Stage fright: what is stage fright, symptoms and how to overcome it?

The respect produced by the fact of having many people watching us can be an obstacle.

It is becoming more and more evident that the psychological factor has a determining weight in the performance of all those activities which involve achieving a level of performance or an external evaluation.. In sports, artistic or even work or academic practice, an optimal mental state can help, while a deficient one will always limit us.

The influence of psychology here is so evident that we have intuitively created certain colloquial expressions to refer to these phenomena: to fill up on the ball, to go out plugged in, to be a pineapple, to be on a roll... or the famous stage fright.

What is stage fright?

Stage fright is a state of high physiological activation that occurs before a performance, or any type of activity that involves the presence or assessment of an audience. that involves the presence or appreciation of an audience.. There are artists who claim that it is impossible to make a good performance without this "fear", and it is true that a certain level of activation is required to perform any task. That is to say, the more activation, the better performance up to a certain point, where performance begins to decrease if this activation continues to increase, drawing an inverted U if it were represented graphically.

This point is known as the optimal level of activationand it is different for each artist. In other words, there will be those who give the best version of themselves at an activation of 80 over 100, and those who need not to go over 65. To limit this level of activation, there are different relaxation and activation techniques, depending on the need to be covered.

Relaxation techniques to use

The most useful relaxation technique in these cases is breathing. By executing a controlled breathing we can reduce those extra pulsations that can ruin our performance, or make us not enjoy the performance. Moreover, by paying attention to the phases of such breathing and the movements of the different organs involved in it, we prevent cognitive anxiety, and prevent our attention from turning to anticipatory or blaming thoughts ("I'm going to make a mistake", "I always get this part wrong, etc.").

Breathing training in controlled environments (rehearsals, at home...) will help us to automate this technique, being able to put it into practice quickly at any time we might need it, such as before a concert or an important match.

However, although excess is usually the most common cause of activation problems, it is worth insisting that a defect of it can be just as harmful (before a piece that we have always mastered perfectly, or before a match against the bottom of the table), so that It is therefore advisable to take into account the existence of activation techniquestechniques, perhaps more rudimentary but just as necessary.

However, and honoring the colloquial name of this disease, we must not fail to pay attention to the most emotional component of it: fear.

The role of fear

Fear, as the good emotion that it is, is not bad in itself. It is adaptive, selected to intervene in the survival of the species, allowing us to flee or fight against threats to our life. However, in our species there has been a cultural selection that coexists with the natural one, and now fear is triggered in situations for which it was not designed. A job interview, an exam, a performance?

That is why, although relaxation techniques help, it is usually good to go further, to unravel what thoughts, what preconceived ideas keep that fear. The fear of failure may be related to one's own self-esteem, or it may have a social function (e.g., to the fear of failure).or it may have a social function (fear of being judged, of being rejected) in which case it is advisable to restructure those ideas, to break the relationships between one's self-esteem and the performance of a particular task, between that performance and one's place in society.