Hypnosis for Performance Anxiety or Stage Fright

I received the following query via Facebook and thought I would share the question and the brief answer here for others with similar questions:

"Hey Brian – have you worked with performance anxiety clients before? I was wondering what kind of approach you would take when dealing with something like this? Would you regress them? What kind of script might you use for suggestions? Do you give them an anchor to use when they go off to perform? Thanks for your thoughts!"

Yes, I have worked with performance anxiety. Quite a bit. I work with actors and singers and athletes and musicians and dancers and other performers and stage fright or performance anxiety is just one of the bugaboos one has to face if you have any hope of genuine success in performance fields.

Actually, while I started burrowing into the world of hypnosis when I was very young, it wasn't until I was doing my graduate work in communication/theatre where we had a special program that targeted helping those with communication anxiety that I began formal studies in hypnosis. Back in the stone age, we used progressive relaxation and a form of desensitization therapy. Basically, it's conditioning. Relax the client, deep relaxation, incorporating visualizations such as a garden or forest or beach or somewhere else that conjures up the relaxation response then slowly introduce the idea of being in a performance situation (start with less powerful images before working into more stressful situations). When the client feels stress, they lift a finger and you immediately discontinue the stress image and go right back into the relaxation mode. Once relaxation is back, introduce another stress image. The theory is that one cannot be relaxed and tense at the same time and by progressively conditioning a relaxation response you are eventually programming that response to what was a stress event.

Today, one would use deep relaxation anchors to fire during the stress tests in a much more efficient manner.

You would also use things like Six Step Reframe or the Fast Phobia Cure from NLP (although I strongly suggest you use formal hypnosis when using any NLP patterns).

I tend to use a form of hypnoanalysis that includes gestalt processes with regression and/or parts therapy today but the relaxation conditioning is an excellent supplement. I would never recommend a person use regression with a client unless they've had specific training for it.

3D Mind or EFT have been beneficial for many folks as well as Core Transformation.

There is no one way to approach this. Actually, I would suggest learning several approaches so that you can more effectively find an approach in the moment that seems to be most effective for a particular client within a particular context.

I hope this has been helpful.

All the best,
Brian

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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan