Welcome to TEDMED NOW, where science and story inspire curiosity. I’m your host, Kelly Thomas.
There are moments when everything narrows.
The noise fades. Your heart speeds up. Your body tightens.
And suddenly, the thing you know how to do feels just out of reach. A test, a final shot, a job interview, a difficult conversation.
Pressure is part of being human, but so is the capacity to adapt.
This season, we’re exploring what it really takes to build resilience.
The ability to endure stress, recover, and grow through challenge.
In episode one, we looked at endurance.
Today, we turn to a different question.
What happens in the moment when pressure hits and performance starts to slip?
Why do we fall apart exactly when we want to be at our best?
And how do we train the brain not just to withstand the pressure, but to perform through it?
To help answer that, we turn to cognitive scientist Sian Bilox TEDMED talk, why we choke under pressure and how to avoid it.
Her work reveals something both humbling and hopeful.
Choking under pressure is something we can better understand, train for, and change.
One of the most humiliating things that you can say about someone is they choked, and boy, do I know that feeling.
It’s such a human way to begin.
Choking isn’t rare. It’s universal.
And what’s happening in that moment is surprisingly specific.
Under pressure, the brain’s coordination starts to fracture.
Systems that usually work together begin to compete.
The prefrontal cortex, responsible for conscious control and working memory, ramps up.
At the same time, automatic skills get disrupted.
This is what researchers call explicit monitoring, paying too much attention to what should run automatically.
And stress intensifies it. The brain’s threat systems, especially the amygdala, activate, shifting attention and narrowing focus.
So now you have three systems colliding, conscious control taking over, automatic skills being interrupted, and a stress response signaling danger.
In other words, the brain is trying too hard to help.
And that’s exactly what causes performance to unravel.
This is where resilience begins, not after failure, but before it.
Growing up, I was an avid athlete. My main sport was soccer, and I was a goalkeeper, which is both the best and the worst position on the field.
When you’re a goalie, all eyes are on you, and with that comes the pressure.
I distinctly remember one game in high school. I was playing for the California state team, is part of the Olympic development program.
I was having a great game until I realized that the national coach was standing right behind me.
That’s when everything changed.
In a matter of seconds, I went from playing at the top to the bottom of my ability. Just knowing that I was being evaluated changed my performance and forever how I thought about the mental aspect of how we perform.
We’ve all felt that shift.
One moment, you’re in flow. The next, you’re watching yourself perform.
Being evaluated isn’t neutral. The brain reads it as a threat, and the body follows.
Breathing shortens, muscles tighten, attention narrows.
Under pressure, communication between systems starts to change.
The prefrontal cortex becomes less efficient.
Working memory capacity shrinks.
Precision drops.
The brain shifts from performance mode to protection mode.
So what does resilience look like here?
Not eliminating pressure, but learning under it.
This is stress inoculation.
Repeated exposure to manageable stress that reduces reactivity over time.
Exposure doesn’t weaken us. It recalibrates us.
Resilient brains don’t avoid pressure. They learn how to operate inside it.
But the question is why? Why do we sometimes fail to perform up to our potential under pressure?
It’s especially bewildering in the case of athletes who spend so much time physically honing their craft.
But what about their minds?
Not as much.
This is true off the playing field as well. Whether we’re taking a test or giving a talk, it’s easy to feel like we’re ready at the top of our game and then perform at our worst when it matters most.
It turns out that rarely do we practice under the types of conditions we’re actually going to perform under, and as a result, when all eyes are on us, we sometimes flub our performance.
We rarely practice under the conditions we actually perform in.
So when the stakes rise, the brain treats the moment as unfamiliar.
An unfamiliar becomes threatening.
Choking isn’t a failure of ability.
It’s a mismatch.
It may not be so surprising to hear that in stressful situations, we worry. We worry about the situation, the consequences, what others will think of us.
But what is surprising is that we often get in our own way precisely because our worries prompt us to concentrate too much.
That’s right, we pay too much attention to what we’re doing. When we’re concerned about performing our best, we often try and control aspects of what we’re doing that are best left on autopilot, outside conscious awareness, and as a result, we mess up.
When pressure rises, we try to control everything.
But our best skills don’t work that way.
They depend on automaticity.
On neural systems, often involving corticostriatal and motor networks that operate best without conscious oversight.
And under pressure, control becomes interference.
So resilience also means knowing when to let go.
In basketball, the term unconscious is used to describe a shooter who can’t miss.
And San Antonio Spurs star Tim Duncan has said, when you have to stop and think, that’s when you mess up. In dance, the great choreographer George Balanchine used to urge his dancers, don’t think, just do.
Athletes and performers have long understood this. Don’t think, just do. Not metaphor, mechanism.
Something as simple as singing a song or paying attention to one’s pinky toe as pro golfer Jack Nicklaus was rumored to do can help us take our mind off those pesky details.
Redirecting attention helps. A song. Focus on your breath. Notice something small. Not distraction as avoidance, but as regulation.
It’s also true that practicing under conditions that we’re going to perform under, closing the gap between training and competition, can help us get used to that feeling of all eyes on us.
This is true off the playing field as well.
Whether it’s getting ready for an exam or preparing for a big talk, one that might have a little pressure associated with it, getting used to the types of situations you’re gonna perform under really matters.
Close the gap between practice and performance.
Add time. Add observation. Add stakes.
Make it real.
Resilience isn’t avoiding stress.
It’s learning its shape.
We’ve also figured out some ways to get rid of those pesky worries and self doubts that tend to creep up in the stressful situations. Researchers have shown that simply jotting down your thoughts and worries before a stressful event can help to download them from mind, make them less likely to pop up in the moment.
Write your worries down. Because when concerns occupy working memory, they compete with what you’re trying to do.
Writing clears that load. This isn’t mindset. It’s bandwidth.
It’s important to remember that it’s not just our own individual being that can put limits and that can perform poorly. Our environment has an effect on whether we choke or thrive.
Our parents, our teachers, our coaches, our bosses all influence whether or not we can put our best foot forward when it matters most.
Resilience isn’t only individual, it’s environmental.
Conditions of support or judgment shape how these systems respond under pressure.
We don’t build it alone.
We build it in systems.
Fast forward from my high school soccer game to my freshman year in college.
I was in the chemistry sequence for science majors, and boy, did I not belong.
Even though I studied for my first midterm exam, I thought I was ready to go, I bombed it.
I literally got the worst grade in a class of four hundred students.
I was convinced I wasn’t going to be a science major, that maybe I was dropping out college altogether.
But then I changed how I studied.
Instead of studying alone, I started studying with a group of friends who, at the end of the study session, would close their book and compete for the right answer.
We learned to practice under stress.
If you could have looked inside my brain during that first midterm exam, you likely would have seen a neural pain response, a lot like the math anxious individuals I study.
It was probably there during the stressful study situation as well.
But when I walked into the final, my mind was quiet, and I actually got one of the highest grades in the entire class.
It wasn’t just about learning the material, it was about learning how to overcome my limits when it mattered most.
What happens in our heads really matters, and knowing this, we can learn how to prepare ourselves and others for success, not just on the playing field, but in the boardroom and in the classroom as well.
Choking under pressure isn’t a character flaw. It’s a brain under strain.
And that means it can change.
Resilience isn’t eliminating pressure. It’s meeting it differently.
Practicing under real conditions, building familiarity with discomfort, and learning when to let go of control.
Because the brain is adaptable, stress is trainable, And resilience again and again is something we can build.
Thank you for listening to TEDMED NOW. I’m Kelly Thomas.
