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Public Speaking Fears and Anxiety
By Free Psychology Articles | December 24, 2007
Here’s a list of the things we hear most often:
- 1) Drying up’ or not being able to speak.
- 2) Forgetting what you are talking about your mind going blank.
- 3) Having the heckler from Hell.
- 4) Having someone in the audience who knows more than you do.
- 5) People noticing that you are nervous.
- 6) Having to run screaming from the room.
- 7) The presentation being so awful and embarrassing that your social/career relationships are forever ruined.
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The impossible to answer question from Hell’ - 9) The audience talking over you or walking out
- 10) Dying on stage (OK, so we made this one up to make it up to 10
What to Do About a Fear of Public Speaking
Firstly, let’s accept that we need fear. Without the ability to become very fearful no human beings would be here today - our ancestors relied on fear to survive bigger, stronger and faster predators.
When we become highly fearful, the unconscious mind takes over and we become primarily set up for physical action. In order to survive a physical threat we respond automatically for the sake a quick reaction. In certain situations, this can be a life-saver.
During this ‘fight or flight’ response, breathing speeds up in preparation for physical exertion, we may sweat to cool the body, or feel as if we can’t think’ Survival in very primitive conditions is primarily about action rather than thinking
How much anxiety is good for public speaking?
So we don?t want too much anxiety and we don?t want too much relaxation. We need enough tension to give us energy, and enough calmness for clear thinking and recall. We need the right balance.
Most of the petrified presenters that we train are doing the same thing!
Here’s the usual ‘pattern of fear’.
1) You have a presentation coming up.
2) You think about it, imagining things going wrong and so feel anxious.
3) Unknowingly, you build up an association between the thought of the speech and the feeling of fear.
4) You go into the actual situation and get a fear response!
Repeated often enough, this will cause the two to become very closely associated. This is ?negative mental rehearsal’ for the event. Not surprisingly, when you go into the actual situation you feel terrified!
Dogged by an Ancient Brain
As Ivan Pavlov showed, dogs who are repeatedly fed whilst hearing a bell can eventually salivate when just hearing the bell without food.
People who repeatedly feel fear coupled with imagining something find they feel fear when the situation arrives.
However, people can learn to associate tightrope walking, fighting in battles or defusing a bomb with a state of psychological calm.
You can learn to change an association.
Topics: Featured, Social Psychology |
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