Dealing with Performance Anxiety
A couple of weeks ago after church my family and I loaded up the van and headed out of town for a quick two-day camping trip in the mountains. As is typical for a pastor family when trying to get out of town on a Sunday, we hit the road later than we expected, which means we arrived at our campsite later than we expected. Normally that wouldn’t be too big of a problem, but we’ve got a one-and-a-half year-old named Harvey and we were arriving at his dinner time.
As most parents can attest to, this is a critical time in the evening where the have-tos don’t stop till they’re asleep. Low blood sugar equals raw and wild emotions, so you’ve got to get food ready while you keep them from melting down, feed them, get them in the bath, calm them down and get them to bed. We’ve generally got this under control at home, but at a camp site that we were just arriving at during this critical time was a different challenge.
We needed dinner, a fire to cook it in, and a tent set up right away. So as we pulled up, I told my oldest son, nine-year-old Oliver, to get the fire going while I set up the tent. He KNOWS how to start a fire, he has done it a ton of times, and with his six-year-old sister’s help gathering materials and a lighter in hand, I thought he would have us cooking before I could get the tent up. Somehow though, something was different this time. Maybe it was the urgency, maybe it was because we were all counting on him – whatever it was he couldn’t figure out how to get a fire going, something I knew he could do.
I looked up from working on the tent and I just saw him staring at some sticks in his hand with a look of bewilderment on his face. I went over and asked him what was going on and why he wasn’t getting the fire going and he looked up at me with tears starting to brim in his eyes and he said, “I don’t know how.”
I am all too familiar with this in my own life to not recognize what was going on. He had just been hit with performance anxiety. Lucky, or unlucky, for him, his dad and performance anxiety are old friends.
I just smiled at him and said, “Oliver, that is not true, you absolutely know how to start a fire, you’ve done it so many times. You’re just freaking out and have lost your confidence. You know you’ve started fires before right?”
“Yes,” he said. That also told me he hadn’t lost his mind.
Then I said, “Okay then, I want you to step away from this, take deep breaths, remind yourself that you have done this a ton of times before, remember how to do it, and come back and get it done. Just come back whenever you’re ready.”
He wondered off into the woods at the edge of the camp, messing with sticks and looking at things. Within five minutes he was back and had the fire going before I was finished with our monstrosity of a tent.
Later on we had a good talk about what had happened.
I told him how proud I was of him and that he probably lost his mind and his confidence because he really wanted to come through for his family when they needed him – and that is a good thing to care about. We’re always going to struggle to come through for the people we care about either due to a lack of competence or confidence – a lack of ability or a lack of believing in ourselves – and we need both. If you can do something but you don’t believe in yourself, you’ll freeze up and won’t be able to do the thing you know how to do – like what happened with the fire. If you believe in yourself, but in reality you can’t really get it done, you could put yourself or the people you care about in a bad situation.
You need both competence and confidence to be able to come through for people, and there is nothing that can steal your confidence quicker than performance anxiety. Unfortunately, doing something you really care about or doing something for people that you really care about can often make us more susceptible to performance anxiety.
I told him about my version of freaking out over being able to light a fire. It’s with preaching. When I first became a pastor I had such intense social anxiety that I couldn’t stand in front of people and read scripture without shaking. When it came to preaching, I would be sick with anxiety for days beforehand and floored with depression for days afterwards. For years, that created the rhythm of my life. I kept at it though, because God wouldn’t let me go and because I loved God and I loved my people.
Over time, I learned to do three things when dealing with performance anxiety that has been a great help to me.
- Recognize that anxious, accusing voice is a lying enemy. It’s not telling the truth, it’s being mean just to be mean, and worst of all it is keeping you from coming through for the people you care about. Recognize it for what it is and ignore it.
- Remember who you are and what you’ve done. Remember, visually remember, all the practice, the work, the training, and the preparation you’ve put into this. Remember all the times you’ve done this thing before. Remember who you are and why you are doing what you’re doing.
- Give it to God. At the end of the day none of us are perfect and none of us can control outcomes. Perfection and outcomes are God’s territory. Even the best woodsman gets lost sometimes or can’t start a fire. Even the best preacher chokes or says something wrong sometimes. It’s just life. And you never know if being lost in the woods is just where God wants you to be at that moment or there is something you need to learn there. You never know if the thing you say in the wrong way is what someone needs to hear or if your imperfection puts someone at ease. God uses all sorts of things to speak to people and there is far more going on in this world than what we are aware of. Give the outcomes to God and leave them there.
I’m really glad I got to have that conversation with my son. I think he got it and I’m glad that some part of my struggles might help him walk through life a little easier. I hope this was helpful for you too.
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