How to Overcome Performance Anxiety: The Grocery Store Method

By Carl Chinn, LMHC/LPC · Licensed therapist since 2012 · Reviewed August 2026

Here’s the problem. Whenever it comes down to execution (asking the person out, giving the presentation, pitching the client), something seizes up. You panic, or you go blank, and the words don’t just fail to come out, they come out wrong, in a way that makes you sound worse than if you’d said nothing. Then you replay it for a week. What do you actually do with that?

The usual advice is “just relax” or “power through it,” which is roughly as useful as telling someone who can’t sleep to “just fall asleep.” So let’s try a different door. Let’s make the problem as concrete as we can, because the concrete version is solvable, and once you can see the solution there, you can carry it back to the version that feels impossible.

Start with something easy: the grocery store

What happens when you go grocery shopping hungry?

Not your best decisions. The snack aisle applies pressure. The diet plan quietly leaves the building. And the finisher (the checkout lane, stacked with guilty-pleasure impulse buys right at eye level) closes the deal. You walk out with a bag full of things you didn’t plan to buy.

Now look at what that actually is. When the chips are down and it’s crunch time, the decisions you make get clouded by doubt, temptation, distraction, and a private, insistent form of panic: in this case, a very satiable hunger. It is not so different from the presentation, or the pitch, or the ask. Same structure: pressure, a moment of execution, and a hunger underneath it making your decisions for you.

The reason the grocery store is a good starting point is that its solution is obvious, in a way the others aren’t. Nobody agonizes over how to shop well while hungry. They just say:

• Go with a friend who’ll keep you accountable.
• Bring a list.
• Clip coupons for the healthy stuff.
• Have a strong meal plan in mind.
• Budget for good snacks.
• Eat before you go.

Simple. Concrete. Obviously effective. Now hold onto that, because the exact same moves work on performance anxiety, once you find the hunger.

The hunger under performance anxiety isn’t physical

At the grocery store, the hunger is literal calories. Under a presentation, a pitch, or an ask, the hunger is social. You want acceptance. Validation. To be understood. To not be rejected in front of people whose opinion you can feel in your body.

That’s the stomach you’re actually shopping on. And it’s just as feedable as the physical one. If social hunger is what makes you panic at crunch time, then the fix is the same shape as “eat before you go.” Feed it in advance.

How to translate this? The same list, one for one:

• Role-play with a friend or colleague what you’re hoping to communicate. (Go with someone who keeps you accountable.)
• Record your approach and give yourself honest, constructive feedback. (Bring a list.)
• Read up on how other performers organize their approach: presenters, salespeople, whoever does your version of this well. (Clip the coupons.)
• Decide, in advance, your role to this person and their role to you. Are you the expert? The peer? The one asking a favor? (Have a meal plan.)
• Do something validating to fill your tank before you go out on a limb: anything that reminds you you’re already okay before you risk the thing. (Eat before you go.)

Same list. Different hunger.

Why “just prepare” undersells it

The cheap version of this takeaway is “prepare.” True, but it undersells the idea badly, because it skips the most important step: knowing what your particular hunger is, and feeding that specific one.

The insecurity at the grocery store is calories and immediate gratification, so you eat first. If yours is validation, seek it in advance and fill your cup before you go. If yours is feeling organized, draft the plan and the outline until the shape of the thing is solid in your hands. If yours is pride in your work or confidence, go show someone who knows less than you the thing you know how to do, and let yourself feel competent on purpose before you walk into the room.

This lines up with how psychologists understand confidence: not a mood you summon, but a belief built from evidence. They call it self-efficacy, Albert Bandura’s term for believing you can handle a specific situation. The most powerful thing that builds it isn’t a pep talk, it’s mastery experience: actually having done the thing, or something close to it, before (the research on self-efficacy). Role-playing the conversation, recording the pitch, running the outline. Those aren’t busywork. They’re small mastery experiences you bank in advance, so the real moment isn’t the first time.

There’s also a reason the “power through it” advice backfires. Research on choking under pressure finds that when a high-stakes moment floods you with self-monitoring and fear of being watched, it can degrade skills you already have (the research on choking under pressure). Willpower aimed at the panic in the moment tends to feed the panic. Preparation aimed at it beforehand tends to starve it. (If that attention-shift sounds familiar, it’s the same spine as focusing on the process instead of the result.)

Make the plan specific enough to survive the moment

One upgrade makes all of this dramatically more reliable (and before you skip past it as obvious: it isn’t): don’t prepare in general, prepare in if-then form.

There’s a well-studied version of this: psychologist Peter Gollwitzer calls them implementation intentions, plans shaped like “if situation X happens, then I will do Y.” That simple format measurably raises the odds you actually follow through under pressure, compared with a vague intention to do your best (the research on if-then plans). A grocery list is already an if-then plan: if I’m at the store, then I buy these. Do the same for the performance. If they open with a hard question, then I say “good question, here’s how I think about it.” If I feel my chest tighten, then I slow down and take the next point one at a time. You’re writing the list your panicked self will follow, because your panicked self can’t compose one on the spot.

What confidence actually is

The key is not powering through it. That was never what confidence was. Confidence is being prepared, not to convince the other people, but to convince yourself that this is handleable, because of the actions you already took and are continuing to take. It’s the quiet knowledge that you ate before you came, so the snack aisle has no power over you.

You don’t stop feeling the stakes. You just stop shopping hungry.

What to ask a therapist about this

If performance anxiety is genuinely getting in the way of your work, your relationships, or things you want to do, that’s worth bringing to a therapist, and it’s a very workable problem. (If you’re not sure what that work would even look like, here’s what therapy actually does.) Approaches that teach concrete tools, like solution-focused or cognitive behavioral therapy, are usually good at building the exact “feed the real hunger, plan in if-then form” scaffolding described here. If the anxiety is rooted in something older (a long history of feeling unseen or judged), a more relational or insight-oriented approach may fit better. A consultation call is a good place to describe what your particular hunger seems to be and ask how a given therapist would work with it.

And the reframe is yours to use today: find the hunger under the panic, and feed that: BEFORE you go out on the limb, not during.

About the author
Carl Chinn, LMHC/LPC is a licensed therapist who has practiced since 2012. He writes about therapy, attention, and decision-making at Become The Way. Read Carl’s full bio.

Become The Way is a directory of independent licensed therapists. If performance anxiety keeps getting in your way, you can browse therapists and book directly.

This article is for general information and educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional mental health care, and reading it does not establish a therapist-client relationship. If you are in crisis or having thoughts of harming yourself, please contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (US, 24/7 by call or text), your local crisis line if outside the US, or call 911 if in immediate danger.