Stage fright is an all-too familiar condition for many performers. It's experienced by both seasoned professionals and novices alike. It spares no one because of their age and, in fact, can come on later in life after years of performing. To most people it is an irrational condition and, in general, is regarded as something to be borne, to be endured. You perform in spite of it. After all, you think, it‚s such a common condition and we all can find our own ways to deal with it. So you accept the cold hands, the sweats, the waves of nausea, the shortness of breath and just walk onto that stage and you make it through.

For others, stage fright or performance anxiety can be harder to overcome. At the least it prevents you from showing your talent at its best. At worst, it can bring a career to a standstill. We hear of the successful instrumentalist in a major orchestra who suddenly finds himself no longer able to walk on stage. Or the middle-aged writer who can‚t bring herself to read aloud her stories to a room full of strangers. Or the young singer whose fear of auditioning is getting in the way of a career before it has even begun.

Various coaching tools and therapies are available to provide some help and, depending on the severity of the condition and the willingness of the 'victim‚' to address the problem, have proven successful in overcoming the physical, emotional and mental manifestations that are the evidence of stage fright.

PERFORMANCE COACH

Some newer approaches for dealing with stage fright were introduced to several BSR subscribers recently by Dr Nancy Cetlin, Ed.D, Dr. Cetlin has worked for over 30 years as a psychologist and performance coach. The two-hour introductory overview focused on several inter-linked processes which she has developed into a unique program that she has used successfully on hundreds of performers in various disciplines for the treatment of stage fright and performance anxiety. Dr Cetlin has offices in Back Bay, Boston, and Brighton. Her website is www.nancycetlin.com

FLOW STATE

To begin, Dr Cetlin presented the concept of Flow States. As she says, "It is a different state of consciousness than we usually experience, yet something everyone has experienced involuntarily many times‚" "The Flow State exercise," which readers may recognize as being similar to 'the Zone," a term often used in sports, here is intentionally induced by the coach and later practiced by the performer on his or her own. The performer is verbally guided through images and experiences to reproduce a particularly positive flow state from the individual's past experience, with all its sights, sounds, textures, even smells when they found themselves to be at that optimal state. This past experience, whether it was a fleeting moment or a longer peried of time, was unencumbered by feelings of being judged or of being self-critical. Things just flowed for the performer. The value of praciticing this and other optimal states is realized in envisioning one's self, using mental rehearsal techniques, functioning at one's best in this ideal emotional/physical state.

Another type of optimal state, says Dr. Cetlin, is achieved through technologically aided measures of heart rate variability, like “Heart Math,” and it’s small hand held “em-wave” stress reducer.  Heart Math’s “EM wave” helps the user to attain a state of heart rate and breathing synchronization called “coherence” through a visual response system to one’s pulse!  Amazingly enough, this coherence of heart rate, breath, as well as immune and endocrine systems, is achieved by imagining that one can breathe feelings of love, appreciation, and other positive emotions through one’s heart.  Not only is this a relaxing and pleasant state, but Dr. Cetlin finds that this positive emotional state can be used quite successfully for peak performance via mental rehearsal techniques. Additionally, this versatile technique also makes for a healthier heart, and reduces stress and anxiety levels, helping your body to defend against the well documented correlation of negative emotions and their damaging effect on the heart, e.g. heart attacks!

MENTAL REHEARSAL

Next Dr Cetlin talked about the mental rehearsal which, as a technique, is very familiar to any dedicated musician: To learn a piece of music well you must break it down to smaller and smaller elements, learning each element in part, by practicing it mentally, as well as by actual practice. Then you broaden the elements to include more and more of the music until the whole work has been mastered. Similarly, with Dr. Cetlin's form of mental rehearsal, small, problematic elements (in this case, a musical problem or difficult moment) are identified, then paired with a “solution” for the problem or distraction, and then practiced as a 2 part sequence so that the “problem” becomes merely a  cue for the musician to automatically enact the “solution”. A simple example would be loss of focus, or a moment of distraction – so common in rehearsal and performance, and especially common when one is anxious and distracted by all manner of destructive negative predictions.  Followed by a concrete way for the performer to re-focus, this sequence is practiced until re-focusing becomes an instantaneous response to loss of focus. What makes the difference here is the mental projection of optimal mind/body states onto this short exercise as well as  longer sequences of mental rehearsal.  Thus, every time you rehearse even the tiniest sequence, you see and hear yourself in a flow state, training your mind to associate these optimal states with your future performance.

EMDR

*[EMDR, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is a well researched, proven technique for the treatment of trauma, as well as other disorders related to fear.  For example, even a blown audition can be encoded by the brain as a trauma. The bilateral stimulation of the left and right hemispheres of the brain (using rapid side-to-side eye movements, alternating auditory tones, or right and left hand tapping) is a now famous aspect of the sophisticated system of desensitization know as EMDR.  Called a “rapid adaptive learning process” by its developer Dr. Francine Shapiro, Ph.D., it is now sought after by many as a treatment for traumas, phobias and anxieties.]

There’s nothing like a good night’s sleep, they say.  It gives your brain a chance to make sense of all the information you took in today, to make sense of the raw data.  This occurs during the Rapid Eye Movement, or REM stages of sleep; so called because the eyes have been observed to “scan” back and forth rapidly during those periods across the night.

But not all information gets processed and deposited into the relevant areas of the “thinking brain” – the cortex. Not all raw data gets resolved.  The reason for this, as Dr. Cetlin explained, is that some raw data is just too raw.  Some events in our lives, whether far back in our childhood or more recent, have associations that can’t be processed with just a few good night’s sleep, because they felt overwhelming at the time, even though you might not think of them that way in retrospect.  These memories have gotten stuck in what we informally call the “fight/flight/freeze/appease” area of the brain, where the thalamus, hippocampus and the amygdala reside, underneath the wrinkly gray cortex which makes up our more “rational” brain.  So, the result of a bad “performance experience” in 7th grade may seem funny or just all over now, but down in that primitive part of the brain, a feeling of terror may have been associated with it, and it just keeps getting “triggered” every time something, like another performance situation rekindles it.  Seems like we should be able to explain something that simple away, but that deep down primitive area of the brain knows only powerful drives, so an inventive way of reaching downward and de-sensitizing that fear had to be found. Before EMDR, Cognitive and Behavioral therapies were the most commonly recommended treatments for performance anxiety.

EMDR and other new methods, like Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing, and some energy therapies have found pathways through body to assist in reaching into deep brain structures to decouple those irrational connections, and allow our rational and creative cortex to take over again.

These are admittedly rather complicated and mysterious sounding techniques for coaching, but Dr. Cetlin has estimated that her use of them in her practice since 1994 is what makes the real difference in positive results for her clients. 

Other techniques involving mental training for peak performance, and the exciting growth of brainwave biofeedback known as Neurofeedback are among the services that Dr. Cetlin did not have time to describe or demonstrate; however she maintains that keeping up with every effective method of reaching your unique potential is essential to the practice of peak performance coaching and training.


***
For additional information about Dr Nancy Cetlin's work or to contact her directly please go to www.nancycetlin.com

The following websites, referenced on Dr Cetlin's web page, provide more information about Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing.

www.EMDRIA.org
www.EEGSpectrum.com
www.Sensorimotor.org

* Please note that, although Boston Singers Resource does not endorse this particular method or similar methods, either explicitly or implicitly, we view the ideas presented by Dr Cetlin with interest. Persons interested in this type or any type of mental health program should thoroughly investigate the methods and claimed benefits before proceeding with any treatment.