Anxiety
Behavioral Experiment for Overcoming Performance Anxiety
The client avoids a specific performance situation due to a catastrophic prediction about the.
When your client is stalled by performance anxiety, it’s often because a single, catastrophic prediction feels like an absolute certainty. Their expectation of humiliation or failure in a specific situation is so strong that avoidance seems like the only sensible choice. The belief itself becomes the primary obstacle, preventing them from taking the very action they need to advance.
This task moves the work from discussion into direct experience, treating the client’s prediction as a hypothesis to be tested. It guides them to collect firsthand evidence in a structured, manageable way, targeting the belief at its source. Your client returns not with an argument against their fear, but with direct, personal data that can fundamentally alter their perspective.
Behavioral Experiment for Overcoming Performance Anxiety
Identify one performance situation you are avoiding because of a negative prediction. Before you do anything, complete the first two columns of the table below.
First, write down your specific prediction of what will happen. Rate your belief in this prediction from 0% (impossible) to 100% (certain).
Second, design and write down a small, concrete action you can take to test this prediction. This is your experiment. It must be something you can do before we next meet.
After you have completed the experiment, fill in the last two columns. Describe what actually happened and what you can conclude from the result.
| My Prediction (Belief: ___%) | The Experiment (My specific action) | The Actual Outcome (What happened) | What I Learned (From the difference) |
|---|---|---|---|
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