Stage Trauma: When Freezing on Stage Impacts Your Confidence Long-Term

Have you experienced that moment - you know the one I mean… the soul-crushing moment when you completely "died" on stage?

The lights blazing down, hundreds of eyes watching, and suddenly you're frozen—unable to speak, move, or even remember why you're there. Your mind goes completely blank, your body betrays you, and time stretches endlessly as you stand there, paralysed by terror and shame.

If you've lived through this nightmare, you know it's not just embarrassing—it's traumatic. That single moment can shatter your confidence so completely that the thought of ever performing again feels impossible.

If you find yourself avoiding stages entirely, keeping going but feeling deep visceral anxiety, having panic attacks when thinking about performing, or believing you'll never recover your former confidence, you're experiencing what I call stage trauma—one of the most devastating yet misunderstood forms of performance-related psychological injury.

Stage Trauma Symptoms Include:

• Avoiding stages and performance

• Continuing performance but feeling filled with visceral anxiety that doesn’t seem to respond to coping techniques

• Trying to never think of the event ever again and ‘just move on’ yet never feeling the same as you did before

• Reliving it and feeling ashamed and exposed

The Physiology of Freezing on Stage: What Happened and Why? (No - you didn’t just forget your lines)

When you freeze on stage, your brain isn't malfunctioning—it's doing exactly what it's designed to do when faced with what it perceives as danger. When faced with a perceived threat, the brain's instinctive survival mechanisms kick into high gear, triggering trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze, and fawn.

Think of it this way - if a fast car came flying at you - would you want to spend time thinking, analysing, and debating whether to get out of the way? No. Your brain hijacks you to jump out the way before you even had time to think. This same area of the brain is response for freeze. It literally stops you from being able to think. The problem is, this time, there’s no fast car, and people are waiting for you to speak.

What makes stage trauma particularly devastating is the public nature of the experience.

Unlike private failures that you can process alone, stage trauma happens in front of witnesses—sometimes hundreds or thousands of them. Your nervous system interprets this as social humiliation, the ultimate threat to your belonging and safety in the community.

Stage trauma creates a vicious cycle that can trap you for years:

Why EMDR May Be More Effective for Stage Trauma than Talking Therapy or Exposure

EMDR based therapy can help you overcome performance anxiety or stage fright - by addressing the root cause of anxiety. When performance difficulties stem from traumatic experiences, Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) can be particularly powerful because it addresses the underlying trauma that created these responses.

EMDR works by:

• Processing the traumatic memory of your stage experience so it becomes a normal memory rather than one that hijacks your nervous system

• Healing the nervous system activation that gets triggered when you think about performing, allowing your body to return to baseline

• Reprocessing core beliefs that formed during the trauma—moving from "I'm inadequate / incompetent / bad / not good enough for this " to "I had one difficult experience but it doesn’t mean anything about my capability"

• Trusting yourself again - you didn’t forget, your brain hijacked you. But you need to be able to trust yourself again to feel safe on stage.

• Reducing the emotional charge around performing so you can approach stages with neutrality rather than terror

Ready to Reclaim Your Voice?

If this resonated with you, you're not alone. As a therapist specialising in social presence, including performance trauma and creative blocks, I regularly work with clients who've experienced the devastation of stage trauma.

This isn't just about getting back on stage—it's about healing the core wounds that make being seen feel dangerous and developing the internal safety that allows for authentic expression.

References

Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.

Shapiro, F. (2018). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: Basic principles, protocols, and procedures (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.

Studer, R., Gomez, P., Hildebrandt, H., Arial, M., & Danuser, B. (2011). Stage fright: its experience as a problem and coping with it. International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, 84(7), 761-771.

van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The body keeps the score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma. Viking.