Want to be a cheerleader but Stage Fright!! HELP ME PLZ!!?

Question

I really want to try out for cheerleading next week i have stage fright, How can I get over it??

Answer 1

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Carbonell1.html
The hallmark of stagefright is, of course, the panic symptoms you experience during a presentation or performance. But there is more to stagefright, and if you’re going to overcome it, you need to become aware of all its parts. Stagefright actually consists of four components, and you have to work with each of them if you’re going to overcome the problem. The four components of stagefright are:

Anticipation: the nervous, negative, and largely unrealistic thoughts and mental images you experience in the minutes, hours, days and weeks (sometimes months!) before a scheduled performance.

Avoidance: when you avoid performance situations because of fear, you unfortunately strengthen and maintain the stagefright. It prevents you from having the helpful experience of coping with the anxiety, and leaves you instead with the impression that you would have experienced a horrible disaster if you had actually tried to perform.

Anxiety and Panic: the fearful symptoms you experience during your performance before an audience. These symptoms may include physical sensations such as labored breathing, sweating, racing heart and dizziness, as well as numerous fearful thoughts about how poorly you are doing and how the audience is repelled by your nervousness and incompetence.

Appraisal: the period after a performance, when you come to some conclusions about how you did.
It’s the product of thinking of the performance situation as a threat, rather than a challenge. Thinking of it as a threat sets off primitive “fight or flight” responses which would ordinarily help you fight off a predator, such as a rush of adrenaline, diversion of blood to your major muscles, faster heartbeat, and so on.. If you really were getting into a fight, all those changes would be helpful. But if you’re trying to give a speech, they tend to get in your way!

Stagefright is also the product of focusing on yourself, and your anxiety, rather than on your presentation or performance. When you’re focused on yourself to an excessive degree, you’re unable to immerse yourself in the role of the performer. Instead, you worry about how you look and sound; you imagine all the most critical thoughts, and attribute them to the audience; and then you try to control your anxiety by a variety of means. For instance, people will: cut short their presentation; rush through it; hand it over to a co-presenter; read it word for word; and avoid any interaction, including eye contact, with the audience.

The unfortunate aspect of these efforts is that they usually make the stagefright worse. They make the presentation less interesting, and create a barrier between the speaker and the audience. They lead the speaker to feel more alone, and therefore more self conscious and fearful.

If instead, the speaker could turn her focus to the task at hand, and get fully immersed in that, the process of communicating with the audience would flow more smoothly.

Why don’t people do that? Why don’t they just turn their focus to their performance?

It’s because they have the idea that it’s not okay to feel anxious up there, and they think they have to get rid of that anxiety. They think that, if they could get rid of the anxiety, then they could perform.

For a lot of people, it’s because they tend to think that the anxiety they have beforehand, the anticipatory anxiety, is only the start of the problem. They’re plagued by this thought: “If I’m this nervous now, how much worse will it be when I start talking?”. They assume that their anticipation is the low point of the anxiety, and that it will increase terribly once they get on stage.

The truth is, for most people, it’s exactly the reverse. The anticipation is the worst part of the anxiety. Once they get involved in the performance, they start to feel better, not worse.

But just hearing that isn’t usually enough to allow someone to manage the fear. A person with stagefright is driven to struggle against their fear.

That’s the problem.

A successful treatment for stagefright will help a person to accept, and work with, the fear, while they give their main focus to the performance.

Here, by way of example, are a few coping techniques for stagefright.

TIPS FOR COPING WITH STAGEFRIGHT

1. If you want to talk (or sing, act, etc.), you have to breathe. And if you want to do these things calmly, you'll need to breathe diaphragmatically. This won't always come naturally, and you'll probably need to practice. You can find everything you need to learn how to do this at http://www.anxietycoach.com/breathing.htm.

2. Remind yourself that the audience isn’t there to see or hear you, unless you're a very famous person (or your mom is in the audience). They're just here to see the person who's talking about this topic (or playing this piece, etc.). Today that happens to be you. That's not really important to them.

