UNDERSTAND FEAR OF PUBLIC SPEAKING
The first thing to understand is that fear is a natural and normal human 'negative' emotion. The purpose of negative emotions is to tell us that something isn't quite right; an indication that we need to take some kind of action. In the case of fear, the message is 'danger'. While we are born with fear of loud noises and fear of heights 'pre-wired' in our nervous systems, and all other fears are learned from 'experience'. The catch is, our mind is so powerful, that the 'experience' doesn't have to have been real, it could just have been vividly imagined. (That's why you can get feelings about speaking in public or trying to speak just by thinking; you don't have to actually be there). Learned fear is an important survival mechanism, but just occasionally the wires get crossed and we learn a fear response for something where it doesn't belong – where there isn't a significant danger – and Fear Of Public Speaking can develop. The Root Cause The root cause of Fear Of Public Speaking varies from individual to individual, and whilst no two individuals are the same, most fall into one or more of the following categories: A Single Traumatic Incident. A highly stressful or frightening real event at which, instantaneously Fear Of Public Speaking is created. Similar to, say, a child being bitten by a dog and developing an immediate phobia, a single traumatic incident is a one-time experience at which there is such extreme fear - even if only for a moment - that the nervous system 'learns' to associate fear to help the individual avoid such situations in futre. The initial fear, by the way, may be nothing to do with speaking in public or trying to speak. We often hear from clients that the problem started at a time when they were under extreme stress for something completely unrelated, but the mind somehow associated the negative feelings to speaking in public or trying to speak anyway. An Associated Traumatic Experience. This is where the individual does not directly experience the fear, but 'associates' to someone who does, either in a real situation, or, more rarely, when watching someone in a movie - or even a dream - experience a traumatic event. A Slow Build. A slow build occurs when a mild case of Fear Of Public Speaking escalates over time to become a severe one. What is happening here is that the individual is 'accumulating' fearful associations to speaking in public or trying to speak, so that the evidence used by the mind and nervous system is becoming increasingly irrefutable that fear is the appropirate emotion. That means that anxiety isso it is created automatically in anticipation each time... creating a self-fullfilling prophesy.
Sometimes Fear Of Public Speaking can simply be developed from seemingly harmless experiences, or seem like 'its always been like this'. The truth is it hasn't always been that way (there's no such thing as a new born baby with irrational fears and phobias) but it may have started way back in an early childhood, possibly school, experience. A 'Learned' Respose, like Fear Of Public Speaking can Always be UN-learned... In all the years we've been helping people overcome the most extreme fears and phobias, we have never found a case that could not be overcome, provided the individual was determined to do so. The human system is capable of learning new responses incredibly quickly (how else could a single incident lasting only a few seconds or minutes create a problem in the first place?) and with the correct techniques a fearless, comfortable response can always be restored. The first step to overcoming Fear Of Public Speaking is to take this quick – free – self-assessment now.
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