Anxiety and shooting

[Jimlakeside]

Anxiety is a polite word for fear. You cannot be anxious unless you believe that you are going to be harmed. Anxiety is the perception that you are going to be harmed.

You create your own anxiety when you have a reflected sense of self and you attempt to regulate your anxiety through how well you shoot.

We create our own anxiety when our sense of self is dependent on what other people think of us. Anxiety is created when we base our sense of adequateness, competency, value and worth as a human on achieving and performing. We get anxious when we don’t perform well (and we feel bad about ourselves), then we attempt to regulate that anxiety by working harder so that we can achieve and perform better (creating an endless feedback loop).

“We believe in a personal, unique and separate identity; but if we dare examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our ‘biography,’ our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards…It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely on for security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?

Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn’t that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?” The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. Soyal Rinpoche.

Know thyself: Socrates

[Vulture]

Welcome to the forum.

Without seeming rude on your first post, I don't buy whats being sold.

It sounds like a sedentary person telling me the only reason I shoot is to give myself another title. Another reason to hide from the monster of who i am because if i were to meet myself in the raw i could not handle the terrible truth of being just another human being, another insecure naked child hiding under the stairway, too scared to come to grips with who i am. Too afraid that people will see me as i really am...nothing special.

I don't think so.

Anxiety is antisipation with a hard-on. Feeling that bead of sweat rolling down your temple, eyes and ears seeming to take in everything. Your breath sounding like a hollow echo in a coffee can. So focused that you can see the perferation on A zone. Feeling your heart beat and the blood pumping through your veins just as the RO calls out..."Stand By"

Anxiety is fearing it will never happen again.

[Jimlakeside]

Vulture

Yes, exactly, an excellent reply. A little anxiety is helpful, but when we are full of anxiety that interferes with our shooting, then it becomes harmful. My point is that when you don’t know who you are, your only choice is to be overly concerned with what other people think of you creating harmful anxiety. Your description of yourself is of a person who has a solid sense of who he is and, therefore, is not concerned about being validated by other people. In my opinion, this is mental toughness.

[tpcdvc]

Vulture

Yes, exactly, an excellent reply. A little anxiety is helpful, but when we are full of anxiety that interferes with our shooting, then it becomes harmful. My point is that when you don’t know who you are, your only choice is to be overly concerned with what other people think of you creating harmful anxiety. Your description of yourself is of a person who has a solid sense of who he is and, therefore, is not concerned about being validated by other people. In my opinion, this is mental toughness.

Wow. Can you say over thinking. This is simple. If anxiety is getting in the way, you are simply not concentrating on the business at hand. If you are doing what you are supposed to you simply can not think about what other folks may or may not be thinking. FOCUS!

[gunsablazin]

I must be missing something, I rarely feel nervous before I shoot anymore. I just see what I need to do and just have FUN doing it. When I do get that jittery feeling it is because I have self doubt about some part of a stage, then I relax, tell myself I can do it, and then do just that. I have learned that blowing a stage is not the end of the world, you should learn from your mistakes and the more relaxed I am the better I shoot.

[tightloop]

Vulture

Yes, exactly, an excellent reply. A little anxiety is helpful, but when we are full of anxiety that interferes with our shooting, then it becomes harmful. My point is that when you don’t know who you are, your only choice is to be overly concerned with what other people think of you creating harmful anxiety. Your description of yourself is of a person who has a solid sense of who he is and, therefore, is not concerned about being validated by other people. In my opinion, this is mental toughness.

Unusual post for your #2....this as in most any sport or personal endeavor, we can be too cerebral...take the mind out of the equation and just let the body do it. And BTW, anxiety is a combination of things, some physical some mental...and we all have it from time to time, regardless of how cerebral we might be or think we are...

Enjoy the forum.

[Jake Di Vita]

Eh, I just shoot.