Coaching Performance Anxiety

Reader responses to the YouTube video clip on my previous blog post on noted the positive and calming effect Coach Mo Cheeks had upon Natalie Gilbert, the young girl who froze when singing the National Anthem at the NBA Playoffs. One person commented that Coach Cheeks probably helped turn a traumatic situation into a more positive experience. Another reader said that she cried when she watched the video because she felt so bad for the young singer. Others noted Coach Cheeks' quick thinking in finding a way to help young Natalie continue singing and preserve her self-esteem. Wouldn't we all love to have a Coach Cheeks with us for those dreaded moments when we forget what we know, fumble what we have practiced, feel confused and humiliated, and freeze up in public? Well, I am happy to tell you that each of us has the potential to have a personal Coach Cheeks, although sometimes we have to work through some emotional issues to discover him and to believe in ourselves.

Many performance anxious individuals are very concerned about what "others" (i.e., the audience) think of them. Some of them try to perform to please "others", assuming the audience will think the same of the performer as the performer thinks of himself. Typically, such performers feel deficient in some way and assume the audience will judge them negatively as they judge themselves. In such cases, there is an underlying "magic" belief that we can know or predict what others think and influence them by how we act or perform. In psychological "jargon" this is called projection. We project what we think about ourselves, particularly the parts of ourselves we do not like, onto others. Then the performer catastrophizes and makes assumptions that the audience will be as critical as the performer is about himself. Rationally, the performer may know that she cannot make an audience love her by performing brilliantly, but the fantasy of a "perfect" performance, speech, test score, or essay fuels an illusion of omnipotence about controlling the audience. This fantasy intensifies performance anxiety and increases the possibility of freezing up in public.

One of my patients had such a poor self-image that she was afraid to speak in public or talk freely in therapy. She told me that she "knew" I would not like her if I heard what was on her mind. After much exploration, we discovered that she feared she would be humiliated by me as she had been by her parents as a child. She tended to talk about the weather and current events instead of her inner thoughts and feelings. Another patient became argumentative when I asked him to elaborate on what he was saying so that I could understand him better. He assumed I was criticizing him rather than trying to collaborate with him. As we came to understand his attitude, we learned that he had been bullied by his father as a child and that his career choice had been disapproved of by his parents. He was afraid that his boss - his "audience" would be similarly critical. It took much exploration and work to build his confidence that he was free to choose his career without guilt, and that all his thoughts and feelings were valid.

In these examples, as with other patients, my patients and I analyzed and worked through multiple, often complex, past and present issues that were embedded in their frozen negative images of themselves that got projected onto the audience. I became a "coach" as well as a psychoanalyst who, over time helped them find their own voices. People can learn that while audience approval is desired, it no longer defines their self-concept. Patients can learn to be their own best supporters, cheer-leaders, and coaches; critics do not lurk in every audience. Critics are most debilitating when they are beliefs and negative feelings operating inside one's own mind. When people come to understand what fuels their magic beliefs that others will disapprove of them, they realize that their internal coach - their "Mo Cheeks" - can be inside their minds if stage fright threatens to freeze up their performance. Positive self-esteem which can result from in-depth psychological understanding and internalized self- coaching are the keys that free up (vs. freezes up) a performance.