copyright 2015 TalkPower Inc.
Showing posts with label Fear. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fear. Show all posts
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Thursday, September 3, 2015
Sunday, August 30, 2015
Thursday, August 27, 2015
Friday, August 21, 2015
Thursday, August 20, 2015
Where to Look
Should you make direct eye contact with the audience before
you begin speaking? The answer, you might be surprised to learn, is no.
Making eye contact (which means having a nonverbal eye to
eye conversation) distracts you at a time when you need your concentration to
focus on your first words, your adjustment to this high visibility, the
strangeness of the distance between yourself and the audience, your rapid heartbeat,
and the general shock of the performance situation. You need time, about 30
seconds or even more, to get used to all of this.
ADJUSTING TO THE AUDIENCE:
The next phase involves your awareness of the audience, so
that you can slip into an easy and comfortable relationship with them. This
will happen automatically if you stand still when you first face your audience.
You don’t have to do a thing except squeeze your toes three times slowly before
you speak your first words. This phase is enormously important. If you do it
correctly you will feel very much in control.
WHERE TO LOOK:
Look straight ahead at the faces in your audience, perhaps
at their foreheads or even their hair. Look neither too high above their heads,
nor so low that you appear to be looking at the floor. Making eye contact is
not necessary because if the audience looks into your eyes and you are looking
at their faces, you will feel as if you are making eye contact. The necessity
for direct eye contact is a myth. For example, when you go to the movies and
become involved with the story you laugh, you cry, you may become terrified,
yet none of the actors in the screen make eye contact with you. In the same
sense, when you are speaking, in is not necessary for you to look into the eyes
of your audience for them to feel involved with you. Just don’t look above or
below their faces. After two or three minutes have passed, and you feel you
have established yourself in front of your audience and your presentation is
flowing, you may choose to make direct eye contact with one or several of the
members in your audience, as long as it does not disturb your concentration. Do
what feels comfortable to you.
While keeping your gaze at the face level of your audience,
do not fix anyone with a prolonged stare. Actively staring into the eyes of
your audience implies that you are perusing them “Do you like me? Is this
good?” Don’t look for approval. The audience looks to you for leadership. Lead!
SCANNING THE ROOM:
When you fist stand in front of your audience, please—do not
mechanically scan the room, moving your head from right to left as if your eyes
where great flood lights emanating from a controlled tower. This is extremely
awkward and looks unnatural. Instead, as I have just said, when you first stand
in front of an audience, before you begin to speak, be as still as possible and
look straight ahead in the general direction of their faces. A smile is nice,
but it isn’t essential. If you can smile a small smile, smile. If you want the
complete attention of the audience, your physical stillness, rather than your
physical activity, will make this happen.
As your speech progresses and you become more comfortable,
from time to time, you can move your head slowly, looking at your audience to
the left or right. Once again, naturalness and comfort should decide when and
if you look at various people in the room. If at first this pose seems stiff and
robotic, do not change back to your old nervous behavior. Eventually, you will
relax into physical stillness so that you feel comfortable and empowered.
Wednesday, August 19, 2015
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Public Speaking Phobia Acquired Later in Life
I used to love
speaking in public and I don’t know what happened but for the last three years,
whenever an opportunity comes up when I have to make a comment, address a
group, or ask a question at a meeting, at that precise moment all of my brain
functions jam. And there I am, hopeless, shamed…I fee like a victim in front of
a firing squad.
-Erwin, accountant
Some 70 percent of my
students and clients recall that from early childhood they were shy and didn’t
speak up, the other 30 percent who suffer from public speaking phobia had a
different story. These people were once excellent speakers. Generally outgoing,
they were active in drama and debate clubs, were class valedictorian or
presidents of class societies.
They all report that one day their ability to speak in
public vanished and they had abandon all opportunities. Behavioral psychology
tells us that phobias happen after a traumatic event—usually an experience that
shakes the individual to his/her core—like a psychological near death
experience. This could be as serious as a terrible car accident, sudden death
of a loved one, a natural disaster, and experience in combat, acts of
terrorism, rape, etc. Oddly enough, experiences that one can consider rather
benign can also produce such an effect. For example, going away to college,
moving to a new community, losing a job, etc. although these events are no
where as near as life threatening as those in the previous list, with certain
individuals they can fall under the category of traumatic events. As a result one
sense of personal control and safety is utterly shattered at the deepest level
of self, resulting in Post Traumatic
Stress Syndrome. The stress reaction can appear immediately or up to two
years after the traumatic event. No matter what the cause, or the variety or
precipitating events, the result can be a phobia, such as fears of flying,
driving, fear of heights, or enclosed spaces. The phobia triggered by a
particular event can them generalize to other areas, such as fear of escalators
or trains, or a sudden panic attack in front of an audience.
