Anxiety Coach

OVERCOME THE FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING

In my article "The Panic Trick", I described how panic can trick you into acting in ways that actually make you more afraid, rather than less. (If you haven't read that yet, I suggest you do so before continuing here). You can derive a lot of power from understanding, and using, the information contained in that article. Let's consider how this can be applied to the fear of public speaking.

How do you respond to your fear of public speaking? If you're like most people with this fear, you probably engage in a lot of avoidance. You might even have made major life decisions based on this fear. For instance, people sometimes choose college coursework, even careers, in such a way as to avoid public speaking. They pass up promotions which would require speaking. And they'll often go to great lengths to avoid having to speak at meetings or make presentations. For many people, the part of a meeting where everyone is asked to introduce themselves is a major source of anxiety, and they try to find excuses to miss those occasions.

It's certainly true that the more you avoid an activity you fear, the stronger and more persistent that fear becomes. People often come to see me for help with this fear, and they often have the idea that I will first help them to become unafraid of public speaking, and then they will go out and do some public speaking.

That's not the way it works!

If you've read the section on panic attacks, you've already read about why people need to practice with what scares them in order to get over their fear. That's desensitization. This doesn't mean you have to start giving long speeches right away, but it does mean that recovery will be accomplished by working with your fear, not by resisting it.

When I work with people who fear public speaking, our agenda includes skills training and regular practice with those skills. Neither by itself is sufficient; any good treatment program will offer both components. One good place to get such practice is at a local Toastmasters club. Toastmasters is an international organization devoted to helping people become better public speakers. It's not specifically designed for people with a phobia, and you need to learn anxiety management techniques elsewhere before you go, but it can be a good place to get regular practice with a friendly audience.

Try this exercise
MMany of you probably fear public speaking but still do it occasionally, either because you don't want to give in to the fear, or because you can't always avoid it without damaging your career. Here's an exercise to do right now. Take two minutes to identify all the things you do during a speech in an effort to feel less afraid. What do you do to control your fear while speaking, or even just introducing yourself, before a group?

Write down all the responses you can think of in two minutes, then click the button.

What's on your list? Fearful speakers I've worked with have included items such as:

Read it
Don't look at audience
Rush through it
Skip portions of my talk
Tell myself it'll be over soon
Imagine audience in their underwear
Cough, pretend to have a sore throat
Use a lot of slides
Clench fists beneath lectern
Keep swallowing, to make sure I can drink fluids
Wear my lucky shirt

One of the things I'll ask them is, specifically, how do you think these will help you? So let me ask you to review this for yourself.

Take two more minutes to look at your list and try to identify exactly how you think these measures will help you.

Here's what I notice when I review this question with fearful speakers. Their strategies during a speech involve steps which are designed to:

End the speech as soon as possible
Avoid any pauses or interruptions during the speech
Avoid contact with the audience
Hide the fact that they are afraid

These all involve resistance. They involve efforts to resist and fight the anxiety. They also involve efforts to resist the role of a speaker, to avoid acknowledging to myself that I am the speaker here, and I will do what a speaker does. What's the result of this resistance? Typically, it will make you more afraid, not less - just the opposite of what you want.

Let's think about the first two strategies listed above. People talk fast when they're afraid, and when they're trying to get through a speech quickly they talk really fast. When you talk fast, you're more inclined to breathe shallowly, from your chest, and can make yourself more anxious physically. When you talk continuously, without taking occasional brief pauses, you don't give yourself the chance to take a relaxing breath, and you may end up holding your breath for uncomfortably long periods. This can give you the sensation of running out of air and being unable to breathe!

All this hurrying naturally reduces the chance that your audience can enjoy your speech. It creates more of a barrier between you and them, which might have been your intention, but this will actually increase your fear. The less of a connection you have with them, the more unfriendly they will seem to you.

Fearful speakers will often try to ignore the audience, thinking that if they notice the audience, it will increase their own anxiety. It's unfortunately common, for instance, to avoid eye contact with the audience. This deprives you of any audience reaction and feedback. You won't notice when people seem more interested, or have questions.

When you don't have any feedback from the audience, you'll substitute your own thoughts. And if you're a fearful speaker, your thoughts and self evaluations are virtually guaranteed to be far more negative, and unrealistic, than anything your audience might think or say! You may have trouble believing that. So check it out. Next time you listen to a speaker, observe your own thoughts and reactions, and compare your attitude toward that speaker with the attitude you take toward yourself when you're the speaker.

Finally, efforts to hide your fear create an additional fear for you - the fear of being "found out". This only adds to the anxiety you experience. And it has another negative effect. After you have given a speech, even if it has gone well, you may find that you take no pride in your success because of this thought:

"If they knew how afraid I was, they'd think less of me."

I've worked with many successful businesspeople who, despite their fear, actually presented frequently and did a good job. Unfortunately, because of their desire for secrecy, they thought they were "fooling people" and never felt satisfaction from their work. In order to progress, they had to see that they were the ones being fooled - not the audience!

You can overcome the fear of public speaking, provided you develop a game plan based on three basic elements: an accepting attitude toward your fear; a willingness to work with it rather than to fight it; and methods based on a knowledge of how anxiety actually"works".

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This page was last modified on 6-10-2004.