Fear of Speaking

Swimming with sharks

Imagine you’re on vacation, and you find yourself swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean. The water is crystal clear, and the bright shapes of tropical fish, sea anemones and coral twinkle in the beams of sunlight streaming down from the surface. Suddenly, out of the corner of your eye, you notice a 12-foot shark moving directly toward you. Adrenalin courses through your body, causing your heart to race, your muscles to tense, and your eyes to dart about looking for a method of escape.

Suddenly, something extraordinary happens. Your conscious brain intervenes. You happen to know a little about sharks, so you look again. You see that this is a nurse shark, and nurse sharks aren’t the least bit interested in eating humans. This intellectual thought begins to negotiate with the primitive fear and you begin to overcome the nervousness. You really are swimming with sharks, but you assure yourself that you aren’t in danger.

What can this story teach us about the fear of public speaking?

• We react to things that seem threatening even if they aren’t
• Adrenalin is released into our bodies before our conscious minds can intervene
• Even when terrified, we can calm our fearful, unconscious reactions
• By understanding the source of your nervousness, you can manage your fear

Is it just me?

During our workshops, before the first on-camera speaking exercise, we typically ask the group, “Who has a fear of public speaking?” or “Who’s nervous?” Nearly every hand goes up. We then ask the class to look around the room to notice if anyone looks nervous. Amazingly, hardly anyone does. How can that be?

The fact is nearly all of the symptoms of nervousness – the racing heart, the rush of adrenaline, the sweaty pits, the nausea, the clouded thinking – aren't visible from the outside. Our internal feeling of nervousness differs dramatically from how we look to others from the outside.

Since everyone else in the room looks perfectly calm, we think to ourselves, “What’s wrong with me?” Rest assured, there’s nothing wrong with you. In fact, you’d be a very rare human being if you didn’t feel some public speaking anxiety.

A very human reaction

In workshops, participants often jokingly say that the distance from their seat at the conference table to their spot at the front of the room feels like the longest journey in the world. They can go from relaxed and comfortable to jittery and scatter-brained in fewer than five feet. It’s amazing what happens to our internal chemistry when we are thrust into the spotlight. Nervousness is hardwired into all of us. It’s a very human, albeit primitive, reaction. Why would standing in front of a group of friendly, supportive people produce so much angst and adrenaline?

Ask yourself this question: If you were a creature in the woods and ten sets of eyes were silently staring at you, what would that mean for you? It means you’re prey. You could die! Your primitive brain, that part of you watching for dangerous situations, finds it threatening to be at the front of the room. You’re singled out from the crowd with many sets eyes silently watching you. It feels especially menacing when the staring faces are expressionless, and such is typically the case when you first begin a conversation. A sea of blank faces can be very threatening.

Eliminating your fear versus Managing your fear

A common myth about the fear of public speaking is that it’s possible to completely eliminate it.

The truth is: You can’t.

Even the most confident public speakers will tell you that they feel some degree of anxiety before stepping in front of an audience. Call it stage fright or phobia. Call it fear or simply nervous anticipation. The fact is, we all have to overcome nervousness when we have to talk in front of a group. As the stakes get higher, you will feel anxiety.

The most common way to try to eliminate your public speaking phobia is by desensitization. As with any phobia, you’d have to put yourself through the anxiety-inducing experience so many times that your body would simply stop reacting to it. Not only is this a grueling process, most people give up before they reap the rewards.

At SpeechSkills, we take a very different approach. What if you knew you looked like an exceptionally confident public speaker even if you still had a few butterflies? How would that feel?

What can I control?

Often people try to address their fear of public speaking by focusing on the fear itself – the deep and irrational part of our subconscious. While you may not have control over the fight/flight impulse to load up on adrenalin when you are forced into the spotlight, there are two areas where you do have control; your physical body and your conscious thoughts. Because of this, it is far easier to look comfortable than it is to feel comfortable.

This is why SpeechSkills workshops focus on looking confident and comfortable. As a result of our workshops, your public speaking skill levels will rise as you have more opportunities to practice showing increased confidence.

Real results, no lip service

After one or two workshops, we expect that you will be amazed at how comfortable you look. However, we don’t expect you to take our word for it. One of the reasons that we provide on-camera coaching is so you can see what you look like from the outside. In the long run, it’s your opinion of yourself that will make the biggest internal shift in your level of confidence. When you know you look good, you begin to feel good. In our workshops we:

• Explicitly define and demonstrate the physical behaviors exhibited by confident speakers
• Provide expert feedback and on-camera coaching so that you can cultivate these behaviors for yourself
• Encourage you to develop “learned confidence” through a series of in-class exercises until it becomes a part of your muscle memory
• Help you create a strategy so that you can continue to overcome nervousness long after class ends
  

And here’s where things get really good. We know that if you have deep self-assurance and that you look confident and relaxed, most of your public speaking anxiety will melt away.

Speech anxiety vs. clinical fear and phobia

If you think you have a deep-seated public speaking phobia, SpeechSkills is probably not the answer for you. Crippling fear is probably best addressed through counseling. However, if you find pubic speaking to be uncomfortable (maybe even extremely uncomfortable), but you feel that developing this skill will enhance your career, our workshops and DVDs will give you the knowledge and skills you need to succeed.

Our approach is to build your confidence by giving you skills to be a truly effective speaker. We won’t promise to eliminate all of your public speaking anxiety, but when you overcome nervousness and replace it with a calm, confident exterior you will be well on your way to becoming an effective public speaker.