Ride the wave: 3 tools to help you rethink, redirect, and reframe your public speaking fear
public speaking anxiety can be unpleasant, but by reinterpreting physical symptoms and using positive self-talk, you can reduce your public speaking fear.
Jitters are normal, but a racing heart, shaking hands, or panic is usually part of our body’s fight or flight response. By learning to reinterpret symptoms of fear, we can teach ourselves how to tell the difference between an uncomfortable situation and true danger.
Many people have butterflies when getting up in front of a crowd. However, people with public speaking anxiety feel these jitters on another level.
A racing heart, shaking palms, sweating, dry mouth, lightheadedness, or nausea can all be byproducts of the panic and dread associated with this kind of fear, and these feelings aren’t something you can control. They’re part of the ‘fight or flight’ response your body is having to what it perceives as a dangerous situation.
Even though getting in front of a room isn’t the same as being chased by a predator, your brain still thinks you’re in danger. The emotional risk of feeling vulnerable, embarrassed, or ashamed brings up a flood of adrenaline—which is why your body is stuck feeling shaky, sweaty, or sick.
To overcome these instinctive reactions, we need to teach our brains how to tell the difference between something uncomfortable, and something that could actually cause us harm.
Acceptance-based behavioral practices can go a long way towards de-escalating this fear. Your heart might still race, your hands might shake, but there are ways to re-interpret these symptoms so that they don’t cause you as much psychological distress. When we exercise, we feel these same physical sensations—a racing heart, or sweaty palms—but what we don’t do is assign them a particular meaning. In time, learning to re-interpret these feelings makes it easier and easier to tackle your fear. Here are a few tools to get started:
The 90 second rule
Physical symptoms of public speaking anxiety can be uncomfortable. By reinterpreting these symptoms and using positive self-talk, you can reduce your public speaking fear.
According to psychologist Dr. Joan Rosenberg, waves of unpleasant body sensations last about 90-seconds long. “Feelings are generally known at a physical level before you are consciously aware of them,” she explains. Fortunately, these feelings are temporary. Like the fight or flight response described above, these feelings are from chemicals in your brain surging through your body. It might seem like the fear you’re feeling is lasting longer than 90 seconds; what typically continues past the 90 seconds is the rumination and discomfort from our feelings.
“Physiologically, our bodies cannot maintain arousal states for very long. Making your way through feelings—especially uncomfortable ones—mainly involves tolerating the bodily sensations until the body re‑regulates. The body prefers to be at homeostasis, its typical state, and will try to get back to baseline as soon as possible.” — Dr. Joan Rosenberg
As Dr. Rosenberg explains in her book, 90 Seconds to a Life You Love, once these chemicals are provoked, your body will respond in its own unique way. Whether it’s sweaty hands or butterflies, this rush of chemicals is a wave that will eventually subside. Research suggests this wave lasts around 90 seconds or less
When we ruminate and try to make sense of the trigger (‘I’m shaking like a leaf! I’m going to be nervous the whole time I’m on stage!’), the wave gets triggered again—which is why we sometimes feel more than 90 seconds of nerves. By accepting the temporary nature of the situation (‘90 seconds. My hands are shaking, and it’s a chemical response to being here. It’s just temporary.) you can avoid the rumination, get settled into the feeling, and learn to ride the wave.
Re-interpret sensations
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” — Soren Kierkegaard
The most common symptom of anxiety around public speaking is a pounding heart. Although it’s not pleasant to feel like your heart is going to pop out of your chest, it’s also not necessarily bad either! If you were finishing up a brisk run on a beautiful afternoon, your heart might be pounding in the same way—it just wouldn’t seem like a negative thing.
Feeling panicked, sweaty, nauseous or light headed isn’t something you can control. Fortunately, it’s not something you should be able to control, either. Although some Tibetan monks can control their body temperature in meditation, and there’s a small amount of research suggesting that you can arbitrarily influence the rhythm of your heart, it’s not something the average person could (or should!) attempt to do.
Instead, accept the feelings in your body as they are. You don’t need to change the fact that your heart is going to race. You can change how you react to it. Ride the wave.
Expand, don’t contract
Another aspect of the fight or flight response is contraction. Squeezing your body together, as we tend to do when we’re anxious, leads us to common symptoms of fear, including shallow breathing, tight muscles, or a squeaky voice. One way to counteract this tendency is to learn to breathe from (and talk from) your stomach.
In her book, How to Own the Room, comedian Viv Groskop talks about letting your brain ‘drop into your stomach.’ When you move your attention lower, you take the focus out of your fear and into your body. If you put a hand on your stomach as you breathe, you can physically feel your breath moving in and out. When we’re anxious, we constrict, and our breathing moves up to our chest. By dropping our attention lower, we can put more focus on our body and become more aware of our whole self.
Although we can’t control a racing heart or shaky palms, learning to reinterpret the physical symptoms of anxiety can go a long way towards de-escalating your public speaking fear. Putting acceptance-based practices to work helps give you more control over your experiences which, in time, will help you become a more confident speaker overall.
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