One of the most painful things you can experience is performance anxiety. This can occur when you’re competing, climbing with a friend, or even bouldering by yourself. You’re anxious and aren’t motivated to climb.

Why would you feel this way when you love climbing? It’s because you’re afraid of losing something. As you dig deeper into this feeling, you find that it’s actually an existential crisis in a way. You fear that your identity is at stake. You fear that how you understand yourself will die.

This fear is accurate. Your identity will die. Your identity shifts as you go through experiences. That’s not a bad thing. It’s actually helpful. It’s part of your climbing training program to build mental strength. It helps you understand yourself in more authentic ways. But, you need to know now to navigate it.

You can investigate this further in two ways. First by taking a clinic with our trainers. Second, with our new Falling & Commitment Online Course.

What is performance anxiety? Performance anxiety is defined as: the real or imagined anxiety or fear you experience when you have to perform in front of others. I got this definition off the internet. What strikes me is the “real or imagined” aspects of this. To me, there is no such thing as “imagined anxiety or fear.” These are real emotions you feel.

A better definition would acknowledge that the anxiety or fear you feel is real. And, you need to expand this a bit. You don’t only experience performance anxiety in front of others. You can also experience it by “performing in front of yourself.” For example, you don’t give your best effort on a boulder problem because you don’t like the feeling of failing.

Performance anxiety has an existential element to it. You’re anxious and fearful because you fear you may die if the performance doesn’t go well. It’s not that you will literally die. It’s your identity. Your identity tends to be tied to achievements. It changes when you don’t achieve your goals. How you understood yourself died.

Is performance anxiety common? Yes. Why? Because we all tend to understand ourselves based on our achievements (or lack thereof). We feel good about ourselves when we succeed. We feel bad about ourselves when we fail.

This tendency comes from comparing yourself to others. Two things tend to happen when you do this comparison. First, you feel like a failure because so many other climbers perform better than you. Second, even when you’re the best, you’re afraid of not being the best. You’re anxious about performing poorly. Or, you’re anxious about not performing well.

How long does performance anxiety last? Great question. The short answer is: it lasts a lifetime…if you don’t reframe how you understand it. It lasts as long as you’re afraid about how you’ll perform. More specifically, it lasts until you shift your focus.

Performance anxiety persists if you focus on goals. You can’t control goal achievement. Performance anxiety lasts as long as you focus on what you can’t control.

Performance anxiety symptomsHow do you know if you’re experiencing performance anxiety? Here are some specific things to notice:

• Your heart rate is racing
• Your breathing is elevated
• Your mouth is dry and/or your throat is tight
• You’re trembling physically, including your voice
• Your hands are sweaty or they’re cold
• You feel nauseous
• Your vision contracts

What’s so cool about this is your body feeds you information about an upcoming stressor. It’s not comfortable to experience these feelings. But, it’s helpful that you can tune into your body to understand what’s happening. And, you can do specific things with your body to process those feelings. You can “treat” the symptoms by using the body itself.

Performance anxiety treatmentPointing all this out doesn’t do much to alleviate performance anxiety. It increases your awareness, but now you need to treat it. Here are some practices you can do to work through performance anxiety:

• Practice: Separate identity (self worth) from outcomes
  • You set yourself up as a victim when you tie your identity to outcomes. Why? Because how you feel about yourself depends on those outcomes. In other words, how you feel about yourself is dependent on external events you can’t control.
  • You separate your identity from outcomes by being more objective. Do this by asking 2 questions: First, “What did I do well?” Second, “What do I still need to learn?”
• Practice: Focus on what you can control
  • Focusing on outcomes creates an external locus of control. You can’t control anything external to yourself.
  • Instead, create an internal locus of control. Do this by being curious about the situation you’re engaged in. Focus on the effort you’ll exert.
• Practice: BEB (breathing/eyes/body) Rule
  • Engage your senses. Hear your breathing. Focus your eyes on what’s around you. Feel your body as you straighten your posture.
  • The BEB Rule shifts your attention. Instead of thinking about the performance, you’re focusing on the present moment. That shifts your focus from what you imagine will occur to the reality of what is occurring.

Performance anxiety solutionsThese practices are definitely helpful. They can make you feel worthwhile. But what if you could shift your perspective? What if your self-worth was a non-issue? The ultimate solution to performance anxiety is making self-worth a non-issue. Then you’re not afraid of losing anything. You’re not in an existential crisis.

Here is a progression for shifting your perspective to solve performance anxiety:

• First, either/or: This is how you begin understanding your identity. It creates performance anxiety. You either feel good or bad–either worthwhile or worthless–based on your performance. Here your attention is stuck.
• Second, both/and: This is the first step to break anxiety’s hold on you. You feel both good and bad about yourself. You feel both worthwhile and worthless. But, you feel these states with awareness. Understanding the both/and nature of how you feel helps you accept them. Acceptance is an important starting point for moving beyond these feelings. It’s the beginning of freeing your attention.
• Third, neither/nor: Here you break the tie that connects your identity with outcomes. You make self worth a non-issue. You perceive your identity as neither good nor bad. You understand that you’re neither worthwhile nor worthless. This perspective allows you to be an objective observer. You’re not worried about your identity anymore. You’re curious about your effort. This frees your attention to perform your best.

Summary

Going through this process untangles your self-worth from outcomes. It diminishes or eliminates the pain of performance anxiety. Don’t be in an existential crisis. Make self-worth a non-issue.

You’ll be pain free when you compete, climb with your partner, or even when bouldering by yourself. Your motivation will stabilize. You’ll want to climb because you love it again.

To make this stick requires you to dig deeper into this topic. You can do that by connecting with our trainer network to take a clinic. Or dig into it with our new Falling & Commitment Online Course.