Coping with Anxiety and Nervousness During Competition

Welcome to session number 70 of the Tennis Psychology Podcast. Hi, I'm Dr. Patrick Cohn, and in today's session, I help a player that doesn't have confidence in her strokes and gets so nervous it doesn't feel like herself when she's playing in competition.

I feel insanely nervous before and during a match. I think it has to do with the confidence in my shots. Why do I feel like I've never swung a tennis racket when I'm so nervous?

Well, I know, working from many, many athletes over the years, that anxiety or nervousness and confidence are kind of polar opposites. If you don't have full confidence in your game, it's a heck of a lot easier to get anxious or nervous because you're worried about how the outcome is going to be. Remember, anxiety and nervousness is usually directed at something in the future. You're worried about losing to an opponent, maybe who you think you should beat, or you're worried about embarrassing yourself, or you're worried that, like you said, your shots aren't going to be there, that you don't have confidence or trust in your actual shots. When you're nervous, your strokes are going to feel much different than when you're relaxed and you're in a regular setting. And it happens to a lot of players when they go from a practice situation to a competitive situation, they tend to get nervous, tighten up, worry about results. As I said, have what I call fear of failure. And ultimately it. The strokes don't feel the same. It's like I've heard players say, I don't feel like it's myself out there. It's a different person out there playing. But you have to remember that it's not just about the tension. It's ultimately about what it is that you're fearing. So fearing of hitting bad shots, to me, because your strokes aren't in order or you don't have full confidence in your strokes really isn't the bottom line here. Ultimately, it's the fear of making mistakes, which leads to the fear of maybe losing, which leads to maybe the fear of embarrassment or disappointing someone else. So you can see if you chain it out and kind of look at what's the ultimate fear underlying the fear of failure and the anxiety here, there's other issues you have to consider. So it's a little bit more complex than what you would think of on the surface. I'm nervous, I get tight, my strokes don't feel the same. Basically, you have to look at it from the perspective, okay, I don't want to disappoint a parent. I don't want to disappoint my coach, or I don't want to disappoint my teammate. Playing in doubles, you have to approach it from that perspective and be able to deal with the fear head on. If you're worried about embarrassment, that says that there's some social approval issues going on and you have to be able to let go of what others think about your game. Interestingly, a lot of the times what I find out is fear of failure is often driven by this need to want to be accepted, respected, like or approved of by other people, which we call social approval. So you might want to think about some of those scenarios. Are you worried about disappointing someone, or are you trying to gain the respect of a certain group at your club or in your circles of tennis? Thanks for the question, and good luck with your game.