Performance anxiety

  Performance anxiety is driven by an individual’s persistent fear that they will fail to achieve the required level of performance in a situation where they are under public scrutiny. Most of us have experienced at least some anxiety when, for example, taking an exam or test (test anxiety), public speaking (public speaking anxiety), having an interview or doing a presentation in a meeting (presentation anxiety) but it is not disabling. At optimal levels it can even enhance performance and is a normal and adaptive experience. However, at higher levels of anxiety, it can be extremely distressing and disabling for the individual. One might imagine that performance anxiety is highest in employees with the least training, knowledge and experience but this is not the case. There is in fact a high incidence of performance anxiety in experienced professionals who have achieved high status, have considerable knowledge, skills and years of formal training to do the job. Such individuals may be generally well adjusted to their work and in interacting with their peers but experience ‘stage fright’ in a particular area of their work such as making a presentation, or when talking in larger groups. It is as if the higher that the individual has climbed up the career ladder, the more they fear the fall from that ladder. The higher levels of public scrutiny, higher expectations and a greater number of opportunities to expose their ‘incompetence’ may be contributory factors. Such individuals often live in fear of being publicly exposed as being ‘incompetent’ and much time is spent worrying that failure is just ‘one miserable performance away’.

People with performance anxiety see themselves in a very negative and self-critical way. They imagine that they are coming across to others as socially incompetent and make negative self-evaluations of their own performance and what they believe others are thinking about them. Three processes then maintain and worsen this distorted self-image. These are an ‘internal focus of attention’ on physical and mental symptoms of anxiety, ‘anxious thoughts’ about themselves and how others see them, and the use of ‘safety behaviours’ to prevent their feared consequences from coming true. Physical symptoms of anxiety include sweating, shaking, palpitations, tension, hot flushes, nausea, dizziness, over-breathing, light-headedness and so on. Cognitively they may experience difficulty concentrating and the mind racing. Common examples of anxious negative thoughts about oneself in performance anxiety include ‘I am not up to the job’ … ‘I will fail’ … ‘I will look stupid’ … ‘show myself up’ … ‘won’t be able to cope’ … ‘what if I start to shake’ … ‘what if my mind goes blank’ … ‘what if I look stupid’ … ‘come across as strange’ … ‘collapse in front of others’ … ‘blush’ … ‘sweat excessively’ … or ‘stammer’. Examples of negative cognitions about evaluation by others include ‘others will see that I am incompetent’ … ‘think I am stupid’ … ‘see how weak and inept I am’. As a result of experiencing the physiological and cognitive components of anxiety, the individual then adopts what are called ‘safety behaviours’. Examples of ‘safety behaviours’ displayed in performance anxiety include avoiding eye contact, sitting near an escape route, talking too little (or sometimes too much), talking faster, keeping quiet in meetings, folding their arms, fidgeting, trying not to make themselves the centre of attention and keeping out of the spotlight. They believe that these safety behaviours are helping them cope more effectively with their anxiety, but unfortunately they inadvertently have the effect of maintaining it. The following case study illustrates performance anxiety.