“What if Anxiety Isn’t the Enemy? How Embracing It Could Be the Key to Your Best Performance Yet”
I remember my first experience with anxiety vividly. It was my first official solo performance, and I made the rookie mistake of inviting everyone who might have an opinion—literally everyone. It felt like I had crafted the perfect recipe for disaster: cracked voice, forgotten lyrics, and all the while, a looming cloud of judgment. I was physically sick before going on stage, and time seemed to dissolve as I spiraled into a kind of personal abyss.
Anxiety had me in a chokehold. But somehow, as I was about to step on stage, I remembered a little trick: focus on where the anxiety lives in your body. I started paying attention to the physical sensations and allowed myself to feel them. I wasn’t avoiding it; instead, I was tuning in and talking to it, acknowledging its presence. Oddly enough, that helped.
By reframing my anxiety as adrenaline, I found a way to channel it. You see, I stopped treating it as an adversary and started seeing it as fuel. The moment I recognized it wasn’t some monster under my bed but rather adrenaline coursing through my veins, I found a new kind of freedom. My focus sharpened, and I could even feel a hint of excitement brewing underneath the fear.
The Counterintuitive Power of Acknowledging Anxiety
Our natural response to anxiety is usually avoidance, but what if that’s precisely the wrong approach? By facing it head-on, you give it space to exist without letting it take control. I didn’t try to squash the anxiety; I spoke to it, acknowledged it, and fed it what it needed. It turns out that anxiety isn’t some insurmountable beast. Once you give it a seat at the table, it shrinks to a size you can handle. It even started to feel more like adrenaline—a familiar companion that I could work with, rather than against.
Transforming Fear into Playfulness with Voice and Movement
In Voice Movement Immersion (VMI), we take this idea even further. Anxiety becomes a doorway to something playful, a starting point rather than a dead end. The secret lies in harnessing that nervous energy and transforming it through voice and movement. When you give yourself permission to vocalize without worrying about sounding “right,” and to move without caring how it looks, you create a space where anxiety can’t control you.
Think about it: anxiety is a tightly coiled spring of energy. Rather than trying to bottle it up, what if you let it burst forth? You turn that tension into sound, into movement, into something alive and unpredictable. You’re not escaping the anxiety; you’re transmuting it. You’re dancing with it, playing with it, letting it fuel your expression in ways that surprise even you.
The Magic of Physical Focus
One of the most powerful tools in this transformation is something incredibly simple: paying attention to where you feel anxiety physically. That queasy stomach, those sweaty palms—they’re not signs of weakness. They’re physical manifestations of energy that can be directed. When you focus on these sensations and talk to them, as I did, you stop being a passive participant in your experience. You take an active role, shifting from victim to alchemist.
It’s a fascinating shift when you stop seeing anxiety as the enemy and start treating it as a resource. This isn’t about ignoring or suppressing it; it’s about embracing it with curiosity. It’s like meeting a stranger at a party who seems intimidating, only to realize they’re surprisingly good company once you start a conversation.
From Terror to Transformation
Anxiety will always show up uninvited. But if you can make friends with it, you can turn it into something useful, maybe even exhilarating. Just as Adele channels her pre-show panic into performances that resonate deeply, you too can transform your anxiety into something that fuels your creativity. By tuning in to the physical sensations and giving them a voice and movement, you start to see that anxiety is just a reminder that you’re alive, that you’re here, and that you have the power to choose what to do with it.
So next time you feel anxiety creeping in, don’t shush it away. Acknowledge it, play with it, let it add color to your voice and movement. You’ll find that the monster isn’t quite so scary when you realize it’s been holding a gift for you all along: the chance to discover a new side of yourself, one that’s vibrant, resilient, and incredibly alive.
Randolph Matthews
