River Flow. On wellbeing and optimal performance

As interpreters, what can we do about the stress, nerves and self-doubts that high-stakes or high-profile assignments can induce? How do we keep these from undermining our ability to meet the moment and interpret effectively? This reflection uses a river analogy for how we can assure our own wellbeing and optimal performance. It’s all about what we do upstream, during, and downstream from an interpretation, and in general, how familiar and at ease we are with the internal river of our own experience.

Together with my co-instructor, I was recently with a group of individuals training to test onto a roster of diplomatic interpreters. They all had ample experience. All had cut their chops interpreting in medical, legal, social service or other contexts, including armed conflicts. Several had previous lives as journalists, broadcasters, or educators. In this training, they were primarily learning consecutive notetaking techniques that would enable them to handle the sometimes long, fast, and dense discourse encountered in diplomatic settings, where protocols often prohibit interrupting the speaker.

A side theme kept running through our discussions and exercises: What about the stress and nerves and self-doubts that high-stakes or high-profile assignments can induce?

A side theme kept running through our discussions and exercises: What about the stress and nerves and self-doubts that high-stakes or high-profile assignments can induce? How do you keep these from undermining your ability to meet the moment and interpret effectively?

As our week of training drew to a close, today was the day we had set aside to briefly address those questions directly. But how? The view of the Potomac River outside my hotel window gave me the answer. The analogy of a stream or river would serve well as a framework for how we, as interpreters, can assure our wellbeing and optimal performance. It’s all about what we do upstream, during, and downstream from an interpretation.

Upstream

The upstream «before» phase is about caring for and attending to the needs of one’s future self, the self who will later be interpreting.

The upstream «before» phase is about caring for and attending to the needs of one’s future self, the self who will later be interpreting. Projecting forward: What do I need to do now to optimize my performance and experience then, when actually in the hot seat? What might I then wish I had done in terms of prep, anticipation, organizing, and tending to my own emotions and mental state?

It seems to me that at least 85% of the effort of interpreting done well is in the prep: Becoming an informed traveler in the particular world one will be stepping into by exploring, understanding and mapping the topic, issues, players, landmark references, concepts, and terminology. Also, learning the backstory of the speakers or principles.

What will work best in the booth or on the move, both for reference materials and actual interpreting? What’s my analog backup in case the equipment glitches (e.g. notebooks, pens)?

There’s also anticipating and tending to our own future physical and cognitive wellbeing. Taking care to get enough sleep and enjoy nutritious meals for the “fuel” reserves we may need to draw on. Getting out for walks or other physical movement to release built-up tensions and expand the flow of energy through body and mind. And planning: What to wear that will be appropriate yet comfortable for the duration of the assignment, and also adaptable (like if AC is blasting cold air). What to bring for physical wellbeing—water, snacks, lozenges… Visualizing one’s personal workspace and flow. What tech set-up will spare me from fumbling around so I can just work, like a well-oiled machine. What will work best in the booth or on the move, both for reference materials and actual interpreting? What’s my analog backup in case the equipment glitches (e.g. notebooks, pens)? Also, minimizing day-of stress by planning how to get there with ample time and, if possible, scouting the venue. Veteran interpreters anticipate all this, because they know full well that practical details can determine how well or badly an assignment goes, no matter how much they’ve prepared for the content to be interpreted.

But there’s an additional, often-ignored upstream aspect of caring for one’s future self. Namely, tending to what may be going on mentally and emotionally. Inwardly acknowledging whatever anxieties, self-judgments, doubts, or worries may be swirling around inside, rather than trying to ignore or repress them. As self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff explains, “When we meet our suffering with mindful awareness—without judgment or resistance—we become more stable and are better able to respond to what’s happening rather than simply react. We stop running, and can instead face our distress with balance and clarity” (Neff, 2025).

And not just face what we’re experiencing but meet ourselves there with kindness. Such warm self-empathy is what begins to ease inner tensions, softening them.

And not just face what we’re experiencing but meet ourselves there with kindness. Such warm self-empathy is what begins to ease inner tensions, softening them, so that instead of remaining within their grip, we can instead move into beneficial action. For example, reminding yourself of what is within your control (smart preparation, your own state of being) and what is beyond your control (the outcome, events as they unfold). Then letting go of worries about what you can’t control anyway. Or, consciously reframing how you are mentally and emotionally relating to the assignment. If it feels like a threat to your reputation, try approaching it instead as an exciting challenge. Fear contracts and paralyzes. Challenges have an expansive effect, rallying all our mental and physical inner resources to meet them. If you’re worried and anxious about how you will perform, see if you can focus instead on the people you will be interpreting for, who need you. Doing so eases self-conscious doubts and anxieties because it shifts your attention away from yourself, engages the motivation of care for others, and spurs whatever clearsighted action that inspires. This is a helpful mental stance to take as you prepare, and also as you’re about to walk into an interpretation, which brings us to the “during” phase.

