Coaching practices for How to Get Over Performance Anxiety in Bed

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

• 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
• By bedtime I’m already dreading another bad night, and the harder I try to force myself to sleep
• I lie in bed for ages trying to fall asleep, and the bed has become this place where I just fail to sleep
• I’m so wound up about nailing this presentation that the pressure to be good is exactly what makes me freeze

Practices that may help

1. 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
2. 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
3. Break the anxiety-about-sleep loop
   Interrupt the cycle where worrying about not sleeping becomes the main reason you can not sleep.
   Stimulus Control for Sleep
4. Apply stimulus control to the sleep environment
   Use the bed only for sleep and sex — no other stimulation — so your body learns that bed means sleep.
   Stimulus Control, Made Practical
5. 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
6. Use the bed only for sleep (and sex)
   Reserve the bed strictly so the brain learns to associate it with sleepiness, not wakefulness.
   Stimulus Control for Sleep
7. 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
8. 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
9. 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
10. Use PMR to wind down for sleep
    Run the sequence lying in bed to lower physical arousal and ease the transition to sleep.
    Progressive Muscle Relaxation, Made Practical

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