I would suggest a holistic approach to looking at anxiety and stress as a whole and how to adopt practices or lifestyle changes to gradually be free from it. When you heal from stress and anxiety in a holistic manner in all facets of your life, performance anxiety will become your ally rather than a foe. Performance anxiety arises before we go into some important performance such as speaking of the stage, attending an interview or writing an exam. It is a natural protective mechanism to keep up focused on the important task at hand without getting distracted and help up remain energised and effective. So it is not advisable to aim to completely overcome it. How will we have motivation and excitement if not for performance anxiety.
However, I do understand your point of view. When performance anxiety comes on top of an already stressed out restless state of mind, it could result in sleeplessness and complete freezing up on stage. This happens because our mind is already over exhausted due to stress and anxiety and on top of it the performance anxiety gets added. We need to look at ways to rest our mind and heal our stress as a holistic way of life instead of just focusing on performance anxiety.
The self care strategies suggested in the article linked below works very effectively for this. Please read it and cultivate a daily habit with it and you will never need any medication for anxiety, performance or otherwise.
Selvan Srinivasan · 2y
What self-care strategies can autistic people use to help them cope with anxiety and/or depression?
It is easy for an autistic person to adopt a specific set of practices and do it regularly everyday. I suggest the following routine or you may take it as a daily ritual and simply follow it for a few months. After that it will become an automatic habit and it will help keep anxiety and/or depression at bay lifelong. In the morning when you wake up, spare 15 minutes to do the following three activities: 1. Three minutes of FGCB (this is explained in the linked answer below). Three minutes of Deep crossing (watch the video and just follow. continue FGCB while doing this). 2. Selvans Deep crossing: https://youtu.be/qq6iKZquuVI 3. Five minutes of eyes open meditation using the guided meditation audio linked below. Selvans Short Meditation – Witnessing the Four Simultaneous Activities: Selvans Short Meditation – Witnessing The 4 Simultaneous Activities Repeat the same set of practices in the afternoon before or after lunch. Repeat the same set of practices once again at night just before bedtime. Everytime you practice these, notice how you are feeling before and compare it with how you are feeling immediately afterwards. Throughout the day with a frequency of once every hour be with activity number 3 listed above. If you don’t have five minutes to spare, you can do this even for one or two minutes. Just do it once every hour. It will not be difficult to spare just one or two minutes for yourself every hour. You need to regularly practice the above routine at least for a few weeks to begin noticing significant improvements in your life. Please do not discontinue just after a few days because nothing is happening.