Specialty
Performance Anxiety & Public Speaking Therapy
When being watched makes your mind go blank
You may know your material inside out and still dread the moment all eyes turn to you. Presentations, interviews, auditions, exams or even speaking up in a meeting can trigger a racing heart, a shaking voice, a blank mind, and days of anxious anticipation beforehand.
Performance anxiety is usually not a lack of preparation or ability. It is a protective response that fires at the wrong moment, treating an audience like a threat.
Many people quietly organize their careers and lives around avoiding these moments, turning down opportunities they actually want. That avoidance brings short-term relief and long-term cost.
This pattern responds well to treatment. With the right approach, the anticipatory dread shrinks, your body learns that visibility is safe, and speaking becomes something you can do rather than something you can get through.
Signs performance anxiety & public speaking may be affecting your life
- Intense dread for days or weeks before a presentation, interview or exam
- Racing heart, sweating, trembling or a shaky voice when attention turns to you
- Your mind going blank or losing your train of thought mid-sentence
- Freezing or feeling unable to get words out
- Rehearsing excessively yet never feeling ready
- Replaying every perceived stumble for days afterward
- Avoiding roles, classes or opportunities that involve speaking or being evaluated
- Test anxiety that undermines what you actually know
- Fear that others can see how nervous you are, which makes the anxiety worse
- Relying on scripts, slides or over-preparation to feel any control
Our approach to performance anxiety & public speaking
Performance anxiety usually persists because the nervous system has paired visibility with danger, often reinforced by earlier experiences of embarrassment, criticism or freezing. Willpower and practice alone rarely change that pairing, which is why capable people can stay stuck in it for years.
We tailor treatment to how your anxiety functions. Clinical hypnosis can help retrain the automatic anticipatory response and build calm, focused states you can access before and during performance. EMDR can process the specific memories that taught your body to brace, and somatic and experiential work helps you stay present in your body.
The goal is not to eliminate all nerves, which are normal and even useful. The goal is that anxiety stops deciding what you say yes to and stops taking the joy out of exciting opportunities.
Clinicians who specialize in performance anxiety & public speaking
ACT · EMDR · Hypnosis
Dr. Laura Faiwiszewski works extensively with performance anxiety and public speaking, including the physical side of anxiety, such as racing heart, shaking and going blank. She helps people unhook from the fear of being judged so that presentations, interviews and evaluations stop looming over everything else. *
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EMDR · Hypnosis · Psychodynamic
Dr. Micah Zylstra brings particular strength in performance-related anxiety and the fear of being seen, including freezing and self-consciousness in front of others. He is attuned to the self-critical voice that often fuels the dread before and the replaying after. *
Full profile →Modalities
Therapy approaches that may help
We integrate these techniques, custom-tailored to you, in the order your nervous system can use first.
FAQ
Frequently Asked Questions
- Is performance anxiety the same as social anxiety?
- They overlap but are not identical. Performance anxiety centers on specific evaluated moments, such as presentations, interviews, auditions or exams, while social anxiety spreads across everyday social situations. Many people experience some of both, and treatment is tailored to your particular pattern. *
- Why does my mind go blank even when I know the material?
- Going blank is part of the freeze response. When your nervous system reads an audience as a threat, it prioritizes survival over recall, which temporarily disrupts access to memory and language. It is a physiological state, not a knowledge problem, and it can be changed with treatment.
- Can therapy help with stage fright before auditions or performances?
- Yes. Stage fright responds well to approaches that work with the body and the anticipatory response, not just with thoughts. Clinical hypnosis, EMDR and somatic work can each play a role, depending on how your anxiety shows up.
- What about test anxiety?
- Test anxiety follows the same underlying pattern: an evaluated moment triggers a stress response that interferes with the very performance you are worried about. The same treatment principles apply, and many people see meaningful improvement in how they feel and perform under exam conditions.
- How long does treatment take?
- It varies with how long the pattern has been in place and what feeds it. Some people notice a real shift within a couple of months, especially with a specific upcoming event to work toward. Deeper patterns of fearing judgment can take longer. Your therapist will discuss a realistic arc with you early on.
- Will I have to do exposure exercises like giving speeches in session?
- Not necessarily. Facing feared situations in a graduated way can be part of treatment, but it is one tool among several and is always paced collaboratively. Much of the work happens by changing the underlying response, so the situations themselves become less threatening.
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