Skip to main content Skip to footer Performance anxiety can affect anyone, including athletes, professionals, students, and even those navigating intimate relationships. Whether it shows up at stage fright, fear of public speaking, pressure at work for anxiety on Zoom, the experience can feel overwhelming.
Your heart rate is. Your mind blanks. Your body tightens.
Here’s the truth: performance anxiety is not a personal weakness. It’s a brain-body response.
We use brainspotting to help you access and release the deeper patterns driving that response so that you can perform with clarity, confidence and presence.
For many athletes and high performers, performance anxiety can show up in a very specific and frustrating way known as the yips. The yips are sudden, involuntary disruptions in skilled movements such as a golfer a short put, a baseball player unable to throw accurately, or a musician losing fine motor control. Even though the person knows what to do, their body doesn’t cooperate.
This is not a lack of skill or effort. It is a brain-body interference, pattern, rooted in the nervous system. The yips often develop when pressure, past mistakes or fear become encoded in the brain’s emotional and motor systems. Overtime, the brain begins to associate performance with fear, triggering a reflexive response that overrides fluid, automatic movement.
In essence, the body locks up because it is trying to protect you even when there is real no danger.
Brainspotting is a brain-body therapy that helps identify and process the root cause of emotional performance blocks. Instead of just talking about the problem, it helps you access where the stress that is stored in the brain and body.
It is based on key principles:
Performance anxiety lives deep in the brain, especially in the amygdala, your internal alarm system.
This part of the brain:
That’s why you can’t think:
“I’m ready. I practiced.”
… but still, feel:
The yips are an intensified version of the same brain-body dynamic. Instead of just feeling anxious, the nervous system disrupts coordination and timing. This happens because high pressure experiences, especially repeated mistakes or embarrassment that become stored in the subcortical brain. When triggered the body shifts into survival mode, interfering with fine motor control, and automatic performance.
This is why trying harder, thinking more or pushing through often makes the yips worse. The system is already overloaded.
When anxiety is triggered, your brain shifts into survival mode. This reduces activity in the prefrontal cortex, which controls focus, creativity and decision-making. This is why insight alone does not resolve performance anxiety or the yips.
Brainspotting works directly with the subcortical brain and nervous system, where performance anxiety lives.
It helps your brain:
Brainspotting is especially effective for the yips because it targets the exact brain-body patterns that disrupt performance. Instead of trying to correct the movement itself, brainspotting helps process the underlying emotional and neurological imprint that is causing the interference. As the brain releases the stored patterns, performance often returns to more natural, automatic flow without forcing or overthinking.
During a session, therapists track subtle body signals, such as:
These are signs your brain is processing and releasing stored performance stress
Common challenges:
Brainspotting helps you feel grounded, confident, and authentic when speaking
Common challenges:
Brainspotting helps athletes, focus, reaction, time, and flow state
Common challenges:
Brainspotting supports, clear, thinking, confidence, and leadership presence.
How to perform better on Zoom
Virtual environments create unique stress:
Simple Strategies
Common challenges:
Brainspotting helps release:
This allows for presence, safety, and connection
You don’t have to push through performance, anxiety, alone.
Brainspotting offers a deeper, lasting solution.
Depends on your goals. Many people notice meaningful shifts within 3 to 5 sessions, with continued improve improvement overtime.
No. Sessions are carefully guided using titration to keep the process safe and manageable.
EMDR is more structured
Brainspotting is more flexible and led by the client and the client’s mind-body state
Many people find brainspotting feels deeper and more intuitive.
No. You can process performance anxiety without retelling your story in detail or revisiting past traumatic memories.
Yes. Brainspotting is highly effective online.
HIlary Stokes, Ph.D., LCSW is a licensed psychotherapist in California with more than 25 years of clinical experience, specializing in trauma therapy, PTSD treatment, anxiety, depression, and nervous system healing. She holds Master's degrees in Clinical Social Work and Kinesiology and Sports Psychology and a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology with a specialization in Tibetan Buddhist Psychology. Dr. Stokes is extensively trained and certified in brainspotting, EMDR, somatic therapy and other mind body approaches. Her integrative work bridges neuroscience, mindfulness, and holistic psychology to help clients process unresolved trauma, rewire stress patterns, and build emotional resilience.
Dr. Stokes’ clinical approach is informed by advanced professional training and her own healing journey from complex trauma, which shaped her commitment to therapies that go beyond traditional talk therapy. She has worked in psychiatric hospitals, addiction and PTSD treatment centers, universities, integrative medical facilities, and private practice. As co-developer of the psychology and wellness programming at Sanoviv Medical Institute, she witnessed firsthand the power of integrating mind and body for lasting transformation. Today she helps individuals heal trauma, strengthen emotional regulation and reclaim purpose through brainspotting, EMDR, somatic therapy and mindfulness interventions.
Kim Ward, Ph.D. holds both a masters and a doctorate in Transpersonal Psychology with a specialization in Tibetan Buddhist Psychology. She brings more than 25 years of experience in trauma recovery, Brainspotting and mind-body transformation. She is extensively trained and certified in Brainspotting, somatic therapy, and trauma-informed approaches. Dr. Ward integrates neuroscience, nervous system regulation and consciousness-based psychology to help individuals process unresolved trauma, shift limiting beliefs, and access greater emotional resilience. Her work focuses on healing at the root, beyond symptom management, through brain-body therapies that create lasting change.
As co-developer of the psychology and wellness programs at Sanoviv Medical Institute, Dr. Ward brings a uniquely holistic perspective to trauma therapy and personal growth. Her path from corporate leadership into psychology shaped her commitment to helping clients move beyond external success toward embodied fulfillment and emotional freedom. Dr. Ward's expertise combines Brainspotting, emotional intelligence, contemplative psychology and purpose-driven coaching. Drawing from both advanced academic training and lived experience navigating complex family mental health dynamics, she supports clients in transforming stress patterns, reclaiming vitality, and aligning with authentic purpose.
Phone/Fax: (619) 819-6841
Email: contact@authenticityassociates.com
Our office is located in Carlsbad, CA 92009
We also do nationwide sessions via Skype
and FaceTime.
We are offering a FREE 25 minute consultation
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