During

You can’t change what you know, what skill level you bring, what others do and say, what unexpected things happen. Dreading, resisting or lamenting don’t help.

Once an assignment has begun, we can best optimize our performance and experience of interpreting by letting go and being in the flow, fully present, aware, and available for whatever transpires. At this point, things are what they are. You can’t change what you know, what skill level you bring, what others do and say, what unexpected things happen. Dreading, resisting or lamenting don’t help. Instead, accepting: Self as I am, things as they are. And remembering: This isn’t about me. I’m here to do the best I can for those relying on me, regardless of how things unfold.

Slowing your heartbeat and gradually turning off the tap of stress hormones that flood the body when we’re in danger, afraid or anxious.

There are, however, effective in-the-moment techniques to refocus and ground yourself. If you develop them as regular habits, then they’re there for you, especially when the going gets rough. Whenever there is a momentary pause, simply notice what’s happening in your own body. If, like often happens to me, you find yourself leaning forward, hunched toward the microphone, your whole body tense, especially jaw and shoulders, purposely release those tensions: Shift far enough forward in your chair so that your feet are flat on the floor and your well-supported spine can straighten. This immediately creates more space in your body for your lungs to breathe and your heart to pump fresh, fortifying oxygen. Purposely breathe from down in your belly. If you’re standing, breathe from your feet. Concert musicians have shared with me that this is what they do to ground themselves when they’re about to perform. And see if you can slow your breathing, even a little bit. Thanks to the body’s amazing vagus nerve that winds its way all through the body, interconnecting all our vital organs, slowing your breath has the physiological effect of also slowing your heartbeat and gradually turning off the tap of stress hormones that flood the body when we’re in danger, afraid or anxious.

You can then use your breath to exhale tensions, letting your jaw soften and shoulders drop, so that you’re not expending precious energy unnecessarily, but rather investing only what is needed to interpret. If you’ve ever driven a manual stick-shift vehicle, this shift in energy feels like when you free the engine from revving too fast, too hard, by dropping it into a higher gear where it can just flow with smooth efficiency.

In these ways, your posture and breath are allies. So is your voice. When we’re struggling—like because the speaker is going too fast or is hard to understand—our delivery can start to sound rushed or frantic, our voice may get constricted and higher pitched. Besides being unpleasant and distracting for our listeners, these effects can exacerbate our own anxiety. If this is happening to you, try dropping the pitch of your voice so it becomes deeper and more resonant. Immediately you will sound more confident and in control and, hearing yourself, feel more confident and in control, like you’ve got ahold of the reins again and can forge ahead, no matter what it is you’re facing. As your own distress subsides, you’re then able to shift your focus and motivation back to your listeners, clearly communicating as best you can for their sake.

If the people you are interpreting for are getting confrontational, or the content is disturbing or traumatic, take care to protect yourself so that you can fulfill your role and task as the interpreter.

If the people you are interpreting for are getting confrontational, or the content is disturbing or traumatic, take care to protect yourself so that you can fulfill your role and task as the interpreter. This is particularly important when you are not in a booth but together with the people you are interpreting for. There are small but powerful things you can do: Break eye contact, lowering and resting your gaze on your notebook. This serves as invisible armor, shielding you from whatever darts people may be flinging and lets you better shelter in a zone where you’re just processing and communicating what is being said. Also, even if you can’t change where you are sitting or standing, imperceptibly shift your orientation to be more oblique so that others’ energy is coming not at you frontally, but passing through you.

Noticing and making these shifts—posture, breath, voice, eye gaze, physical orientation—as you are interpreting may seem impossible. But just like anything we practice and come do by habit, they become automatic and are worth paying attention to because they can almost instantly improve how we feel and how we’re able to manage what is happening. In short, they are ways to reclaim our agency, our power to affect our experience of interpreting.

Interpreting places a very heavy and prolonged demand on our limited capacity for directed attention that is effortful and highly focused.

