There are two strong emotions getting in each other way in an emotional blockage, on one hand you have the desire to make things happen and acquire new experiences, but simultaneously you experience significant anxiety of which purpose is to keep you safe.
This makes you to feel trapped between two very strong impulses that prevent you from taking any action. Unfortunately it is impossible to do anything without some degree of danger or risk, so avoiding danger it means avoiding life itself.
We are design to live with this emotions under normal circumstances they function pretty well at keeping you motivated and safe at the same time. You are not intrinsically flowed and broken by design.
In order to become blocked you have to receive "criticism" from an exterior source that is not very benevolent. It is particularly the type of criticism that blames you personally for your performance instead of your skills levels at the time. There is a fundamental difference between judgment and criticism. Judgment is a subjective opinion you have about someone or something while criticism is an objective observation that requires you to gather informations process it objectively and reach a conclusion.
Also it is important to note that giving and receiving criticism it is a humbling experience and in order to give good criticism you have to be humble yourself in order to prevent your biases to intervene. While simultaneously receiving it is humbling because you are allowing someone to expose your weak points. Which is of a tremendous benefit to someone who is trying to grow.
If you confuse judgment for criticism you stop performing for yourself as much as you do it to please the person that judged you, which means that you are going to try very hard to don't fail.
Resistance to failure is anxiety, performing to please others is going to create particularly strong anxiety and this is how you put yourself in this situation. I think that's what the old saying "dance like no one is watching" is all about, I wouldn't say that watching is really the problem, after all the purpose of dancing is to display your body you wan't people to watch, it is the judgment that is the problem.
Failure is natural part of growth, you can't grow without testing the boundaries of your abilities and put pressure on yourself. If you desire to grow you also desire to fail because that is what growth requires. Failure does not make you successful directly, as much as it allows you to build momentum, and from that momentum you grow and expand your abilities. So you gradually slowly move towards success.
Like this you claim back your practice from the hands of the people who judged you, your anxiety is not really about failure as much is about other people hurting your progress with judgment. So it is not only important to build back the momentum but as well to learn how to tell the difference between judgment and criticism.
