Centuries of cultural, religious and social conditioning have corrupted our perceptions of fear. Fear is not something that can be “crushed”, “conquered”, “defeated” or “overcome”. Likewise, it cannot be ignored or “willed” away. These “motivational tactics” and catch phrases have clouded our judgment and kept us from properly preparing for the moment when we hit a wall in our development, and are held back from embracing our greatness by crippling immobility and indecisiveness. 

Before you can ever begin to perform with confidence, you must first learn to understand your fear, as fully and completely as possible. Then, and only then, will you be able to outperform your fears. 

While mine is not a comprehensive or final say in the area of performance psychology, it is a collective work based off of years of theoretical research and empirical research performed every day while coaching. It is a methodology that is constantly evolving and being refined as I am continuously seeking how to help you and your athletes better understand their fears and outperform their performance anxieties. With that being said, let’s get to the question that brought you here in the first place:

Does my athlete have a mental block? 

The reason us humans have erroneously associated a “mental block” with an inability to perform a physical action is due to our brain’s ability to call other physiological responses into action when trying to use fear to discourage your intended course of action. Fear is an interesting beast because it is psychological, biological AND emotional. From a biological standpoint, fear is VERY necessary to our survival as humans. Working off association, the brain learns to take shortcuts allowing us to process information faster and get from thought to action much quicker. The fear circuit in our brains is an extra special shortcut that allows dangerous stimuli to bypass parts of the brain normally involved in sensory processing. It is the only biochemical response that has the ability to bypass the sensory cortex (the brain’s sensory processing center) and head straight to the amygdala (the emotional processing center). This is a unique feature of fear, in which it can bypass the act of processing information and go straight to action.

This is what is commonly referred to as “fight or flight”, a physiological reaction that happens within the body in which hormones are released to prime the body for action (we can talk about why I believe the term “fight or flight” to be rhetorically flawed another time :D). This is where the confusion of what is and is not a mental block happens. 

Enter the term “performance anxiety”. What you or your athlete is experiencing is not a “mental block”, but instead is a “performance anxiety”, which is an incredibly important term to begin using to describe your reluctance to execute a certain skill due to a heightened perceived stress level. 

Typically defined as “an unpleasant psychological state in reaction to perceived stress concerning the performance of a task under pressure”, anxiety is a VERY common emotional state experienced by athletes at all levels of performance. The medical definition of anxiety describes it as, “a state consisting of psychological and physical symptoms brought about by a sense of apprehension of a perceived threat”. It also goes on to state that anxiety can differ according to the situation and the individual.

Fear is the link between these psychological and physical symptoms. Psychological fear has the unique ability among all of the body’s biochemical responses to manifest itself in physical form. Have you ever gone to perform your skill and began sweating, shaking, or tearing up? What about fighting the urge to cry, out of frustration and confusion? What about your heart, has it ever started beating hard? How about your breathing? Has it ever suddenly gotten harder to breathe while standing there, trying to perform your skill? If you’ve ever experienced any of these symptoms, you now know why! Your brain is trying to confuse your rational, logical mind by causing physical reactions to your illogical, irrational fear.

Enter the term “performance anxiety”. What you or your athlete is experiencing is not a “mental block”, but instead is a “performance anxiety”, which is an incredibly important term to begin using to describe your reluctance to execute a certain skill due to a heightened perceived stress level. 

Typically defined as “an unpleasant psychological state in reaction to perceived stress concerning the performance of a task under pressure”, anxiety is a VERY common emotional state experienced by athletes at all levels of performance. The medical definition of anxiety describes it as, “a state consisting of psychological and physical symptoms brought about by a sense of apprehension of a perceived threat”. It also goes on to state that anxiety can differ according to the situation and the individual.

Fear is the link between these psychological and physical symptoms. Psychological fear has the unique ability among all of the body’s biochemical responses to manifest itself in physical form. Have you ever gone to perform your skill and began sweating, shaking, or tearing up? What about fighting the urge to cry, out of frustration and confusion? What about your heart, has it ever started beating hard? How about your breathing? Has it ever suddenly gotten harder to breathe while standing there, trying to perform your skill? If you’ve ever experienced any of these symptoms, you now know why! Your brain is trying to confuse your rational, logical mind by causing physical reactions to your illogical, irrational fear.

Fear is the link between these psychological and physical symptoms. Psychological fear has the unique ability among all of the body’s biochemical responses to manifest itself in physical form. Have you ever gone to perform your skill and began sweating, shaking, or tearing up? What about fighting the urge to cry, out of frustration and confusion? What about your heart, has it ever started beating hard? How about your breathing? Has it ever suddenly gotten harder to breathe while standing there, trying to perform your skill? If you’ve ever experienced any of these symptoms, you now know why! Your brain is trying to confuse your rational, logical mind by causing physical reactions to your illogical, irrational fear.

First of all, great job! You are now starting to understand how to get to a point where your focus should no longer be to “overcome”, “conquer” or get rid of your fear. Why? Because that’s impossible! Fear is intrinsically woven into our DNA as human beings.

Biologically speaking, fear is there to warn us of “clear and present” dangers, things we should avoid as they will most likely end with us getting injured or killed if we don’t change our intended course of action. The most important takeaway here is that biological fear is a result of a clear and present danger.

Psychologically speaking, fear is an irrational response to discomfort, or any thing the brain perceives will cause us discomfort or distress. This is usually a response to us trying something new, different or unfamiliar. If the brain is an ancient calculator, constantly calculating our odds of success and failure based on the level of risk it perceives, then “new” and “unfamiliar” are always going to run a higher level of risk! So “new” to the brain is always to be avoided if it causes us any form of discomfort or distress. But this feeling we experience when trying or facing something new can also be a great indication of when you’re about to step out of your comfort zone and try something amazing!

New doesn’t always have to be something scary. It can be an indication of you about to step into the next stage of your development as an individual and athlete, and a step towards embracing the greatness you were designed for! Fear is not something you can get rid of, and psychological fear is your brain’s response to discomfort, distress and low confidence. If we can seek to understand more, we can learn to recognize our acute stress responses that trigger our performance anxiety, and gain a greater understanding of oursleves and our abilities. In a way, we can learn to fear fear itself less! The more you work to understand your fear, and the more often you do so, the greater your confidence will be in understanding that fear. With greater understanding and confidence, we can outperform ANY fear!