Despite your best practice, preparation, and intentions, do you ever worry you’ll still mess up? You’re not alone! Performance anxiety takes multiple forms including somatic anxiety, your body’s reaction to a challenging situation, and cognitive anxiety, your worry thoughts and other negative thoughts about failing to perform. You may have thought to yourself or heard from someone else “Just don’t worry!” Evidence shows that trying not to think about something like worry, also known as thought suppression, backfires, paradoxically leading to increased negative thinking and much worse performance.
How to Prevent Others From Worrying Too Much
Coaches in particular can reduce paradoxical effects on sport performance by emphasizing and teaching what to do instead of what not to do. Statements like “Don’t Worry,” “Don’t Fall,” “Don’t Miss,” teach people to focus on mistakes. Keep it positive instead, focus on goals, and teach the skills that help performers achieve them.
How to Help Others Who Worry Anyway
If you’re trying to help someone who worries or has other negative thoughts, DO NOT move immediately to simple problem-solving with statements like “look at the bright side,” “at least you can perform,” “just get over it,” “just don’t worry,” “you should…,” or other “at leasts…” and “just….” Despite your best intentions, these encouragements often backfire because they sound invalidating, showing you’ve skipped the listening and understanding process and rushed to solutions. They oversimplify the situation and are not likely to help. For more, learn how to validate and check out Kate Hays’ one-two method.
How to Help Yourself With Worry & Recover
If you’re trying to help yourself with worry, you may experience similar thoughts like these “justs,” “at leasts,” or “should” statements, which we call self-invalidation. Instead of buying into them, trying to be kind to yourself, validate yourself, practice self-compassion, and move on. You can also…
Replace this pattern:
1. negative thought, 2. invalidation, 3. thought suppression…
With this pattern:
1. negative thought, 2. validation (normalization), 3. acceptance/refocus or 4. challenge/reframe/refocus.
Worry Shows You Care
Worry thoughts are part of life. They show you care about something enough to worry about it. It’s how you handle these thoughts and recover that matters. Start by normalizing and other ways of validating yourself. Work hard, practice better focus, adopt a positive mindset, and be prepared for negative thoughts and worries to come up. When they do, know that they’re normal, don’t take them too seriously, acknowledge them and challenge them or move on, refocus, and perform.
References
Beilock, S. L., Afremow, J. A., Rabe, A. L., & Carr, T. H. (2001). “Don’t miss!” The debilitating effects of suppressive imagery on golf putting performance. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 23(3), 200-221.
Janelle, C. M. (1999). Ironic mental processes in sport: Implications for sport psychologists. The Sport Psychologist, 13(2), 201-220.
Wenzlaff, R. M., & Wegner, D. M. (2000). Thought suppression. Annual review of psychology, 51(1), 59-91.
