What is the root cause of performance anxiety? An important work meeting where you’ll pitch, an audition, or even a social gathering can make you feel like you’re dying on the inside.
Performance anxiety. Two little dirty words that make your hands sweat and your heart race.
But why? Well, it’s a combination of internal and external factors. Let’s take a look at some of the root causes of performance anxiety:
Perfectionism, imposter syndrome, and comparison to others—they're like the triple threat to our confidence and well-being.
Perfectionism is that constant pressure to always be flawless, never mess up, and achieve the impossible. It's exhausting, right?
It can stem from being parentified as a child. You may have had to be overly responsible and take care of your siblings or even your parents.
Or you may have been the golden child that your parents or caregivers lived vicariously through. You may have been “cheered on” to be the best in sports, music, or whatever it was you took part in.
But the message was loud and clear that you weren’t good enough unless you achieved what your parents felt you were capable of, and what made them feel emotionally safe or validated.
Both of these scenarios create a subconscious blueprint that runs you on autopilot. It drives your thoughts and actions today, and here’s the worst part…
When you try to change things up so you aren’t so tortured, your subconscious blueprint starts working in overdrive to keep things the same way.
That’s because those behaviors you had when you were little served as a coping mechanism to your circumstances at the time. So when you try to change your mind consciously, a subconscious defense mechanism kicks in and makes it harder to gain traction for long lasting and genuine change.
Then there's imposter syndrome. It's like this nagging voice in your head telling you that you might be a fraud, or that you don't deserve success. Like success is for someone else that’s more deserving than you.
And comparing yourself to others? That's a whole other level of stress.
I’ve worked with lots of women over my career as a hypnotherapist. Some of them would be considered “normal or average” and others would be considered to be “model material”.
But what connected them all together was the fact that none of them were happy with their appearance. Like not one of them. It was so ubiquitous that it taught me an important lesson I’d like to pass onto you.
As long as you have an internal blueprint that says you aren’t truly worthy or lovable, you too may find yourself unhappy with how you look or compare yourself to others, their accomplishments, their appearance, or their status.
So start working with your subconscious mind so you won’t look back and regret appreciating what you have now.
Low self-worth and looking for external validation for worthiness - This may be a byproduct of what I just discussed, or it may come from other trauma, neglect, or the constant messages that you aren’t good enough, smart enough, attractive enough, special enough, or rich enough.
Your self-talk may be unkind and you may take things very personally and feel rejected in certain circumstances.
Living up to someone else's expectations - This one’s tough. There’s a lot of doctors and lawyers out there who didn’t really realize that they made their career decisions to make someone else in their life happy. So that person would think highly of them or so they could quell their insecurities. This is like external validation times 10.
And this spills out to other professions as well. Where you live, the kind of car you drive, the clothes you wear, the places you go, and the people you associate with. It’s insidious and it can steal your joy because you aren’t being honest with yourself about what you really want.
And to make significant changes and make your needs a priority will nearly turn your life upside down, at least for a while.
That’s a hard conversation to have with yourself.
All of these things tie right into performance anxiety. So you’ll need to address them at their root to gain real traction instead of cheer leading yourself on only to gain temporary motivation.
But, and this is a big but, we can’t wrap things up here until we take a look at unhealthy industry expectations or even abuse.
If you’re a hypnotherapist, actor, or an agency, the one thing that’s important to recognize is if you ever experience performance anxiety and you’re in an unhealthy or abusive relationship with a coach, casting director, director, or employer, your performance anxiety is appropriate.
It’s telling you that something isn’t right and you need to do something different.
It’s not okay to be abused emotionally, sexually, or physically. That’s pretty obvious, but depending on the industry, this type of behavior is normalized and you’re expected to tolerate it to get to the next level.
And then there’s less obvious unhealthy relationships that help you along in your life or career. Enter the world of coaching.
This can be any type of coach, from an acting coach, business coach, life coach, manifestation coach, mindset coach, empowerment coach, happiness coach, success coach, motivational coach, or insert your title here coach.
There are good coaches, but there are also SO many coaches who use a “break the door down” style of coaching, and it’s really prevalent in the coaching industry.
I feel that it’s really unhealthy.
What does this look like? In the coaching relationship, the coach will naturally hit a wall at some point because the client wants to reach a goal, but their subconscious mind’s inner blueprint isn’t in alignment with their conscious desire and it just isn’t working out.
To compensate for this the coach tends to blame or shame the clients for their lack of success, drive, or even their vibrational state, as in the case of manifestation coaching.
These coaches focus on a more aggressive approach of eliminating excuses, breaking through limitations, or attracting what you want.
You may hear them use phrases like “You’re being resistive”, or “You’re not being fully responsible for the results you want to create” or “You’re making excuses”, or “You aren’t vibrating high enough”, or “Get rid of your head trash”, or “You just aren’t ready”, or “You’re playing small.”
This works for some people but the results are usually short lived. Often clients attain the result, but it doesn’t bring them genuine happiness because it’s not what they really want deep down. For many people, being shamed simply makes them feel bad about themselves and doesn’t help.
They go on to develop performance anxiety and a lack of self-compassion.
They can push themselves too hard to achieve the result the coach wants, just to win their approval, or get them off their back.
And of course this type of “gym coaching” can be quite subtle too, done under the guise of being loving and kind. But at its core is judgment, blame, and shame.
There's a missed opportunity for real growth.
Wrapping it up, tackling these underlying issues is the key to overcoming performance anxiety.
Whether it's perfectionism, imposter syndrome, comparison to others, or navigating unhealthy industry expectations, addressing these factors head-on empowers you to reclaim control over your performance and well-being.
By acknowledging and working through these challenges, you pave the way for greater confidence, resilience, and success in all aspects of your life and career.
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