Are you one of those rare people who never gets nervous when giving a presentation? If so, be grateful. Most people have some kind of situation that causes the willies.
One of my clients, for example, was in his element giving a pep talk to his team, but when promoted to senior vice president he had to present to the board of directors in the company's huge conference room, standing behind a podium, looking out at a sea of "important" faces. Suddenly his knees threatened to buckle and he completely forgot what he'd rehearsed for weeks. He'd lost the confidence engendered by more familiar, comfortable, intimate settings.
If you're one of those who suffers from stage fright, take comfort in knowing you're not alone. Nicole Kidman has admitted her hands shake and she has trouble breathing in red carpet situations, with all those cameras focused on her. Rock singer Rod Stewart remembers a 1968 performance at New York's Fillmore East theater when he was so nervous he hid behind a stack of speakers for his first song. That way he didn't have to look at the audience.
If you're one of those who suffers from stage fright, take comfort in knowing you're not alone. Nicole Kidman has admitted her hands shake and she has trouble breathing in red carpet situations, with all those cameras focused on her. Rock singer Rod Stewart remembers a 1968 performance at New York's Fillmore East theater when he was so nervous he hid behind a stack of speakers for his first song. That way he didn't have to look at the audience.
I once read in a Book of Lists that not only do a significant number of people list their greatest fear as speaking in public, this ranks ABOVE fear of death.
You may think anxiety attacks would be difficult to change, and of course that's true for some people, but many who could change just don't know how. Typically, they avoid the triggering situations entirely or try to suppress anxiety when it is triggered, not realizing they're feeding the fear by reinforcing the belief "I can't do this." In his book Don't Panic, Dr. R. Reid Wilson writes:
"Our instinctual defenses fail to overcome panic. In fact, they actually support the recurrence of anxiety attacks. We encourage and strengthen the power of panic by treating it as our 'enemy,' to be avoided or to be battled... Whenever you resist something, that something will persist."
In fact, there are proven ways to break these patterns that will work for most people. Dr. Wilson's paradoxical approach is my favorite: locate the symptom and exaggerate it! This defies logic, I know, but it seems to communicate directly with the unconscious and knock it silly.
Another effective approach is the fast phobia cure. This method worked so well with a client who feared flying, she completed her next trip forgetting she used to be afraid, and only remembered it when I asked how her trip went.
A slightly more complicated but highly effective process is systematic desensitization and visualization, where you create a hierarchy of instances in the area of your fear, from least feared to most feared, then relax and visualize the least fearful until the anxiety goes away, moving gradually up the hierarchy until you can picture what used to be the scariest situation while feeling completely relaxed. One of my clients overcame his fear of snakes by gradual desensitization over a period of several weeks.
Another effective approach is the fast phobia cure. This method worked so well with a client who feared flying, she completed her next trip forgetting she used to be afraid, and only remembered it when I asked how her trip went.
A slightly more complicated but highly effective process is systematic desensitization and visualization, where you create a hierarchy of instances in the area of your fear, from least feared to most feared, then relax and visualize the least fearful until the anxiety goes away, moving gradually up the hierarchy until you can picture what used to be the scariest situation while feeling completely relaxed. One of my clients overcame his fear of snakes by gradual desensitization over a period of several weeks.
Most of all, allow yourself to laugh a little about your anxieties. The Pop-Up Book of Phobias adds grim humor to our variety of fears -- of heights, of flying, of spiders or snakes, of dentists, fear of pretty much anything you can imagine -- garlic, the color white, books (including pop-up books), priests...
