Ansia da prestazione e ansia lavorativa
Los Angeles vive di performance — l'audizione, il pitch, la riunione, il lancio, il post. L'ansia da prestazione non è un difetto nelle persone ambiziose; è quello che succede quando le aspettative che hai assegnato al tuo lavoro superano quello che il tuo sistema nervoso riesce a reggere in un normale martedì.
Performance and workplace anxiety includes the chronic dread, presentation/audition anxiety, perfectionism, and burnout patterns that show up in high-output professional life. Treatment in Los Angeles combines CBT for the immediate moments with deeper work on the patterns underneath. Group therapy adds a powerful dimension: hearing other high-functioning adults describe the same private experience.
Non devi giustificare quello che porti con te.
Alcuni momenti riconoscibili, nelle parole usate da altre persone. Se alcuni di questi risuonano — è un'informazione, non un verdetto.
La domenica sera arriva con una sensazione. Le spalle, il petto, il timore che non ha niente di specifico dietro.
Prima di una riunione o un'audizione non riesci a mangiare, a pensare, a respirare del tutto — e dopo non riesci a smettere di ripassarla.
O non dormi, o dormi troppo, o entrambe le cose nella stessa settimana.
Hai iniziato a misurare il tuo valore in risultati. I giorni no sembrano fallimenti.
Ti senti parlare in una riunione e una voce chiede chi ti ha fatto entrare.
Hai paura che rallentare sia la cosa che romperà la serie.
Sospetti, giustamente, che questo non sia sostenibile.
Come si sviluppa di solito questo tipo di ansia.
Performance anxiety isn't a single diagnosis — it's a pattern that often blends elements of social anxiety, GAD, and the cultural conditions of high-output professional life. Los Angeles intensifies several of those conditions: the audition cycle, the pitch process, the long stretches of public visibility, the proximity to people whose careers move differently than yours.
Common contributors: perfectionistic temperament, family-of-origin scripts that tied love or worth to achievement, early experiences of public criticism that lodged, careers with unclear feedback loops (creative industries especially), and chronic sleep debt that the work of the work doesn't permit.
What's worth knowing: high-performing people are not seeing therapists 'in spite of' their performance — many are seeing therapists *because* of it. Therapy is one of the highest-leverage interventions for sustained output. Your peers are doing it; they're just not posting about it.
"Our goal isn't to make you less driven. It's to give you a relationship with your work that doesn't cost you yourself."
Distinguerlo da schemi simili.
Una breve chiarificazione, in linguaggio semplice, su come questa condizione si distingue da schemi che sembrano simili.
What performance anxiety is: a recurrent pattern of pre-event dread, in-event activation, and post-event rumination, often paired with self-talk that's harsher than you'd accept from anyone else. Combined with chronic stress and sleep loss, it overlaps with burnout.
What it isn't: ordinary nerves before a high-stakes moment (which often sharpen performance and pass quickly). Imposter feelings without functional impact. Generalized anxiety not tied to performance contexts (that's GAD). A condition that requires you to be 'less ambitious' to treat — therapy here is about a healthier relationship with output, not less of it.
Come può aiutare la terapia
L'ansia da prestazione e quella lavorativa rispondono bene a un approccio combinato: competenze pratiche per i momenti stessi (presentazioni, pitch, lavoro esposto al pubblico), e uno sguardo più profondo a quello che hai silenziosamente associato ai tuoi risultati. Utilizziamo la CBT per affrontare le previsioni e il dialogo interno che alimentano l'ansia, e approcci come ACT e Internal Family Systems (IFS) per lavorare sui pattern più profondi.
La terapia di gruppo è un utile complemento per questo lavoro — in parte perché il gruppo diventa un luogo per praticare l'essere visti senza dover recitare, e in parte perché sentire adulti in gamba e laboriosi descrivere le stesse esperienze private riduce l'isolamento che alimenta la sindrome dell'impostore.
Il nostro obiettivo non è renderti meno determinato. È darti un rapporto con il tuo lavoro che non costi te stesso.
Approcci che utilizziamo
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
Addresses the predictions and self-talk that fuel anxiety in performance moments. Practical, present-tense skills you can use the morning of a meeting.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
For the deeper patterns — the part of you that ties self-worth to output. Useful when CBT alone has gone as far as it can.
Group therapy
Especially useful here. Sitting in a room of other high-functioning adults describing the same private experience puts a real dent in imposter feelings.
Common shapes performance anxiety takes
Non esistono due presentazioni esattamente uguali. Di seguito trovi le forme più comuni che vediamo nella nostra pratica — incluse per aiutarti a trovare la versione più vicina a quello che stai vivendo.
