Coaching practices for How Do I Overcome Public Speaking and Performance Anxiety

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For How Do I Overcome Public Speaking and Performance Anxiety, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• The hardest moments are the joins and the exits
• There’s a big thing coming up
• I’m so wound up about nailing this presentation that the pressure to be good is exactly what makes me freeze
• Right before the test or the big moment, my head is so jammed with what-ifs and dread that there’s no room left to actually think
• Right before I go on, my heart’s pounding, my hands are shaking, my mind’s gone tunnel-narrow and blank

Practices that may help

1. Build scripts for situation entry and transitions
   Prepare simple, natural openers and transitions so you’re not improvising from scratch under pressure.
   Overcoming Shyness: Philip Zimbardo’s Framework
2. Apply EFT to specific performance anxiety triggers
   EFT has the strongest self-guided evidence for test anxiety, public speaking, and sports performance stress.
   EFT Tapping: What It Is, How to Do It, and What the Evidence Shows
3. Use paradoxical intention for performance anxiety
   Before a performance, commit to performing as badly as possible — notice what happens to the anxiety.
   Logotherapy: Paradoxical Intention
4. Write about your worries before a high-stakes performance
   Offload performance anxiety by writing it out in full immediately before the event.
   Choking Under Pressure, Made Practical
5. De-activation Strategies for Over-Arousal
   Use targeted techniques to reduce arousal when anxiety or over-activation is undermining performance.
   The Yerkes-Dodson Law: Finding Your Optimal Performance Zone
6. Use graduated social exposure
   Start with low-stakes social interactions and systematically increase difficulty.
   Overcoming Shyness: Philip Zimbardo’s Framework
7. Deliberately enter low-stakes discomfort
   Regularly choose small situations that trigger the target anxiety so the nervous system learns it is survivable.
   The Confidence–Competence Loop
8. Shift to task-focused attention under performance anxiety
   Redirect attention from self-monitoring and outcome worry to the specific process cues of the task at hand.
   Attentional Deployment, Made Practical
9. Set your posture before high-stakes moments
   Take a private moment to settle into a confident posture before a presentation or hard talk.
   Posture and Confidence, Honestly Explained
10. Create a pre-performance ritual that includes posture
    A consistent pre-performance ritual — including posture — reduces anxiety and improves performance more reliably than any single element.
    Power Posing Revisited

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