According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, a staggering 31.9% of adolescents and 40 million adults are affected by anxiety disorders annually. Feeling anxious and worried about your performance and social situations is understandable. However, performance anxiety doesn’t have to hold you back or prevent you from being successful. There are many effective and scientifically-backed techniques that can help young professionals manage and overcome anxiety.
Maks Ezrin, founder and CEO of Youth Prevention Mentors, provides in-home support for young professionals grappling with performance anxiety and other mental hurdles.
Performance anxiety is a common struggle for many young professionals starting their careers, but it … [+]
Ezrin says, “Performance anxiety, depression, substance use disorder, and executive dysfunction are often outward manifestations of unresolved internal issues.” It is through Youth Prevention Mentor’s customized and robust approach that they are able to help young adults and adolescents navigate these issues. They use several science-backed techniques to help their young adult clients struggling with performance anxiety. Those are listed below along with ways you can take advantage of these yourself.
Achieve Flow States
Research shows that activities that induce a state of flow—intense focus and absorption in a challenging task—cause the brain’s self-monitoring centers to deactivate. This ‘flow state’ effectively silences your inner critic and allows complete immersion in the task or activity at hand without self-judgment.
Seek out leisure activities like cooking, gardening, writing, cleaning, or exercise that fully engage your skills at an optimal level. The more time you spend activating flow states, the less mental bandwidth anxiety has to creep in.
Opposite Action
When anxiety drives you toward avoidance or isolation, force yourself to do the opposite. If a work social event seems too nerve-wracking and uncomfortable, make yourself attend and actively chat with colleagues. Leaning into social challenges that provoke anxiety, rather than running from them, counterintuitively builds confidence and self-efficacy over time. It may feel extremely uncomfortable at first, but the opposite action progressively loosens anxiety’s grip.
Thought Flagging
Anxiety frequently fuels recurring negative thoughts and cognitive distortions. Thought flagging involves noticing these anxious thought patterns when they arise and objectively labeling them. For example, instead of spiraling about a mistake and overthinking what could go wrong, you’d say, “There’s my perfectionism thought again” or “I’m catastrophizing about my presentation.” Simply recognizing and naming thoughts like “I’m going to completely mess up my work presentation” helps diffuse their power and emotional charge. Flagging anxious thoughts consistently builds self-awareness and weakens their influence.
Thought Acceptance
Accepting anxious thoughts as they come is often more effective than desperately trying to suppress them. Research shows that suppression often backfires, causing thoughts to rebound. Meaning, the more you force anxious thoughts away, the more your mind fixates on them. Acceptance means acknowledging recurring thoughts without judgment or emotional reaction, allowing them to pass through your mind fluidly. Fighting and struggling with thoughts only seems to make them more prominent.
Paradoxical Intention
With this approach, you use humor and reverse psychology to undermine your fears. If you’re anxious about an important work presentation, spend time vividly imagining messing up in exaggerated, absurd ways—fumbling over words, using the wrong slides, even face-planting on stage. Surprisingly, visualizing worst-case scenarios often takes the paralyzing pressure off perfectionism and increases confidence and performance. Subvert anxious thoughts through exaggeration and laughing at their irrationality.
Cognitive Reframing
Anxiety distorts thinking through cognitive biases like catastrophizing, black-and-white thinking, and magnifying negatives. Reframing involves consciously challenging distorted, anxious thoughts and purposefully adjusting your perspective. If you irrationally frame an upcoming performance review as a total catastrophe, take a step back and re-evaluate by recalling the accomplishments and value you’ve provided your team throughout the year. Reframing builds resilience against anxiety’s warped mental filters.
Positive Self-Talk
The way you talk to yourself directly impacts self-esteem, motivation, and problem-solving capability. Make an effort to speak to yourself with the same compassion, acceptance, and emotional support you would offer a close friend struggling with anxiety.
Intentionally write out and repeat empowering affirmations, remind yourself of past successes, and balance negative thoughts with positive ones. Changing self-talk habits fosters confidence, focus, and optimal mental performance. You can’t truly become your own best ally until you start speaking to yourself as one.
Performance anxiety is often the mind’s way of saying you’re ready to grow and expand beyond your comfort zone. Techniques like these equip you with tools to face anxiety with courage and proactive self-care rather than avoidance. With time and practice, anxiety evolves from a barrier to a beacon guiding the way to new professional and personal fulfillment. With practice, you can begin to live and lead with intention.