Audition / pitch anxiety
Specific to the moments where you're being evaluated. Pre-event dread, in-event physiological activation, post-event rumination.
Public-speaking anxiety
Common in early-to-mid career; can also re-emerge later when stakes shift (TED talk, keynote, board presentation).
Imposter / impostorism
The internalized sense that your competence is a fluke. Particularly common in high-achievers in their first few years of a senior role.
Perfectionism-driven workplace anxiety
Anxiety tied to a chronically high internal standard. Useful in moderation, costly in excess.
Burnout-adjacent performance anxiety
When sustained performance demands have outpaced your nervous system's recovery. Overlaps with depression.
Creative / artistic block
When the work itself becomes anxiety-bound. Particularly common in LA's creative industry clients.
Un tipico percorso di trattamento, settimana per settimana.
Ogni persona procede al proprio ritmo. Le fasi seguenti sono uno schizzo onesto di come il lavoro di solito si svolge — non una prescrizione.
Weeks 1–4
Stabilize the immediate. Skills for presentations, pitches, public-facing work. Sleep usually starts shifting in this window.
Weeks 4–12
Deeper layer. What you've quietly attached to your output. Family-of-origin scripts about achievement. The voice in your head when you're alone.
Beyond 12
Building forward. Many clients describe a felt shift in how Sundays land, how they walk into meetings, how they treat themselves on off-days.
Schemi specifici della popolazione di LA che serviamo.
Performance anxiety is the most common reason high-functioning LA professionals come to therapy. The audition cycle, the pitch process, the public-facing nature of much LA work — these create a specific shape we know well. Our entertainment-industry clients often describe a long stretch between auditions where the anxiety is its own job. Our healthcare and tech clients describe a perpetual on-call quality. Our creative clients describe the inversion of imposter feelings on weeks they're producing well. We've worked with all of it.
Dove avviene questa cura nell'area metropolitana di LA.
Our office is in Pasadena (301 N. Lake Ave, Suite 600) with parking on site and easy access from the 134, 210, and 110 — most of our in-person clients commute from the San Gabriel Valley, the Eastside neighborhoods (Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Atwater Village), the Glendale–Burbank corridor, and central Los Angeles. For clients in the Westside, the San Fernando Valley, the South Bay, Long Beach, and Orange County, telehealth is often the more practical format. California has strong telehealth parity laws (Bus. & Prof. Code §2290.5) — most major insurance plans cover telehealth at the same in-network rate as in-person care, and our clinicians see clients across the full state.
Quello che le persone chiedono prima della prima chiamata.
Is this just burnout?
Sometimes — burnout, performance anxiety, and clinical depression overlap in ways that matter for treatment. Part of the early work is figuring out which of these you're carrying. The specific blend shapes the approach.
Will therapy make me less ambitious?
No. Most clients become more effective, not less, because they spend less energy fighting themselves. The internal critic doesn't go silent — it stops being the only voice in the room.
Can I keep working at full capacity during treatment?
Almost always. We typically work in weekly 50-minute sessions. Some clients use a focused stretch of more frequent sessions during a particularly intense work period; we adjust.
I'm in the entertainment / creative industry. Do you work with that?
Extensively. The audition cycle, the pitch process, the public-facing exposure, the long stretches of waiting — these are LA-specific patterns we see often. Many of our clinicians have worked with industry clients for years.
How does group therapy help with performance anxiety?
Hearing other accomplished adults describe the same private dread — the imposter voice, the Sunday-night chest-tightness, the reaction to one critical email — is a quiet kind of revelation. Imposter feelings depend on isolation; group breaks the isolation.
Se questo risuona, spesso lo fanno anche questi.
Disturbo d'ansia sociale
Social anxiety is the kind of thing that's hard to explain to people who haven't had it.
Leggi di Ansia sociale
Disturbo d'ansia generalizzata
If your mind has been busy for so long you can't remember when it wasn't, you're describing what we treat every week.
Leggi di Ansia generalizzata (DAG)
PTSD e ansia correlata al trauma
If something happened to you and your body still seems to think it's happening, that's not weakness.
Leggi di PTSD e traumaLa prima conversazione è breve. Al resto pensiamo noi.
Qualunque cosa tu abbia provato prima, da quanto tempo dura — contattaci per telefono, e-mail o modulo di contatto. Il nostro coordinatore sanitario risponde alle domande, verifica l'assicurazione e ti aiuta a trovare il clinico più adatto a te.