Coaching practices for Practice Anxiety Skills

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Practice Anxiety Skills, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

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

  • There’s a big thing coming up
  • I can calm myself just fine practicing alone on the couch, but the moment I’m in the actual situation that sets me off
  • I only ever try a new way to handle this once I’m already deep in a full-blown wave, and by then I’m too far gone to think
  • Right before I go on, my heart’s pounding, my hands are shaking, my mind’s gone tunnel-narrow and blank
  • I only ever try to learn how to calm myself down once I’m already in full panic, and of course nothing sticks in that state

Practices that may help

  1. The Anxiety Toolkit, Made Practical
    A practical anxiety toolkit pulls together a handful of evidence-informed skills — grounding, breathing, interoceptive awareness, behavioral experiments, and balanced self-talk — so you have the right tool for the moment instead of one move for every situation. Several of these rest on solid clinical and experimental support. They are self-help skills for everyday stress and anxiety; for severe or persistent anxiety, use them alongside professional care.
  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. Apply relaxation in increasingly difficult situations
    Practice the rapid response in progressively more anxiety-provoking real-world contexts.
    Applied Relaxation, Made Practical
  4. Rehearse the response before you need it
    Learn and practice the four steps in low-stakes moments so they are available under pressure.
    The DARE Response to Anxiety, 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. Build coping skills before the storm
    Practice regulation skills in calm times so they’re available — and credible — under pressure.
    Building Resilience, Made Practical
  7. 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
  8. Cope-ahead planning for high-stakes interactions
    Rehearse a difficult conversation in detail — mentally and verbally — before it happens.
    DBT Interpersonal Effectiveness: Getting What You Need Without Destroying the Relationship
  9. Acquire a core relaxation skill (and actually practice it until automatic)
    SIT requires one somatic coping skill — diaphragmatic breathing or PMR — trained to automaticity before stress practice begins.
    Stress Inoculation Training
  10. Prepare coping self-talk in advance
    Script what you will say to yourself at the trigger, during the peak, and afterward — before you need it.
    Stress Inoculation Training

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