As a therapist I was surprised by the number of clients I was seeing with some sort of public speaking anxiety. Then I realised that this is the most widely reported problem.
It is not that all my clients were regularly standing in front of large academic groups, but that most of us face situations in our lives which require us to speak in front of the public – be it addressing a learned academic body or as a new mother meeting a group of other mothers when her child is joining a play group for the first time. All these situations can lead to a public speaking anxiety.
Before we can discuss what we can do to help in overcoming fear of public speaking we need to consider how it was developed. We were certainly not born with it – babies are very keen to speak from a very early age and will babble at any one who looks at them eager to communicate. By nature humans are enthusiastic communicators and this could well have been one of the driving forces of our success as a species. What then causes the public speaking anxiety to occur?
As a survival mechanism the human brain reacts instinctively to dangerous situations and this is basically a good thing. However, it can be overdone. Our reaction mechanism cannot distinguish between a real dangerous situation and the memory of one. Consequently when we remember a dangerous situation our hormones react just as if we are facing that situation again.
What, then, is so dangerous about speaking in public? Basically nothing, but it is how we perceive the situation that matters. Most of us in our lifetimes, perhaps as a child, have faced some sort of public speaking situation and been frightened by it. Perhaps we dried up at school when asked to present a one minute talk on our holiday and the class laughed, or perhaps we were always told not to speak unless spoken to.
These situations are not dangerous in themselves, but do give rise to anxiety. Anxiety leads to stress which spoils our intellectual ability. This is because in stressful situations (real or remembered) blood is drawn from our brains and fed to the muscles to aid in fight or flight. Again a good thing, but when faced with public speaking it causes us to stumble over our words and dry up causing more stress.
The result of all this is that when we are faced, in later life, with a public speaking situation we remember the earlier ones and the cycle repeats intensifying the stress and the problem eventually leading to a full blown public speaking anxiety
So now we know were it comes from what can we do towards overcoming this fear of public speaking? Well, this is a BSFF blog so of course I am going to recommend BSFF. How, then, can BSFF help overcome public speaking anxiety?
I could spend a lot of words explaining how BSFF can help with overcoming public speaking anxiety, but I could not do it better than Larry (after all he invented the concept!) so I suggest you go to his website at www.besetfreefast.com , click on the video near the top of the home page and sit back and enjoy. If you are interested there is far more information ob Youtube. Just use the search terms “Larry BSFF”