Anxiety About Meeting Expectations: When Worry About Performance Becomes Chronic

You submit a report and immediately start worrying whether it's good enough. You analyze every interaction with your preceptor for signs of disappointment. You lie awake replaying the meeting where you might have said something wrong. You check your email constantly, dreading criticism. The worry isn't occasional—it's constant, exhausting, and undermining the experience you worked hard to earn.

Anxiety about meeting expectations is common among practicum students. Some level of concern about performance is normal and even helpful—it motivates effort and attention to quality. But when worry becomes chronic, it can sabotage both your wellbeing and your work. Recognizing when concern crosses into counterproductive anxiety, and developing strategies to manage it, matters for getting through your practicum intact.

Productive Concern Versus Destructive Worry

Productive concern motivates action. You're concerned about producing quality work, so you check your analysis twice, proofread your reports, and seek feedback to improve. The concern leads to behavior that addresses the underlying issue.

Destructive worry doesn't resolve through action. You've already checked your work multiple times, but you keep worrying anyway. You've done everything you can for now, but the anxiety continues. The worry generates distress without generating useful behavior.

Productive concern is proportional to actual stakes. A presentation to major stakeholders warrants more attention than an informal update. Destructive worry treats everything as equally high-stakes, generating the same intensity of anxiety whether the situation is minor or major.

Productive concern focuses on what you can control. You can improve your work, communicate more clearly, or ask for guidance. Destructive worry focuses on things you can't control: whether others will perceive you favorably, whether your best effort is enough, whether hidden expectations exist that you don't know about.

Learning to distinguish these patterns helps you lean into productive concern while interrupting destructive worry.

Why Practicum Settings Amplify Anxiety

Several features of practicum experiences can intensify performance anxiety beyond normal levels.

Evaluation is constant and often ambiguous. Unlike courses with clear grading criteria, practicum expectations can feel unclear. You might not know exactly what "good" looks like, making it hard to know whether you're achieving it.

Power dynamics are asymmetric. Your preceptor evaluates you. Your faculty advisor assesses your work. You're dependent on others' judgments for your academic progress. This vulnerability creates natural anxiety.

Professional identity is on the line. The practicum isn't just about grades—it's about whether you can function as a public health professional. Performance concerns connect to deeper questions about capability, belonging, and future career viability.

You're performing publicly in ways you haven't before. Coursework is relatively private; practicum work is visible to organizations and communities. The stakes feel higher when your work matters beyond academic credit.

These factors don't excuse allowing anxiety to dominate your experience, but they explain why practicum settings can trigger it intensely.

Strategies for Managing Performance Anxiety

Ground your expectations in reality. What has your preceptor actually said about your work? What feedback have you actually received? Write down actual evidence about your performance rather than relying on anxious interpretations. Often the evidence is more positive than the anxiety suggests.

Clarify expectations proactively. If you're anxious because you don't know what's expected, ask. Request specific feedback on your work. Ask what success looks like for particular deliverables. Concrete information reduces the ambiguity that anxiety exploits.

Set defined work boundaries. If you're checking email at midnight hoping for reassurance (or dreading criticism), you're fueling the anxiety cycle. Establish times when you're "off" from practicum worry. This doesn't mean you care less—it means you're managing your resources for sustainable performance.

Challenge cognitive distortions. Anxious thinking often involves patterns like catastrophizing (assuming worst outcomes), mind reading (believing you know others' negative judgments), and all-or-nothing thinking (one mistake means total failure). When you notice these patterns, actively question them.

Accept uncertainty. You cannot guarantee that everyone will be satisfied with your work. You cannot control others' perceptions. Paradoxically, accepting this uncertainty rather than fighting it often reduces anxiety. You can only do your best; outcomes aren't entirely within your control.

Build confidence through action. Each task completed, each meeting navigated, each piece of feedback integrated builds evidence of capability. Focus on accumulating this evidence rather than constantly questioning whether it's enough.

When to Seek Additional Support

Some performance anxiety is normal. Significant, persistent anxiety that interferes with functioning is a mental health concern deserving professional attention.

Consider seeking support if anxiety is significantly impairing your sleep, concentration, or daily functioning. If you're experiencing physical symptoms like persistent stomach problems, headaches, or racing heart related to practicum worry, that's a signal. If you're avoiding important work or interactions because of anxiety, that's concerning. If anxious thoughts are intrusive and persistent despite your efforts to manage them, professional help may be needed.

Your university likely offers counseling services. Some programs have mental health resources specifically for graduate students. Seeking support isn't weakness—it's appropriate response to a significant challenge. Just as you'd see a doctor for a physical health problem affecting your ability to function, mental health concerns warrant professional attention.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has strong evidence for anxiety management. Short-term interventions can provide tools that make lasting differences. Medication is sometimes appropriate, particularly if anxiety is severe. A mental health professional can help you determine what level of intervention makes sense.

Maintaining Perspective

Your practicum is one experience in a long career. It matters, but it's not everything. Even if this particular experience has difficult moments, it doesn't determine your entire professional trajectory.

The professionals around you, including your preceptor, have navigated uncertainty, made mistakes, and received critical feedback. None of them arrived fully formed. Growth involves discomfort. Struggle doesn't mean failure.

Most importantly, you are not your performance. Your worth as a person doesn't depend on your practicum evaluation. The anxiety can make performance feel like an existential issue, but it isn't. You matter regardless of how any particular project or experience goes.

Work hard, seek feedback, improve where you can, and accept that doing your genuine best is enough. The anxiety will tell you otherwise, but the anxiety is not a reliable narrator. You belong here. You can do this. One deliverable at a time.