How do many of you deal with performance anxiety?

I am the same! All of a sudden numerous mistakes, even if my husband just walks in the room. I never perform to friends for this reason. I'm trying to get used to a 'sense' of performing by recording myself, but even that ends up with more mistakes than practice! V frustrating, & you're not alone with it.

I focus on the music I’m creating, not on the audience. When I do that, I only care about the music itself, and I don’t get nervous. I recommend the book Beyond the Keys by JeeYoon Kim.

As a hypnotist I work with a lot of people on performance anxiety (both music and presenting/public speaking)...it's a very common thing. Here are some things that work well for most of my clients:

1. Decide how you want to feel when playing the piano. Of course you're probably going to have a lot of feelings, but what do you want your basic state to be? For example,  'open and focused', or 'calm and connected'. Now sit down at the piano, close your eyes and think of a time when you felt that way. Intensify the feeling, make it super vivid, give it a colour and visualise that colour going to your dominant hand. Touch the piano with with that hand and visualise the same colour flooding your body and giving you that feeling. Do it a couple of times to solidify the feeling and tell your nervous system that this is how you feel when you sit down to play. (This is called 'creating an anchor' if you want to look it up). 

2. Yvonne Choi already mentioned this: focus not on the audience, but on the music, the gift you're giving them in being a channel for whatever wonderful piece you're playing. 

3. Practice playing for others in a friendly setting. Organise an informal 'concert' for your neighbours. Ask them to feel free to cough, bring small kids or dogs, etc. This way you can train your nervous system to not be distracted by whatever's going on. And you may be surprised how much fun it is! 

4. Never ever be mean to yourself when you make a mistake. It's counterproductive - it's like training a dog by beating it. Should you slip up, just keep breathing and pick things back up in whatever way you can. This tells your nervous system that it's OK to risk performing, that there is no harsh punishment waiting but the joy of sharing music instead. 

Hope this helps, and, yes, as an intermediate amateur pianist who also happens to be a hypnotist I do still get nervous before performing - but that's not a problem. I just try to open up and do my best. 

I totally feel the same way. I have to say that I have gotten better in the last year. When I say better I mean it was horrible in the past and now just not as severe as before. I watched and read so many streams and articles on this topic. But for me personally the few things that really help are: 1. Practice playing for others. Agree with starting in low pressure setting. I always signed up for the high pressure one here in tonebase community concert too and still keep messing up big time. But I am doing better with the low pressure one than before. So I figured it helps. 2. I tried David Cheng method of cold start. Play the piece you want to perform every day without warm up. If you can play through that day after day, you get better in playing through mistakes. It doesn’t matter if you have cold hands or if you just rush home from somewhere else. It helps you simulate how you may mess up and learn to fix it. 3. Pre plan jump off points when you inevitably have memory lapse or big mess up. 

If anyone is ever interested in forming a small zoom group so we can regularly play for each other, please let me know. I have very few people that I can play for, so I am always looking for low pressure setting to get more practices.