The Threat Of Public Speaking Anxiety

By Dana B. Thompson

Anxiety is a physiological and psychological state that illustrates behavioral, cognitive, somatic and emotional components. It is known as a displeasing emotion of concern and fear. Moreover, anxiety is considered as a general word used to describe numerous disorders causing fear, worry, apprehension, and nervousness. Anxiety actually affects how you behave and feel. It manifests actual physical symptoms. On the other hand, mild anxiety is generally unsettling and vague whereas severe anxiety is extremely paralyzing and debilitating causing significant impact on your life. There are different kinds of anxiety and one of this is the public speaking anxiety.

It's critically important to feel comfortable with the people around you, particularly when you are learning. Make sure you have a teacher who is supportive and helpful. If not, find a new one.Role playing is one of the most helpful things you can do to reduce your speaking anxiety. As I mentioned in item one, speaking a foreign language is like having to present constantly. When I have to give a presentation at work, I prepare extensively to help me feel more comfortable, including scripting and rehearsing it as many times as I can. The same steps can be applied to language. What are some common conversations that you have that you can script and rehearse?Practice is the key to all language acquisition, but you don't always have someone to practice with. Also, if you are suffering from anxiety, you may not have the nerve and motivation to practice with another person. A way to practice on your own is to narrate your activities. When you are getting dressed in the morning, try saying the steps out loud, like "I'm going to take a shower" and "I'm putting on my shirt".Sometimes identifying what triggers your anxiety can be a big step in controlling it. Try and keep a journal of when you feel anxious. Is it a certain person that makes you nervous? Is it a certain situation?What I am going to teach you here is the fact that there is a physical reason for our feeling frightened when put into a position to speak in public. That reason is our body's perception that speaking in front of others is a "threatening situation" that demands the over-creation of adrenalin. And it is the over-creation of adrenalin that gives us our symptoms of feeling frightened.

In medical terminologies, public speaking anxiety is referred to as "glossophobia." It is a very common reported type of social fears. It is actually normal that you will experience nervousness during your presentation or speech. However, in the case of a person with a Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), your feeling of anxiety during public speaking will take out and control your life. You will worry too much a few weeks to months before the date of your speech or presentation. On the day of the presentation, you will suffer from intense physical symptoms of anxiety such as pounding heart, blushing, inability to breathe, and quivering voice. These symptoms result from the flight or fight response of your body. There is a sudden release of adrenaline that prepares you for a sudden threat of danger. At this moment, you will experience loss of body control.

Let me also say this up-front - The information I present here will help those with a moderate to serious fear of speaking in public, as well as give "an edge" to those who do not really fear public speaking, but just want to improve their performance . Those that have used this information successfully have included many in business who must routinely give presentations , show business folks who want to be able to deliver the best performance possible and those who just join an organization and must participate in large meetings once in a while. The symptoms of fear that I will explain how to control are identical to all of us. The only thing that separates us in terms of public speaking is the severity of those symptoms and how we're able to control them.

Another irrational thought is the belief that people will notice everything. This is known as the fallacy of exaggeration. During a speech, some of us will tremble a little. Because we are in constant self-evaluation during a stressful situation, we believe that people will notice. Finally, the last fallacy is the fallacy of perfection. There is an implied belief that we must execute the most perfect speech ever. We are our own toughest critic. We believe that mispronouncing a word or skipping a sentence will ruin the whole speech.

The point is, the final job will not look half as good if the preparation work is not done well.It's the same with a good speech. If you don't collect together the material about which you are going to speak, sort it all into a sensible well thought out order so that all the points you want to cover are included and then arrange that material in an understandable way, your speech will be a disaster. Without that preparation, your task on the day will be immeasurably more difficult.But with all that preparation behind you, your confidence in your own ability with regard to the accuracy of the information should be OK.Your next task, of course, is the delivery of the speech and your preparation for your delivery should be just as thorough as your preparation of the content of the speech.So, what are the ways in which you can prepare yourself for delivery of your speech?During your preparation, find time to practise the speech. Read it through several times and you'll get a feel for how it sounds. If you can, record the speech as you hope to deliver it and listen to the playback carefully. Note down anything which didn't sound quite right so that you can change it at the end.

