Meaning & use
psych yourself out
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Meaning
phrasephrasal verbinformal
To damage your own confidence by worrying too much or imagining that you will fail before you have even started.
Grammar: The reflexive pronoun changes: he psyched himself out before the match.
Patterns
- psych yourself out of doing something
- psych yourself out before something
Don't psych yourself out before the interview; you are well prepared.
She psyched herself out by watching the other runners warm up.
He psyched himself out of asking for a raise.
Word forms
| third person singular | psychs himself/herself out |
|---|---|
| past tense | psyched himself/herself out |
| -ing form | psyching yourself out |
Common combinations
- psych yourself out before a game
- Try not to psych yourself out before a big game.
- easy to psych yourself out
- It is easy to psych yourself out when everyone else seems calm.
- stop psyching yourself out
- You need to stop psyching yourself out and just try.
- psych yourself out of something
- I almost psyched myself out of the audition.
Synonyms and how they differ
- talk yourself out of
- Talk yourself out of is about deciding not to do something, while psych yourself out is about losing confidence.
- lose your nerve
- Lose your nerve suggests sudden fear at the moment, while psych yourself out comes from overthinking beforehand.
- choke
- Choke describes failing under pressure during the performance itself, not the worry beforehand.
Opposites
Word family
- psych verb
- to influence someone's mind or confidence
- psych up phrasal verb
- to prepare yourself mentally and feel confident
- psychological adjective
- relating to the mind
Commonly confused: psych yourself out or psych yourself up?
psych yourself out vs psych yourself up
Psych yourself up means to build your confidence before a challenge, while psych yourself out means to destroy it.
Practice
Before the exam, Maya kept imagining failure and ended up convinced she would do badly. She had ____.
Choose one answer.
Psyched herself out means she damaged her own confidence. Psyched herself up would mean she built confidence, and the other options are not grammatical.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “psych yourself out”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.