Recently I have
more and more clients coming to me due to their fear of speaking in public,
whether it be giving a presentation as part of a job interview, standing up in
front of their whole company to feedback company stats or even having to give a
best man speech at a wedding – no matter what the situation, the fear and panic
can be the same.
In the last
month I have helped 8 people overcome their phobia and present with confidence
and authority with a 100% success rate.
In fact, not only did all 8 out-perform their wildest expectations, they
actually told me that when it came to the crunch, they were excited about doing
it!
So what
causes us to develop these phobias? I’m
always interested in finding out how these issues develop – as I’ve already
said in previous posts, the only fears we are actually born with are loud
noises and falling. When I start a
session with a client I’m like to delve a little to find out where
the fear may come from, not that it’s necessary to know to be able to help my clients,
but I find it helps them to understand why they behave in that way when we establish
the origins. Once they can see where the
fear stems from, it helps their conscious and subconscious mind to realise how
unhelpful the emotion is and gives me the leverage needed to help facilitate the
change.
Fear of
public speaking is actually a learned behaviour – something happened to us in
the past and our brain made a link between whatever was going on around us
and fear – therefore, in order to protect us from perceived ‘pain’
(see Pleasure Vs Pain) our body will sometimes do anything to avoid the pain
and so we often go into full ‘flight or fight’ syndrome. In one extreme case, my client actually
fainted just before he was about to give a major presentation to his
colleagues. That was a sure fire way for
his mind to protect him from the perceived
threat and therefore avoiding pain.
Whilst that
example is extreme, our self protection modes (which might have served us well
at some point in our lives) are quite often unhelpful as we get older. In the example above my client received far more
pain from the embarrassment of fainting than he would ever have done had he
just done the presentation!
Our fear of
public speaking comes from many places, often it’s not actually the fear of
speaking in public but the fear of being judged by others. Many of my clients can trace the start of
their issues back to the dreaded ‘reading out loud’ sessions that where
conducted during English classes in school and the fear of being judged by
their fellow students. For others it can
be general low self esteem or simple transference from parents who are also
uncomfortable in social or public environments – they saw how their parents
reacted and simply unconsciously copied it.
In my role
as the coach, I help clients uncover the origins (although that isn’t
absolutely essential), change any unhelpful ‘movies’ they may be running of
previous incidences they have experienced (when public speaking hasn’t perhaps
gone quite as well as they might have hoped), use various techniques to remove the ‘panic/fear/stress’
emotions and give them some new confidence building exercises to
practise once our session is over in order to reinforce the new behaviour.
Once the fear
of public speaking has been cleared, it can open up a whole new world of
possibilities. One client was really
excited that she was now able to explore a whole new side to her business - she
had often been asked to train others on a range of products and services that
she provides, but always felt that she couldn’t because of her fear of speaking
in front of others. Her business has now taken off in a whole new direction and
she is loving being able to help others whilst boosting her profits
considerably.
If you have a social
phobia or fear of speaking in public, what would removing that old programming
do for you? How would your life be
improved? What could you do that you’ve
never been able to do before?
For
more information on how I can help, please email me at info@whatnextconsultancy.co.uk
Jo
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