3. Expect, and accept, that you will feel anxious, especially at first. That's OK. If you allow yourself to work WITH the anxiety, not against it, you'll be able to calm down and proceed. If you resist the anxiety, you'll make more trouble for yourself.

4. Establish the right focus for your task. What do I mean by focus? I mean what you pay attention to as you engage in your performance. This, unlike the other three tips above, will vary depending on what kind of performance you're engaged in.

* If you are giving a talk, your focus should be your material and the audience reaction to it, because your task is to inform or persuade them. You therefore want to be aware of how they are responding, so that you can connect with them in various ways.

*Establish contact with the audience through eye contact and talking directly to them. Ask them questions to get them involved in your talk (i.e., How many of you here have ever had this experience...?) While your natural instinct will probably be to avoid the audience as much as possible, you will actually feel LESS anxiety once you get the audience involved with you.

*If your task is a performance art, your focus will be different. It's not your job to persuade or inform the audience. You want to perform a piece for their enjoyment. In this case, you can ignore the audience, and turn your focus to your music, or your character, and leave the audience to enjoy your performance on their own.

*Where you don't want your focus to be is on yourself and your anxiety. This is why it's so useful to develop an accepting attitude toward the anxiety, to take a few steps to calm yourself a little, and then shift your focus to the task at hand.

Answer 2

I also had stage fright when I first started performing 8 years ago. Believe in yourself. That's really how simple it is. And pay no mind to; maybe - doubtful - perception.
It makes No Sense.
Know that you Can do it. Otherwise you wouldn't be trying out, right? Nor blessed with the magnificence of It's gift. You obviously love Cheer Leading with a Passion, and passion is as passion does. It was born to be alive and so are we!
We were made for a journey, Autonomous each our own.
We Can Always, but Try.
People want you to try your best.
Don't be afraid.
Fear is a powerless emotion, dear.
If you fear failure, Don't.
You've only failed if you don't try.
Swallow it down, Sunshine.
Inhale and digest it's worth.
Integrity in Gracious Graceful Butterfly be with You.
You'll Rock and so will, It, I promise. :-)

Answer 3

Actually invite one of your more regular fearful thoughts in.
Call the fear to you, say you just want it to come close so you can observe it.
It may seem like the last thing you would wish to bring upon yourself, as you don’t particularly enjoy these thoughts but this approach can be very empowering. You are now calling the shots. You actually invited the issue in.
By doing this you are discharging the dense vibration of fear surrounding the anxious thought. That fear was sustaining itself on your resistance, -the idea that you could not handle these thoughts.

Click Here:

http://youtu.be/4Jd-0vc1xCw

Answer 4

cheerleader stage fright plz

Answer 5

I think you should try to do some routine thing in front of you friends or parents at least to get used to doing some kind of thing in front of people and it'll help if you get used to that. And just relax when you do try out and have fun. Keep telling yourself to calm down and breathe. It helps for me in most cases. Just don't think about you being nervous and have an open mind. I tend to concentrate better on doing what I need to do if I don't worry so much. I hope that helped you.

Good luck!

Answer 6

Listen i know exsactly what to do see if one of your friends will try out with you and have her over to help practice together and just have confidence and believe and if you put your heart to it you can do it!!!!!!

Keep your hopes up girl!!!!!!!!!

your not the only one with stage fright i'm right there with ya!!!!

Answer 7

when i was in choir and theater arts i had a big case of stage fright but i just breathed deeply and i looked above the crowd.

Answer 8

its ok..im very shy too and i also have stage fright....if u make the squad u can be like base or something that hides u kinda...unlike the head cheerleader...who every1 sees.

Answer 9

Practice in front of small groups before try outs. Family, friends, neighborhood children, who cares who it is doesn't really matter. I can tell you from experience when you're up there you get lost in the cheer, and kind of forget the people are there.

Answer 10

I had the same problem...all I did was take a college Communications class, and you know what? I'm totally fine now. Think about taking a class on communications and I bet you anything it will help you out.