Still, there are no two ways about it: Intense interpreting is depleting, both physically and mentally. This is because interpreting places a very heavy and prolonged demand on our limited capacity for directed attention that is effortful and highly focused. The mind thus becomes fatigued and has an increasingly hard time concentrating. The mental fatigue can be accompanied by feelings of irritability and sluggishness. Empirical research into Attention Restoration Theory (Pasanen et al., 2018) has shown that an effective way to replenish the brain’s capacity for directed attention is to spend time in nature. This is because natural spaces invite effortless, soft fascination—the play of light on fluttering leaves, clouds floating across the sky, the gurgle of a creek, birdsong… So, scope out places at the interpreting venue that can serve this purpose, where you can retreat for a few minutes during breaks—even if it’s only a fountain, a garden area, a window. Once there, remove the harness from your mind, allowing it to just roam and rest as it wishes.

Downstream

Purposely offer yourself what it is you know you desire and need. It’s not selfish; it’s essential for your own resilience so you can continue to do the work you do.

Some assignments or days can leave us on an exhilarating “high” of challenging and interesting work well done. Others can leave us physically and mentally depleted. And sometimes deeply troubled, walking around with the vicarious trauma of disturbing content or contentious, even violent interactions. On these days especially, it’s important to prioritize restorative time for yourself, like an aimless walk out in nature to let it all wash through rather than fester. Whatever you choose, let it be in movement, and without any deliberate focus or goal, so your body and mind can gradually release the accumulated tensions. Also, generally, afford yourself time to rest and get away from it all. This is one of the best ways to avoid burnout. Other great releases include play, laughter, and time for quiet reflection. Purposely offer yourself what it is you know you desire and need. It’s not selfish; it’s essential for your own resilience so you can continue to do the work you do.

The looking-back viewpoint also makes it possible to begin to relate to that difficult experience with more perspective and new understanding.

Also, make it your practice to plan in a short end-of-day or end-of-assignment huddle for an after-action review with your team, booth partner, or just yourself, if working alone. This time is for sharing or writing down snapshots from the experience that celebrate the positives and identify what could be improved. You might recognize this as the Plus-Delta, or simply Delta debriefing format. “Delta” (Δ) stands for what to change, emphasizing learning from what went wrong rather than just criticizing it as “bad.” Such discussions or personal journaling help glean learning, bring closure, and also place disturbing or stressful experiences in the past, which is the first step toward healing. As Warren Dale explains based on his work with post-disaster volunteer relief workers (Dale, 2022), the perspective of looking back on an incident (rather than as if still in it) helps the body know that its high-alert distress is in response to something that happened in the past and that it can turn off the alarm bells. In other words, it helps the parasympathetic nervous system begin to calm stress responses automatically triggered by the sympathetic nervous system when we’re in danger or feeling threatened. The looking-back viewpoint also makes it possible to begin to relate to that difficult experience with more perspective and new understanding. Dale suggests a simple two-phrase model to facilitate this process: Where were you when it happened? And, As you look back on it, what… [fill in the question]?

Riding the River

The above suggestions focus on ways to tend to our own wellbeing upstream, during, and downstream from any particular interpreting assignment. Underlying them all is a mindful awareness and acceptance of what you are experiencing and what you need to be well and to perform at your best. They’re a whole lot easier to actually and naturally do if you’re already at ease in the internal river of yourself. There’s no quick technique for that. It takes regularly returning to the riverbank so you’re familiar with those waters and, whether they’re turbulent or calm, you know that you are safe surrendering to their flow.

What we become aware of comes alive. We come into relationship with it. If what we encounter in ourselves is difficult, we can purposely meet it with kind understanding.

This returning-to-the-riverbank is a metaphor for mindfulness practices such as meditation: purposely taking time to pause and breathe into stillness. That stillness makes it possible to become fully aware of what you are experiencing at that moment, including whatever may be happening around you, in your body, and in your mind (emotions, thoughts, memories, worries…). What we become aware of comes alive. We come into relationship with it. If what we encounter in ourselves is difficult, we can purposely meet it with kind understanding. Compassion for our own suffering is what loosens the grip of rumination, rehash, or fret about the future so that we can let it flow on by rather than remain ensnared in its pull. Over time, you become adept at dropping into such awareness and regrounding yourself, so that it’s possible even in the heat of the moment when you’re interpreting.

Julie E. Johnson

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Julie E. Johnson, EdD, is a Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey (MIIS), where she has received distinctions for her excellence in teaching, integrated mindfulness training into interpreter education, and recently released an open-access self-paced course Mindfulness for Interpreters. Julie is herself a seasoned translator and interpreter, including in settings like executive seminars, conferences, governmental missions, and legal proceedings. She has centered her research on Cognitive Load Theory and Mindfulness as they apply to interpreting. Through this rich intersection of teaching, professional experience and research, she has become a leading voice on mindfulness and interpreting. She gives talks and workshops for fellow trainers and working professionals, and her scholarly work appears inThe Routledge Handbook of Conference Interpreting.

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