Public Speaking Anxiety:
Overcoming Your Anxiety of Public Speaking

If reading the first two words of this article's title had you trembling, you’re not alone. A 1973 Bruskin Goldring Survey, later published in the Wallace family’s "Book of Lists", found that the greatest fear among the three thousand people questioned was public speaking anxiety.

Granted, it was a long time ago, and three thousand people do not a nation make. But public speaking anxiety is widespread. A form of performance anxiety, public speaking anxiety results because its victims are sure they will either say or do something to embarrass themselves, or that their audience will be sitting in judgment of every word they speak and pause they make.

Public speaking anxiety will surface the instant you are asked to prepare a presentation, whether it be for your Speech 101 High School class, or for your garden club, or for your company, which is depending on you to reel in a very lucrative client. It may even keep you awake at night, spoil your appetite, and have you obsessing about everything that can go wrong until the very minute you step up to the podium.

Your public speaking anxiety could be based on one of several things:

• You think your audience already knows more about your topic than you will be able to tell them, or that they would be able to express it much more effectively than you.

• You get scared any time you are in unfamiliar situations and, because you are an inexperienced public speaker, this will be one of them.

• You realize that you are going to be all alone up there.

• You think you don’t look, or sound, good enough and that people will be so distracted by your flaws that they will ignore what you are saying.

The point is, public speaking anxiety can stem from a variety of things, but knowing how to deal with it is more important than knowing why you have it.

Treatments for public speaking anxiety can range from hypnosis, to cognitive and exposure therapies overseen by a mental health professional, to breathing and imagery exercises, to a combination of all of them. If your public speaking anxiety is being triggered by a single occasion, a pre-speech visit to a qualified hypnotist may be sufficient to get you through.

But if public speaking anxiety is costing you employment or academic opportunities, you would be better served by scheduling an appointment with a therapist familiar with public speaking anxiety disorders.

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• Stress and Anxiety - Causes and Effects of Stress and Anxiety