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Tag: beating stage fright
Stage Fright & ‘American Idol’ Sonika Vaid
One of the standout performers in the final season of “American Idol,” Sonika Vaid, is no stranger to stage fright.
Now that she’s made it into the final stages of the competition, the Martha’s Vineyard native is starting to receive quite a bit of media attention. It includes a profile interview found on the NBC news website. In the piece, the 20-year-old pre-med student talks about her family’s musical heritage and how her mother served as both her vocal and stage coach.
A mother’s love
As NBC tells the story, “her mother would encourage her to pursue opportunities that would forcefully place her in the spotlight, a place Vaid was hesitant to step into.”
Picking up the story, Vaid recounts “In sixth grade, she actually took the initiative to talk to the music program and asked if there were any singing opportunities or a chance to perform onstage and signed me up.”
The remarkable part of Vaid’s story is what happened next.
Fight, flight, or freeze response
For a month, her mother helped the sixth-grade Vaid prepare for her debut at The Meadowbrook School of Weston. The day of the performance, though, performance anxiety struck. The younger Vaid felt sick to her stomach, one the classic symptoms of stage fright.
When our minds sense an imminent danger, it triggers a physiological reaction known as the fight, flight, or freeze response. Adrenalin is released into the bloodstream to prepare the body to take necessary action and blood is shifted away from functions non-vital at the moment. Digestion is one the functions that shuts down, leading to feelings of queasiness or butterflies in the stomach.
Facing stage fright together
Vaid’s mother helped her face her fear on that fateful day by joining her onstage for her debut performance.
Vaid remembers, “That was definitely a turning point of my career, and ever since then I’ve signed myself up and sang and played the piano at the same time, and I just got more comfortable on stage. I’m just so grateful because you know your mom will always have your best interest at heart.”
The ‘American Idol’ star still shows touches of stage fright, even in the series. For example, Annie Barrett of Refinery29 writes about “watching Sonika’s stage fright transmute into tentative power” during a duet with Season 13 winner Caleb Johnson.
Transmutation
Stage fright transmuting into tentative power is a fascinating idea.
Transmute means to change in form, nature, or substance. So what Barrett seems to be saying is that she could sense Vaid experiencing stage fright at the beginning of her duet with Johnson that the contestant transformed into performance power.
Vaid speaks to this herself in a behind-the-scenes interview aired with the duet. “When I found out I was doing a duet with Caleb, I was a little nervous. . . . I struggle a lot with putting myself out there on stage because I’m a little, I’m scared.”
In her head a lot
Johnson, for his part in the interview, gets at the essence with stage fright in a direct way. “She’s got an incredible voice, she’s got a pure voice, but I can tell she’s in her head a lot.”
We get caught up with the negative thoughts in her minds when performance anxiety strikes, especially when we find ourselves outside of our comfort zone. Johnson teases this out of Valid when he asks her if she’s “played out much,” and his duet partner confesses that she’s only performed at relative’s weddings and at her school.
Stage fright triggers
Going from the weddings of relatives and school performances to the”American Idol” stage fright is certainly stepping out of a performer’s comfort zone. Valid’s fear is perfectly understandable, particularly when we keep in mind the two factors that trigger performance anxiety. You do something in front of others and are judged on it or at least, feel you’re being judged.
Forget the last part of that statement. On “Amercian Idol” you don’t feel you’re being judged. That whole idea of the program is that you are judged.
Watch Valid’a duet with Johnson to see for yourself.
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I’d love to hear what you think. Please comment below if you’re inspired to do so.
Anxiety Robs Australian Swimmers at Olympics
The Olympic Games in Rio should have provided Australian swimmers with lots of opportunities for glory. Going into the Games, there was even talk of them winning up to ten gold medals. The actual take turned out to be just a fraction of that.
Backstroke king Mitch Larkin took home one silver medal rather than two gold, freestyle star Cate Campbell came in sixth in 100m freestyle, and Cameron McEvoy came in worse at seventh in the men’s version of the same event. These provided the biggest disappointments for the Aussies, but there were others.
What happened to a team expected to do so much better?
Stage Fright
The head coach of the Australian team, Jacco Verhaeren, chalked up Campbell’s lackluster performance to nerves. He said the same about McEvoy. It was a candid admission.
It’s hard to find a different explanation for well-trained swimmers who had been the fastest in the world earlier in the year.
Is it possible that nerves could spell the difference between putting in a gold-medal performance and finishing as an also-ran? It seems plausible given that the separation in time between one swimmer and the next can be one one-hundredth of a second.
Fight, Flight or Flee
An online Yahoo Sports article about the Australian meltdown points out that both Campbell and McEvoy faltered at the beginning of their races. Campbell “flinched” and McEvoy “froze.” Both are classic symptoms of the fight, flight or freeze response associated with stage fright and other forms of performance anxiety, including the type of competition anxiety that athletes experience.
But why would the performance of Campbell and McEvoy be compromised by stage fright at the Olympics and not other competitions?
Three Criteria
As I explain in Understanding Stage Fright, three criteria are at play when performance anxiety strikes.
- You do something in front of others (an audience)
- They judge you on it (or at least you feel you’re being judged)
- The judgment constitutes some sort of threat
The first two of these criteria are certainly at play at the Olympics. Athletes perform for a worldwide audience of millions and judged on their performance down to the fraction of a second.
What varies from one athlete to the next is to what extent that judgment constitutes a threat (if you don’t do well). You can see in the relaxed demeanor of, say, a Usain Bolt before a race, that he feels no threat at all. Nor should he. After all, he’s proven time and again that he’s the fastest man on the planet.
For whatever reason, Campbell and McEvoy saw their races as constituting an elevated threat. And who can blame them? The hopes and dreams of an entire nation were riding on their backs in front of a worldwide audience.
Not Just Australian Swimmers
Competition anxiety likely plays a bigger role in determining the results at the Olympics than we realize. Television announcers occasionally make reference to it and a candid coach or athlete will sometimes fess up. However, it goes largely unrecognized, just as it does in other sporting events.
What do you think? Have you ever suffered from competition anxiety? Feel free to comment below.