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- Performance Anxiety
- By: DANA KIM
There are many reasons as to why people suffer from anxiety disorders. However, recent studies have pointed out that any anxiety disorder is a curious blend of psychological, biological and environmental effects and there are treatments to heal each of these. Performance anxiety disorder is not an exception here. Performance, which is specific, anxiety disorder is particularly a variant of social anxiety disorder, whereby people suffer a lot of anxiousness when faced with performance situations in their daily life. Although many people often suffer anxiety when faced with such situations, people suffering from the particular disorder suffer heightened anxiety, which is beyond the normal level.However, most of the people suffering from performance anxiety disorder take up roles very casually when they perform it alone. The problem begins when they are expected to perform the same roles in public, where they get extremely anxious and undergo serious nervous convulsions. They become uncomfortable, nervous, and anxious and fear being scrutinized by others. Some of the instance when one is vulnerable to undergo performance anxiety spasms are while giving public performances, such as reading, singing, dancing, presenting business reports, etc. Unlike the general anxiety disorders, where people suffer heightened anxiety irrespective of the situation, performance anxiety disorder is a little milder and people suffer from this only at given situations.
Although performance anxiety disorder does not directly have any medical implications, a person, suffering from the disorder and who is supposed to perform publicly, may indulge in the intake of serious anti-depressants and stress-relief drugs that may cause harm to their physical well-being. The symptoms here particularly resonate those of general anxiety disorders, including sweating, palpitation, trembling and so on. However, performance anxiety is more predictable than general anxiety disorders, where you know when one might have an attack.
Although the treatment of performance anxiety disorder will differ with each case, the usual therapy involves a balanced integration of medication and behavior therapy. While at one hand, the stress relief medication are aimed at calming the people down, behavior therapy counsels the patient into believing that performance situations are only an unavoidable fact of life. This builds up the patient's self esteem and has a convincing effect on one for developing his or her skill to cope up with situations in life. The later also helps the patient to deal with one's stress, anger, fear, etc better. Mostly visible among teenagers, starting to interact with people, performance anxiety disorder should be checked at its nascent stage, before it takes on serious dimensions.
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