The panic attack causes an episode of thought blocking and
becomes another traumatic event that will not be forgotten. The next time an
opportunity for speaking arises you are psychologically transported to the
past—and that moment when you are speechless. You simply cannot do it; you
decline with some excuse. One avoidant excuse leads to another, and in a very
short time you have glossophobia, an irrational fear of speaking in public.
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Thinking in public
The most difficult thing for a person who is anxious about speaking
in public to do is to think his/her own thoughts while other people (the
audience) are watching. The reason for this is that as children they were
interrupted by powerful others, who barged in on them and humiliated them,
challenged and criticized them. Again and again students report that they were
punished for speaking up and voicing their opinions. Little or no attention was
paid to their feelings or boundaries as mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers,
and teachers dismissed their expression as if it was worthless. Another way that thought blocking is developed is when a
parent or a teacher pressures a child with “what is the answer? Quick, quick!
Hurry, hurry! Tell us the answer, talk, talk!” as if to say, “What is the
matter with you? Are you stupid or something?”
Such a forceful intrusion into the mind of a young person is
terrifying and causes a freezing up or a temporary mental paralysis, as a
result you lose the ability to think or talk quickly, when others in authority
are present. This condition persists into adulthood and occurs in all
performance situations. Although people may have no problem speaking or
thinking in a one on one, where a friendly or even a professional exchange is a
usual style of talking, whenever the speechphobic individual is in a
performance mode being observed or judged by others, the result is thought
blocking and an inability to perform.
Although it would seem that since this problem was initiated
in early childhood, you could overcome your fear and thought blocking in
therapy; in my experience as a therapist and working with highly anxious
professionals, knowing why you have this problem and talking about it will not
change the automatic reaction of the inability to think on your feet in front
of an audience.
For a strep-by-step method for regaining the ability to
think fluidly in public see Chapter 5 A
Panic Clinic for Public Speaking: How-to for the Hopeless in The New
TalkPower available in print on Amazon or as a kindle book (TalkPower: A
Panic Clinic for Public Speaking).
Tuesday, June 16, 2015
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
WHY AM I AFRAID TO SPAEAK IN PUBLIC
“My father was a very respected orthodontist. All
of my colleagues new him and thought very highly of him.………He was a very
accomplished man Of course he was very critical and tough on me ……….I felt so
inadequate next to him. I really feel it when I am at a meeting with other
professionals. I know people are looking at me and comparing me to my father
and I feel so demolished, I become speechless”
Philip Orthodontist
DISCIPLINE OR ABUSE
Verbal pounding is not considered child abuse nor
does it fall into the category of criminal neglect. No person from Social
Services will show up to investigate a parent who calls his child “stupid” or
“lazy” every day. Yet this is psychological abuse. This insulting
way of communicating with a child destroys self esteem and
confidence, making any kind of public performance an ordeal, if not a
devastating experience
“I went to a very strict school” “Children should
be seen and not heard,” “ was the prevailing philosophy. We were discouraged
from speaking up in class unless we were asked a direct question. In the
beginning I was very out going, but I was punished so many times for speaking
up, that I became very quiet.”
There is no escape. The incidents where one is
required to make some sort of an appearance under the glare of public scrutiny
are everywhere. While the necessity of performing has never been greater, the
number of people suffering from performance anxiety and fear of speaking in
public has grown to epidemic proportions.
Many people try to explore
this problem in therapy, hoping that with a proper understanding of how the
phobia developed it will eventually leave. The results are disappointing
because a phobia, a response of the autonomic nervous system, cannot be
eliminated by sitting in a chair and talking about it.
Trying desperately to
hide the inability to speak in public so it does not seem to intrude
or disrupt their lives, people manage to cope, very often to become successful
in their careers. However when the opportunity arises to do a presentation, the
situation becomes a nightmare. One TalkPower student introduced herself as the
head of a large government agency. ”I enhance the careers of my staff.
How? When I am asked to do a presentation I give it to one of my staff members
and so in this way I enhance their careers".
Many of my clients and students blame themselves.
