The Invisible Brake: How Brainspotting Helps Women Move Past Performance Anxiety
You know the feeling.
You’ve prepared. You’re qualified. You care deeply about what you’re about to do. A presentation, an interview, a performance, a conversation that matters.
And then, just as you begin—something inside you pulls the brake.
Not visibly. Not dramatically. But enough to make you feel like you can’t access what you know is there. The words. The confidence. The creativity. The presence.
It’s like your brain and body stopped talking to each other.
The Invisible Wall of Performance Anxiety
Performance anxiety isn’t just stage fright. It can show up in meetings, interviews, auditions, first dates, or even social gatherings where you want to connect but feel locked behind glass. You’re aware of what you want to say or do, but something gets in the way.
It can happen on the field or in the gym, too. You’ve trained, you’re capable—and then your body doesn’t cooperate. Your movements tighten, your reactions slow, and suddenly, you’re in your head instead of in flow.
And often, it’s not about lack of preparation or ability. It’s about how your nervous system reacts when you feel exposed or evaluated.
You might:
Freeze up or go blank mid-sentence
Hear your voice tighten or shake
Overthink every word before and after you speak
Feel your heart race and your stomach drop for hours beforehand
Avoid opportunities you actually want, just to avoid the discomfort
Feel physically off—tension, nausea, or heaviness when it’s time to perform
You know it doesn’t make sense. But that doesn’t make it easier to change.
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Why Coping Skills Aren’t Always Enough
Traditional coping strategies often focus on surface-level support: breathing exercises, visualization, grounding. These can help in the moment—sometimes. But when the anxiety is tied to something deeper, logic doesn’t always reach it.
That’s because performance anxiety isn’t just about the present moment. It’s often rooted in your past experiences.
Maybe you were criticized for speaking up. Maybe you learned early on that being visible wasn’t safe. Maybe you internalized the belief that messing up meant something about your worth. Maybe your achievements were the only way you received attention.
Even if you don’t remember where it started, your nervous system does.
This is especially true for women in midlife, who’ve spent years balancing responsibilities, emotions, and expectations—professionally, emotionally, relationally—often without space to pause. It’s not that you don’t want to show up. It’s that something in your system braces every time you try.
How Brainspotting Helps
Brainspotting is a powerful, brain-based approach that works with where anxiety actually lives: your subcortical brain and nervous system. It uses fixed eye positions to access areas of the brain where emotional experiences are stored—even the ones you can’t articulate.
In a Brainspotting session, we don’t analyze your anxiety. We don’t force it away. Instead, we locate it in the body and gently stay with it, allowing your system to process the stuck emotion and sensation at its own pace.
Clients often describe it as uncovering something they didn’t realize they were holding. And then, letting it go.
Over time, Brainspotting helps:
Release the emotional charge tied to performance situations
Restore your sense of internal safety when it matters most
Reconnect you to your voice, clarity, and creativity
Shift your body’s response so that visibility no longer feels threatening
Whether your anxiety shows up at the mic, in front of a boardroom, on the page, during an audition, in the gym, or just across the table from someone you want to impress—it’s not just in your head. And you don’t have to live with that tension forever.
Brainspotting reaches the places that can’t be accessed by talking alone.
You Don’t Have to Keep Bracing Every Time It’s Your Turn
Performance anxiety doesn’t mean you’re not capable.
It means something in your system is trying to protect you—even if the danger isn’t here anymore.
When you’re in it, it can feel like a betrayal of everything you know about yourself. You know your material. You’ve practiced. You’ve succeeded before. And yet, the familiar wave of anxiety rolls in, uninvited.
It’s not weakness. It’s not failure. It’s a response.
With the right support, it becomes possible to step into moments that matter without shutting down or going numb. It becomes possible to show up fully.
If you’re tired of knowing you can—but not being able to when it counts—Brainspotting may be the path to reconnecting with yourself.