Help with narrative of subjective experience of stage fright

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X-No-Archive: YesI'm trying to explain to someone the experience of stage fright. I believe understanding how it manifests as several discernible "symptoms" helps one deal with it. While I understand what it's like to experience stage fright, I'm having a hard time explaining the experience clearly. Some parts of the experience is easy to describe, like muscular tension, others are less easily communicated accurately. Can someone help me put together a narrative of the experience of stage fright? Ideally, it should use language that is understand the same way by almost everyone, rather than rely heavily on figurative language. Thanks.

Usenet · Accepted Answer

[nq:1]I'm trying to explain to someone the experience of stage fright. I believe understanding how it manifests as several discernible ... should use language that is understand the same way by almost everyone, rather than rely heavily on figurative language. Thanks.[/nq]
1. You may be trying to do too much, if you try to listall possible varieties of stage fright. A simple functional definition seems possible: that stage fright is whatever emotional stress that reduces the quality of a public performance (any type of public performance) to a level significantly below that possible with no such stress or without an audience.
2. If determined to collect a range of types of stage fright,you will find accounts in some biographies and autobiographies of performers (especially actors and musicians.)

Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)

Usenet · Answer

X-No-Archive: Yes
[nq:2]I'm trying to explain to someone the experience of stage ... almost everyone, rather than rely heavily on figurative language. Thanks.[/nq]
[nq:1]1. You may be trying to do too much, if you try to list all possible varieties of stage fright. ... (any type of public performance) to a level significantly below that possible with no such stress or without an audience.[/nq]
I'm not trying to define stage fright. Like most people, the person to whom I was trying to explain the experience already knows what it is, and what it is like intuitively. To me, stage fright is not a singular, amorphous sensation but manifests as several distinguishable "symptoms" (for lack of a better word). I believe that an articulate description of the experience would help a sufferer overcome it. When you explain to someone that a part of what he/she experience as stage fright is actually muscular tension, it helps the person recognize and relax the tension in his/her muscles. (In my experience, consciously relaxing tensed muscles actually can make one feel calmer.)
Another part of the stage fright experience is feeling overwhelmed. This is something that I can only try to explain using a metaphor. Think of a person as an airplane if you will. The brain is the pilot sitting in the cockpit. Just like a pilot controlling the airplane in response to instrument readings, the human brain controls the body in response (in part) to sensory inputs. The radar of an airplane can be likened to visual sensory input, and the radio audio input, etc.

The way I would describe it, the mind feeling overwhelmed is like a pilot seeing dozens of warning lights blinking at the same time: each one is urging or even demanding you to take some action, but it's not obvious what you should or need to do. In the case of stage fright, the metaphorical warning lights are blinking in one's head, except that there's no emergency and no response is needed. These signals/urges/impulses (I can't seem to find the right word here) serve no useful purpose other than to distract the person from his/her performance, and to give the person an unexplained sense of urgency(?) to do some unknown something.

I think recognizing this helps a person learn to ignore those metaphorical blinking lights in the head.
The above is my attempt at an description of the subjective experience. I was hoping that someone more skilled with words can help me come up with a better/more accurate one.

Help with narrative of subjective experience of stage fright

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