Butterflies, Breathwork, and the Moment I Stopped Fighting My Nerves Onstage
I remember standing in the wings of a community theater in Ohio, absolutely convinced I was going to pass out before my cue. My hands were cold. My mouth was dry. I could hear the audience settling into their seats, the low hum of a hundred conversations, and all I could think was: Why do I keep doing this to myself?
That was me at twenty-three. And honestly? Some version of that scene played out for years — different stages, different cities, same spiral of dread.
But here's the thing nobody told me back then: that feeling didn't mean I was failing. It meant I cared. And once I figured out how to stop treating my nerves like an intruder and start treating them like a collaborator, everything shifted.
The Lie I Believed About Confidence
For a long time, I thought confident performers were people who simply didn't get nervous. I'd watch someone walk onstage with this easy, open energy and assume they had some internal dial set to "cool" that I'd somehow been born without.
That's a comforting story, but it's completely wrong.
Almost every performer I've spoken with — comedians, singers, storytellers, actors — admits to some level of pre-show anxiety. The difference isn't the absence of nerves. It's the relationship they've built with those nerves over time. Confidence, I've come to believe, isn't a feeling. It's a practice. And for me, that practice started with getting honest about what was actually happening in my body before I went onstage.
What the Research Actually Says (And Why It Helped Me)
A few years back, I stumbled across research out of Harvard Business School — psychologist Alison Wood Brooks found that telling yourself "I am excited" before a high-pressure performance actually improves outcomes more than trying to calm yourself down. The reason? Anxiety and excitement are physiologically almost identical. Same racing heart, same heightened alertness, same surge of adrenaline. The only real difference is the story you attach to those sensations.
That reframe was genuinely life-changing for me. Instead of standing in the wings thinking I'm terrified, I started whispering to myself I'm ready. I'm fired up. Let's go. It sounds almost too simple, but that tiny linguistic shift started loosening something I'd been holding tight for years.
The Pre-Show Ritual That Actually Works for Me
I'm a big believer in rituals — not superstitious ones (well, okay, maybe a little), but intentional practices that signal to your nervous system that you're safe and prepared. Here's what my pre-show routine looks like now:
Box breathing, four rounds minimum. Inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. It sounds clinical, but it genuinely slows the physiological panic response. I do this in whatever quiet corner I can find, even if that's a bathroom stall.
A physical warm-up that isn't just vocal. Shaking out my hands, rolling my shoulders, doing a few jumping jacks — something that burns off the excess adrenaline before it turns into tension. Your body wants to do something with all that energy. Give it an outlet.
A grounding statement. Mine is embarrassingly simple: "The audience wants you to succeed." Because it's true. Nobody pays for a ticket hoping the performer tanks. Remembering that the room is on my side dissolves a huge chunk of the adversarial feeling I used to carry into every performance.
One genuine laugh. I'll text a friend something ridiculous, watch a thirty-second clip of something funny, or just crack a dumb joke with whoever's backstage. Laughter is a full-body reset, and it's hard to stay locked in anxiety after a real belly laugh.
The Deeper Shift: Vulnerability as a Superpower
Here's what I've learned after years of telling stories onstage: audiences don't connect with perfection. They connect with presence. And presence, real presence, requires a certain amount of vulnerability — which, it turns out, is basically just managed nervousness wearing a different outfit.
When I stopped trying to perform through my anxiety and started letting it live in my body as energy, something unexpected happened. My storytelling got more honest. The pauses felt more real. The moments of humor landed harder because I wasn't working so hard to appear unaffected.
I think about it like this: a tightly strung guitar string produces a clearer note than a loose one. The tension isn't the problem — it's the source of the resonance. My nerves are that tension. They tell me the stakes are real, that the work matters, that I'm showing up for something bigger than just getting through the set.
What I'd Tell My Twenty-Three-Year-Old Self
If I could go back to that theater in Ohio, I'd pull that younger version of myself aside and say: Stop trying to make the butterflies leave. Teach them to fly in formation.
Performance anxiety doesn't disappear — not for me, not for most people who do this work long enough to know what they're doing. But it transforms. It becomes a signal instead of a siren. A compass instead of an alarm.
The night I finally stopped fighting it and just let myself be nervous and show up anyway was the night I got my first standing ovation. Funny how that works.
I'm not sharing any of this because I've figured it all out — trust me, there are still nights where the spiral tries to take over. I'm sharing it because I spent way too long thinking something was broken in me, when really I just needed a different way of listening to what my body was trying to say.
If you're a performer, a creator, a speaker, or really anyone who puts themselves out there and feels that familiar flood of dread before the moment of truth — you're not alone, and you're not broken. You're just alive, and you care about what you do.
That's a pretty great place to start.
