Stress And Performance Anxiety
Managing Stress And Effectively Treating Performance Anxiety
As a former performer playing lead roles in London’s West End and internationally, I have personal experience with the challenges of performing, auditioning, and public speaking.
Stress and Anxiety
The ‘fight, flight or freeze‘ response is our automatic response to perceived attack or danger. This mechanism is an evolutionary development to ensure our survival since we still live in caves and fight or flee from sabre-toothed tigers. We have to cope with a fast-paced technological existence and many social and work pressures in the modern age. We’re no longer burning off our stress hormones and chemicals like our prehistoric ancestors did. Instead, they build up while we sit in front of our computer screens, in traffic on the school run and struggle to manage the fast pace and demands of modern living. This can have harmful effects on both our minds and bodies. It is estimated that between 60%-90% of all visits to health-care professionals are stress-related. Long-term conditions that either cause or are exacerbated by stress include:
- High Blood Pressure
- Insomnia
- Infertility
- Ageing
- Stress / Anxiety
- Depression
- Arthritis / Inflammatory Conditions
- Eating Issues
- Cancers
Get in touch to find out more.
Are you experiencing any of these symptoms of stress ?
- Inability to Relax
- Increased Heart Rate
- Irritability
- Change in Eating Habits / Emotional Eating
- Digestive Problems
- Low Mood / Feeling Like You’re Not Coping
- Forgetfulness / ‘Foggy’ Brain
- Poor Concentration
- Aches and Pains
- Tension Headaches
- Sleep Problems
- Destructive / Unhealthy Behaviours (e.g. Excessive Drinking, Substance Abuse )
Treating Stress, Anxiety And Phobias
It’s a physiological fact that that your body cannot be both relaxed and anxious at the same time. When in a hypnotic trance your stress-response is effectively switched off and your relaxation-response is activated. Your heartrate and breathing slows and blood-pressure drops and blood flow to your organs such as your gut improves. This makes hypnotherapy very effective in counteracting the effects of stress. I will help you learn to self-regulate with breathing techniques, meditation and self-hypnosis during our sessions.
Phobias
Are you afraid of spiders, flying, heights or crowds or any number of other situations? A phobia is an irrational fear of a specific thing or situation. The impact of phobias can range from mildly distressing to completely debilitating. If you have a phobia, you may change your behaviour to avoid the thing/s you fear. You might feel a lack of control or even foolish about it and the impact on your life can be significant.
We can develop phobias either directly from negative experience or from observing and modelling someone else such as our parents, carers or peers, usually during childhood. Sometimes we make a negative subconscious association between seemingly unrelated events, for example we have an upsetting argument with someone, then on the way home trip down the escalator. Some days later we find ourselves feeling extremely anxious when we take the escalator and have no idea why. It makes no sense. We may then go out of the way to avoid taking escalators or find that the very thought of travelling on one creates an unpleasant and anxious reaction. Hypnotherapy is effective in accessing these subconscious thought processes and provides the techniques to manage them.
Treating Your Phobia
I use a range of techniques, including self-regulation and regression which allow you to gradually and comfortably engage in a relaxed, safe trance-like state with the thing that you fear. This is known as Systematic Desensitisation and it’s a technique which allows you to address your fears thus giving you a greater sense of calm, control and confidence.
Performance Anxiety And Stage Fright
I have had many years’ experience as an actor and singer. From my own experience, as well as working with actors, singers and musicians as well as public speakers, I am only too familiar with the often debilitating effects of performance anxiety and stage fright.
Performance anxiety is often the result of a fear of negative evaluation by others or a fear of failure whilst performing or presenting. It often affects those that are naturally more inclined to feeling anxious but it’s suggested that somewhere between 15-25% of performers experience performance anxiety.
Symptoms of Performance Anxiety
We all require a certain level of arousal and adrenaline to perform at our optimum level. However, if you experience performance anxiety, your ‘fight, flight or freeze’ response can upset this ideal balance. Symptoms may include:
- Increased Heart Rate
- Breathlessness
- Changes in Vison
- Sweaty Palms
- Feelings of Dread / Avoidance
- Dry Mouth
- Butterflies in the Stomach
Treating Performance Anxiety
Using relaxation and breathing (self-regulating) techniques, visualisation and mental rehearsal as well as regression and processing situations that initially triggered the fear, hypnotherapy is quick and effective way of reducing the distressing effects of performance anxiety.
