What is Performance Anxiety?

Performance anxiety can affect many aspects of your life and negatively impact all kinds of relationships. However, certain medications can be used to safely and effectively reduce performance anxiety and improve your lifestyle!

You might be wondering what is performance anxiety? This is a broad term that encompasses multiple scenarios which include: sexual performance anxiety (SPA), athletic performance anxiety (APA), and speech performance anxiety.

Learn More About Your Condition

Anxiety is a normal response to stressors and can be useful or detrimental to your well-being.

Anxiety is part of the fight-or-flight sympathetic nervous system response to stress. When anxiety permeates throughout your daily routine or during specific situations that impede on your ability to fully live your life, achieve your goals, develop personal relationships, performance, or be happy it is considered a disorder. There are treatments and psychogenic therapies to help you lead a normal and fruitful life.

There are several types of anxiety disorders which include: panic disorder, specific phobias, agoraphobia, social anxiety disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder. I’ll focus on performance anxiety in the world of competition, speech, personal relationships, and intimacy.

Many patients endorse their inability to have intimacy with their partner or spouse which leads to a spiral of guilt, anxiety, and apprehension towards their relationships. There are no current specific treatments for sexual performance anxiety. Many committed relationships and marriages suffer from this disorder which can have an impact on their relationship.

There are medications that can be used off-label for performance anxiety which include propranolol. This is a beta-blocker most commonly used for blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases but can be safely used at low doses and infrequently to reduce performance anxiety.