They feel that there is definitely something wrong with them, like a birth
defect. The fact is no healthy baby is born with an inhibition. Babies cry when
they are tired, wet, hungry and whatever else displeases them. Babies have no
problem expressing themselves. Think! When was your expression crushed?
Who do you think made you afraid? Unfortunately, knowing how you developed this
problem will not help you to get rid of it .There is an exemption to this rule
.And that is in the case of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome .(People who never
had a problem speaking in public who suddenly find one day that they have a
panic attack or other such reaction to having to do a presentation )About 25 percent
of my students and clients fall unto this PTS category .I will discuss
this in a future blog.The remedy is exactly the same as it is for people
who have had at the problem all of their lives . Read on.
MISSING PERFORMANCE SKILLS
Instead of thinking of your fear of speaking in
public as a sick psychological syndrome let’s look at this condition not as a
phobia but as as a skills deficit. That’s right .You have never developed
" performance skills" so you avoid opportunities to speak in public
because you fall apart in front of an audience. Why? Because so much
pressure of one kind or another was put upon you in the past, that
you developed a super sensitivity to being looked at. And now you can't stand
being the center of attention. This is not the end of the story ! The good news
is that there is a method for training you to develop performance
skills so that when people are looking at you"PERFORMANCE
SKILLS" give your brain the neural patterns (skills) for
holding on to your concentration. That means that you are able to focus on what
you have to say and not on the audience and what they think of you. Amazing as
it sounds with the right kind of training you can look forward to
being proud and happy to speak in public. Join the many thousands of
professionals who have found their voice through Talkpower Training .
(see Talkpower Inc.com)
Performance Anxiety Appears in Many
Situations
. Presenting a formal speech in front
of an audience.
. Meeting around a table
. In a circle where you have to introduce
yourself
. A job interview
. Speaking to the press
. Accepting an award
. Making a toast
. Asking or answering a question in class
. Reading in a church or synagogue
. Playing golf tennis or any spectator sport
. Acting in a play
. An audition
. Playing a musical instrument
. Being photographed or videoed
. Walking down in aisle at a wedding
. Being paged when you’re name is
called and having to stand up and walk
. Appearing in court as a witness or as an
attorney
. Delivering a eulogy
. Speaking at a PTA meting or a board meeting
. A dance concerts
There are so many situations where you become
self-conscious because you are the center of attention. In all of these
scenarios, if you fear that you are going to be judged, you are no longer in a
safe place like a conversation with friends of colleagues. Your mind jumps to
thoughts about what the other person or people think of you and what you are
saying .It becomes very personal. My clients and students have the following
thoughts at this moment of high visibility.
NASTY SELF TALK
. I am so boring
. My voice is wobbly/monotonous
. They see right through me
. They don’t like me
. I look old
. I look fat
. I feel so embarrassed and humiliated
. I didn’t do enough research
. My presentation is a mess
. I am going to get killed in the Q and A
(You get the idea)
The following list describes the
various conditioning factors that that I have discovered result in a fear of
public speaking.
. Authoritarian parents
. Abusive parents
. Overly critical parents or teachers
. Perfectionist parents or teachers
. Obsessive parental focus on child’s
behavior
. Depressed parents
. Parents addicted to drugs or alcohol
. Jealous older brother or sister
. Shaming relatives, neighbors,
teachers etc.
. Bullying
. Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome (I
will discuss this in another blog)
Public speaking phobia can also be
caused by negative attention that one receives because of characteristics that
are different.
. Large nose
. Over weight
/Underweight
. Skin
condition
. Foreign accent
. Too short/too tall
. Unsuitable
attire
. Large
breasts
. Small or no breasts
. Racial /religious difference
. Different
sexual orientation
THIS BARES REPEATING
Instead of thinking about your fear of speaking in
public as a sick psychological syndrome let’s look at your phobia as a
skills deficit. That’s right .You are missing" performance skills" so
you avoid opportunities to speak in public because you fall apart in
front of an audience. Why? Because so much pressure of one kind or another was
put upon you at some time in the past, that you developed a super
sensitivity to being looked at. And now you can't stand being the center of
attention. This is not the end of the story ! The good news is that there
is a method for training you to develop performance skills so that
when people are looking at you, you have 55 the neural patterns (skills)
for holding on to your concentration. That means that you are able to focus on
what you have to say and not on the audience and what they think of you
.Amazing as it sounds with the right kind of training you can look
forward to being proud and happy to speak in public. Join the many thousands of
professionals who have found their voice through Talkpower Training .
(see Talkpower Inc.com)
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