What is Presentation Anxiety?
Wednesday, 18. May 2011
Also commonly referred to as public speaking phobia, public speaking fear, public speaking anxiety, presentation anxiety, performance anxiety, performance nerves or stage fright. In many surveys, the fear of public speaking is often ranked as the number one fear. Surprisingly many people will rank the fear of public speaking higher than the fear of death.
Someone experiencing public speaking anxiety is feeling the effects of the fight or flight response. The fight or flight response is our mind and bodies natural response to a perceived threat. The perceived threat itself may be physical or psychological in nature. (e.g. making a scene, looking foolish, not being liked or accepted, appearing weak, potential physical harm etc.) When it is activated, hormones are released into the body to enable us to either deal with or escape from the dangerous situation.
The effects of the fight or flight response include an increase in our heart rate to pump blood faster to the lungs, muscles and brain. We breath more rapidly to increase our oxygen levels, our muscles tense ready for action and many functions not necessary for fighting or escaping, such as digestion or reproduction, slow or stop.
When people experience a fear of public speaking they commonly experience some of the following symptoms: excessive sweating, breathing difficulties, rapid heart rate, tingling, tightening of the throat, frequent need to urinate, feeling light-headed, ‘going-blank’, trembling, stammering, digestive problems, sense of inadequacy or inferiority.
The fear of public speaking is an anxiety, and like all anxieties it ultimately begins with your thoughts about the current or possible future situations. You may be aware of these thoughts, but often they are just outside our conscious awareness. If your mind perceives a threat then it triggers the release of the various stress hormones into the body which produces the symptoms you experience.
We react in much the same way, whether we are experiencing a real situation or just thinking about it. Simply thinking negatively about a future situation such as a presentation, performance or event is enough to to trigger the fight or flight response.
If you have experienced anxiety then you will most likely have tried to control it using will-power alone, and probably failed in the process. Due to the way anxiety works, it is very hard to fight head on. Usually the more you attempt to control and fight it, the worse it will actually get! An obvious solution is not to try to control the symptoms, but to flow with them where possible and focus on and change what’s actually causing them.
As anxiety starts with your negative thoughts about a situation, the most logical place to start making changes is with those problematic thoughts. Change those thoughts so that you stop perceiving the situation as a threat and the anxiety goes away. This is actually a much easier and quicker process that you might think, and any experienced psychotherapist should be able to help.
Common situations which can trigger fear of public speaking and stage fright can include any situation where you become the centre of attention and feel you are being judged negatively: presentations, acting auditions and performances, musical performances, meetings, interviews, wedding speeches, exams, speaking on the telephone (particularly when in front of others).
Nigel Magowan is a psychotherapist who works with fear of public speaking, anxiety disorders, IBS and phobias. Treatment for Interview Anxiety in London, Harley Street Interview Anxiety treatment in Manchester