the mind
It’s important to know where your mind goes when you start to experience performance anxiety. What are the spiraling thoughts? Do you start to doubt yourself because you're feeling anxious? Do you think of all of the worst case scenarios that can happen in the game?
We want to know exactly what’s going on in your mind, so that we can address it.
Because your thoughts will determine how you feel and the way you perform. So if the thoughts are leading to feeling anxious, the performance is going to look a lot different then when you’re feeling confident.
So knowing where your mind tends to go gives you the power to choose your thoughts and shift your thinking when you feel that mind spiral beginning to happen.
Once we’ve got the mind figured out, we can move to the body.
Moving to the body
It’s equally as important to know the physical reaction your body has when you feel anxious.
There are so many different physical reactions athletes experience when feeling anxious. Sometimes it’s tension in their shoulders, or a stomach ache, or they feel tingly, or short of breath.
Once we know how you tend to react we can work to manage and diffuse the reaction. And there is no one size fits all tool here but rather finding what will work best for you. It might be deep breathing, stretching, shaking out your body, meditating. There are so many helpful tools but we want to find what will work for you specifically.
Once we know that, we’ve got your complete plan to manage performance anxiety.
You’ll know what to do to manage your mind when the thoughts start to spiral, AND what to do to calm your body when it’s reacting to the anxiety. So that you can show up feeling at your best rather than feeling like you’re in panic mode.
This is a process I’ve taken countless athletes through.
So, if you feel like performance anxiety is holding you back, schedule a consultation today to get started.