Public Speaking Anxiety

Public speaking can provoke anxiety, nervousness, panic attacks, outbreak of sweat, sudden coldness, black out, stammering and other responses in an individual. Some of us who have been good speakers may still suffer from a panic attack or anxiety just prior to the speech or public talk. Despite confidence and experience, public speaking may still provoke anxiety and nervousness in many of us.

This is an indication of a deep rooted problem or experience that has created a negative impact at our conscious and sub conscious level. Any kind of experience that is new or being done for the first time could lead to mistakes, flaws, goof ups, and this sense of failure or embarrassment takes a deep root into our memory and sub consciousness.

After practice and experience sometimes this sense of embarrassment or scar can be overcome. But sometimes, the experience may have been so embarrassing that the fear of a similar repeat performance comes to haunt us everytime we take the centre stage.

This realization and acute awareness that all eyes and ears are on us, and any mistake we do will be caught creates a fear and pressure to do well. Any kind of fear or strain or stress plays on the mind and heart creating a situation of panic, anxiety and nervousness.

You need to release this deep seated fear from the psyche. This can be done by repeating the same mistake again or by altering your response to the mistake done. This means when a minor mistake takes place, you must improvise and go on with your talk, and then the fear and threat that sometime went wrong reduces. You learn to accept minor goof ups and this does not create a devastating impact on your psyche.

Another way you can help yourself is by changing your attitude towards mistakes and things that go wrong. Things will go wrong as they seldom do; do not take it as the end of the world. Learn to improvise and take things lightly.