A friend recently expressed a desire to understand what her
children are going through when they experience stage fright so that she can
better help them. Her eldest (the same
age as my K) is deeply shy, not even liking to ask for what she wants in a
restaurant (K is the same way) and my friend has concerns about this girl being
able to survive in the world on her own one day. But what prompted the query was that her
outgoing youngest, who has never minded being the focus of attention in the
past, had a meltdown before her piano recital.
How to explain performance anxiety to someone who does not
experience it herself . . .
I think the most important thing to understand is that there
is no answer to the questions “Why are they going through this?” or “What,
exactly, are they afraid of?” There is
no REASON that it happens; it is INSTINCT, it is Fight or Flight. Some aspect of the situation is perceived in
some deep recess of the brain as a threat, and by the time it has escalated to
the point that another person knows that something is going on, it is Adrenaline
and Cortisol and Stress and there is nothing, in that moment, that anyone can do
to make it better. Chances are good that
anything said that actually gets through will only make it worse.
That’s the bad news: it isn’t rational, so you don’t get to
understand it, and from outside there isn’t anything to do to help.
The good news is that it can be overcome. But it’s up to the person with the anxiety,
and it doesn’t happen over night.
Remember “round robin” reading in school, when every student
would get a turn reading a paragraph out loud in class? Yeah, that brought on full-blown panic
attacks for me. Every. Time.
There was no “reason” for it. I
was a strong reader. I was articulate. (I mean, for crying out loud, it’s what I DO now.) But some aspect of the situation
was perceived as a threat. Maybe it was the
memory of another kid being snickered at when s/he stumbled over a simple word,
or the thought of everyone listening or judging or – who knows? It was never a
specific thing I was consciously afraid of. It would start with a generally anxious
feeling whenever it was clear that was today’s plan for that class. As the reading turn wended its way through
the classroom, my pulse would quicken.
When the row before mine was reading, I’d count how many people would
read before me and count ahead in the reading and scan the paragraph I thought
would be mine and struggle to keep my breathing under control as I
double-checked the counts and re-read it and still tried to keep track of what
was being read now and the blood would be rushing through my ears as the teacher
would ask someone with a short paragraph to read a second one . . . and the
counting would begin again. By the time
it was two people before me you could literally see my heart beating through
two sweaters, not to mention the sweat trickling down my back and soaking
through my pits or the fact that my hands were shaking so much turning the page
in our textbook was out of the question.
That was sitting at my desk when everyone else was looking
at their own books. Imagine what
presentations were like. Pure hell. Somehow I survived them. In freshman lit my “5-6” minute book report
babbled on for 21 minutes. In chemistry,
my research was on the “chemistry of emotions,” and I got a laugh (and some
sympathetic looks) when I said, by way of introduction, that the chemicals in
my brain were telling me I’d be much safer if I crawled under the teacher’s
desk. In speech class I managed to demonstrate
“how to put a clarinet together” despite the violent shaking of my hands; it
wasn’t graceful, but it happened.
What helped? For me,
it was doing things by degrees (slowly conditioning whatever part in my noggin
to see the situation as less of a threat).
In jr. high and high school (running chronologically parallel to the
above stories) I was in band and choir.
It was performance, but it was much-rehearsed and I was never on stage
alone. When I got to college, my
education degree had speech requirements; two semesters worth. For the first, I opted to take “Interpersonal
Communication” in place of the “stand up in front of people and give a speech”
class. For the second, I opted for “Oral
Interpretation” in place of the “more advanced stand up in front of people and
give a speech” class – and this one was the life changer.
Oral Interpretation was in the theater department. The teacher was nice, the class was small,
and all the other people in it were friendly.
We chose our own readings from different genres of literature (poetry,
short story, a scene from a play). We were
encouraged to adopt personae and use different voices for different
characters. We had to write up an
analysis of the piece, work on it at home, and workshop the piece in class
before “performing” it for a grade. It
wasn’t too torturous . . . it was . . . kind of . . . fun!
So I signed up for Acting One the next semester, but my
course load was too heavy and I ended up dropping it then. Later, I auditioned for Community Theater. In my first play I had no lines, I carried
the lamp for Desdemona. In my second
play, I was the lead. I pulled out my
hill-billy accent and we rehearsed a LOT and by the time performance came it
wasn’t really me up there, as I was pretending to be someone else -- so *I*
wasn’t threatened so the panic attacks didn’t happen. (Eventually I did go back and take Acting One
. . . and Two and Three, but later in life).
For me, “putting on a persona” helps. When I taught, I played the “teacher”
role. Job interview? Put on the “competent employee” hat. Sure I still get nervous in those situations,
but it no longer escalates the way it used to.
I’m still not volunteering to stand up and give speeches, but I’ll read
other peoples’ words till the cows come home.
CAUTION: forcing your introverted child to do Community
Theater will probably backfire, and send any progress toward panic control backward
about 5 years (I almost sub-titled this post "Why I Don't Force My Child to Speak to People"). My exact path isn’t going
to work for anyone but me, but I’ll share some other things I’ve learned.
K and I went to a talk by Jill Bolte Taylor about the
teenage brain a few weeks back. From her
we learned that from the time you have a thought to the time that forms an
emotion to the time that creates a physiological response, you have about 90
seconds. Once the “oh, no!” thought
begins, you have some time to breathe deeply, think of something else, re-frame
the situation, or what you find works for you personally. The trick here is learning to notice what’s
going on in your brain so that you can redirect its path from Fight or Flight
to something more pleasant. It takes
practice and time, but I think my friend’s eldest can start to get a handle on
this.
I’ve also been listening to the audiobook of Your Brain
at Work by David Rock. There is a
lot of useful information in there, some of it about re-framing the
situation. The classic example is to “picture
the audience in their underwear” – I think this is originally meant to make the
audience seem more vulnerable (and thus less threatening); as a kid I just
thought it was to make them seem silly, and now I think that, depending on the audience,
this might make them seem *more* threatening.
Sometimes reframing is a simple as seeing the other side (most of the
audience is worried about their own performance), sometimes it means telling
yourself a story (the lady in the front row is frowning only because her
favorite aunt is ill). The trick is to
notice the thought and reframe it before the emotions hit, and well before the
physiological response kicks in; because once the body goes into Fight or
Flight, it’s a long way getting back.
In summary: There’s no “reason” for the fear, and once the
physical stress responses begin there’s not much mom can do to help. Over time and with exposure the experiences can
seem less threatening, especially if the sufferer can become aware of when the
anxious thoughts and feelings begin and work toward re-directing them.
I’m not a psychologist, but I could play one in an audio
book.