About a week before the speech try to build up a positive image of yourself giving the speech really well. 'See' yourself standing confidently and relaxed in front of your audience. 'See' the audience listening intently to you and laughing naturally at your jokes. 'Listen' to the applause after the speech is finished. Do this several times a day for a week or so before the day of your speech.Now that you have done your preparation in the lead up to speech day, you can concentrate on helping yourself on the day.Relaxation techniques such as breathing deeply and slowly in and out as you are being introduced can be very good for putting your body at ease. Something else to try at the same time might be to tighten and slowly relax various muscle groups. Not necessarily in any order these might include; the thigh muscles, calf muscles, the muscles in your arms, shoulders and back. This should relieve any tension in your body so that you can concentrate on your delivery.

For instance, if we were in a situation where we stood embarrassed in front of our schoolmates without saying a word,--- that could be it. Even though we were not speaking in public, our brains perceived our fear just standing there in front of other people as we thought that we looked foolish and/or scared. In a nutshell - what happens to some of us during this type of incident is our brain links our intense negative feelings with merely standing in front of other people as they look at us. It almost sounds silly that deep fears that control us as adults often have such trivial moments of creation in childhood. Often they last only a minute, but it is a minute that can last a lifetime. I'm sure the people who initiated these terrible incidents in our lives so many years ago never think back to them or to us for that matter. They have no idea what they said or did during that incident had such a profound and lasting effect on us.Our fears may only be "in our head" but that's enough to make us react as we do to speaking in public and other anxiety-prone situations. I'm sure you already realize - it's pretty difficult to change what's "in our head" even if we can figure out why it's "in our head" to begin with and why we react as we do to perceived "threatening situations" such as speaking in public.

During a one-to-one conversation it's important to make eye-contact with the person you're having a conversation with. If you are too nervous or too shy to do this directly, a good technique to give the impression of 'eye-contact' is to look at the bridge of the nose of the person you are talking to. For them, it will look as though you're looking straight at their eyes. Try it with a friend. It works.Making 'eye-contact' with your audience is equally important. You can do this and still keep your composure by looking at the heads of individuals. Scan the audience as you speak, but instead of looking directly at their faces, look at the tops of their heads. This will give the impression of direct eye-contact with members of the audience without it being unpleasant for you.These techniques are useful for those people who have the normal feelings of anxiety that the majority of people have before delivering a speech. However, if your anxieties go deeper and are felt for much longer both before and after delivery of the speech, then there are extra helpful techniques that can be tried.

It doesn't matter why we react as we do to speaking in public and it doesn't matter if we remember a particular incident that triggered our anxiety or not. Since our fear is not based on an actual threat to us, we need only eliminate the symptoms of that fear to gain back our self-confidence and function as if we don't have fear. Intellectually, we know there is nothing really to fear when we speak in public, but our bodies act as if there is and it's completely out of our control.Without the symptoms of fear we can speak in public in a more thoughtful and relaxed manner than we ever thought possible. And if we can speak in public in a relaxed manner, guess what - WE CAN SPEAK IN PUBLIC!! PERIOD Really, it's just that simple.The symptoms of fear of speaking in public are curable specifically at the time you're put in a position to speak in public by taking a doctor-prescribed, safe, inexpensive and non-addictive medication. As I will explain, this medication allows us to control the cause of our symptoms exactly at the time when they are getting out of control. Therefore, what I am going to teach you will help those of us who have to routinely give presentations for our careers, those who need to only give several speeches a lifetime for wedding toasts, funerals, and the like, as well as those in show business who must be relaxed and confident enough to focus on their performance.

Finally, have a conversation with the audience. When presenters tend to read from visual aids or cards, they are disengaged from the audience. Remember that your speech is not about you, it is about the audience. You are giving them something, a message. Engage them with a conversation. This approach will be and feel more natural. More importantly, it will help you reduce anxiety.Public Speaking is something we all have to do at some point. The more we do it, the easier it will be for you. Remember that it won't be perfect every time, but with practice you will become much better. The goal is not to get rid of the anxiety, but to learn to control it.

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