Fear of public speaking
Many people have to perform in front of the public throughout their lives, regardless of whether we have a talent for it or not. Knowing their properties, strengths and weaknesses, any person can overcome the fear of performing and achieve success …
Content
- Manifestations of fear
- Physiological manifestations
- Psychological manifestations
- Reasons for fear of public speaking
- How to get rid of the fear of public speaking
- Methods, tips, recommendations
- How to build on your success
The stage and you're in the spotlight. If more than two people are listening to you, this is already public. It doesn't matter what you have to do: tell a report, sing a song, make a toast or congratulate. In thoughts, everything is fine, but in reality, because of the fear of public speaking, all the words fly out of my head and are not going to return. How much can you suffer? Others do it and do it great! Why can't you do the same?
"Don't drift, everything will be fine!" - Supports but does not help. What to do when a strong excitement rolls over the stage and turns off all abilities? All that remains is inability, stiffness, a lump in the throat and a desire to sink into the ground. You feel flawed. Scary, embarrassing and uncomfortable. Traumatic. You can live with this fear, but it doesn't work out fully. You have to avoid all situations when you get into the spotlight. You are not forced to realize all your possibilities. Fear blocks the path to happiness.
Manifestations of fear
A lot of people are worried before a performance, but not everyone can overcome it. Sometimes fear becomes uncontrollable. It even has its own names. The fear of public speaking is called glossophobia. And an anxiety disorder in which a person cannot utter a coherent speech or several related words is called logoophobia. These disorders have their own physiological and psychological manifestations. We can observe them.
Physiological manifestations:
- total stress;
- increased sweating;
- hand tremor;
- throws up a fever or, conversely, chills;
- blood pressure and pulse increase;
- legs do not obey;
- nauseated;
- dry mouth;
- lump in the throat;
- compulsively pulls to the toilet;
- the voice does not obey, trembles;
- there is a lack of air;
- neck muscle tension, head twitching.
Psychological manifestations:
-
confusion of thought;
- obsessive thoughts about an upcoming event long before the start of the performance;
- strong feelings of restlessness and anxiety;
- avoiding situations where you need to speak in public.
Reasons for fear of public speaking
Fear is irrational and cannot be overcome by conscious decision. To fight fear, you need to understand its causes, hidden in the unconscious. There may be several such reasons. Most of them lie in the properties of the psyche of people with anal and visual vectors (according to the terminology from the training by Yuri Burlan "System-vector psychology").
Negative manifestations of the properties of the anal vector, which can exacerbate the fear of performing:
- fear of dishonor;
- fear of negative assessment;
- excessive perfectionism, which makes a person feel ill-prepared all the time;
- indecision, difficulty taking the first step, starting something new.
For such a person, the past is extraordinarily significant, therefore it influences his present.
Bad first experience. It could happen both at home and at school or in kindergarten. When I failed to perform successfully for the first time, I forgot the poem in public, lost my thought during the report and could not finish it, did not live up to expectations. Such an experience is firmly deposited in the memory of a person with an anal vector, it greatly traumatizes him and does not cause the desire to repeat attempts to speak in public.
Prohibition of the right to error. When, in the process of upbringing, the idea is instilled that making mistakes is bad, that you cannot make mistakes, you will be punished for the mistake. This is often due to the fact that at school children are oriented towards grades, and it is in children with an anal vector that the fear of making a mistake is fixed. After all, to be the best in everything is his main desire. In the future, this fear fetters, deprives of freedom of action.
A person with a visual vector naturally possesses great sensitivity, emotional amplitude. Fear is his primary emotion with which he is born. In the process of education, he can develop his feelings and learn to transform fear into empathy, love. If his feelings are not developed, he will remain in fear. One of the types of fear is social phobia, the fear of being around people. At the time of the speech, this fear is especially acute.
When the owner of the visual vector does not realize his emotions in life, he still feels, but his feelings are concentrated inside, on himself. He dwells on his experiences, on how he looks. Can think that everyone can see how worried he is, how his hands are shaking, how unattractive he is.
Childhood trauma in both vectors can affect the ability to perform in public. For the viewer, such a trauma can be the bullying and ridicule of classmates when he went to the blackboard. From such episodes, social phobia and fear of saying something arise.
A person with an anal vector will be influenced by past experience when efforts were made, but they were devalued, criticized or simply not praised in time. After all, the positive assessment and praise of people who are significant to him are so valuable for him. He seems to be stuck in that situation and is still afraid of a bad assessment.
There can be an internal conflict between the properties of the visual and anal vectors. The first one pulls to show emotions and be in the center of attention, while the second makes you slow down, excessively polish details and feel insecure, blame yourself for mistakes.
Awareness of your properties, the peculiarities of their development, their correct implementation leads to the fact that, being on stage, in the center of attention, finally, you feel good, you know what you want to say, and you become able to realize your full potential. Therefore, an important step towards success is not only understanding the reasons, but also using your strengths and taking into account your weaknesses.
How to get rid of the fear of public speaking
A person with a visual vector needs to remove the concentration of attention from himself and focus on the listener. Carry more not about your experiences, but about what the audience wants to hear. Immerse yourself in the emotion and meanings that you want to convey to the audience.
And the owner of the anal vector needs a deep analysis of past experience and good preparation on the topic of the speech. The fear of dishonor has its own value - it makes you constantly improve, it is an incentive to delve into the topic, to be an expert in it.
It is also necessary to remember that the first time is the most difficult - this is how the fear of the new can manifest itself. The second, third time is easier. The main thing is not to consolidate the first negative experience. And if he is already entrenched, you need to understand the reasons for getting stuck in a negative past experience. This alone will change the attitude towards him.
How can all this be done in practice?
Methods, tips, recommendations
A visual person can rehearse a performance in front of loved ones or benevolent people. In front of the mirror is also good, but not as effective. Think more about how to convey what you want to say, what emotion to involve. This must be the lack for which they came to listen to him. Entering the role, getting used to the image - this is so good at it! Fall in love with your viewers, after all.
It is important for a person with an anal vector to prepare well and understand the topic. Collect and analyze a lot of material, put everything on the shelves in your head. Preparation is very important, but it is worth remembering that excessive perfectionism, on the contrary, interferes and you need to stop in time, and not endlessly cling to the quality of preparation. For example, musicians do not play just before a performance, but give themselves time to abstract, to relax before an important event.
It's good to make a speech plan, a cheat sheet for theses. Compose the text with the main thoughts so as not to get confused. And if it so happens that the thought gets lost by some unexpected question or situation, so that there is always a general plan of action before your eyes.
Do not start with very large and important events. If the fear is already there, it's best not to take risks and start with less important speeches, such as a speech at a friend's birthday. Consolidate success and then move on to more difficult tasks.
Do not try to do everything "perfect". Give yourself the right to make mistakes. Anyone can be wrong. Perfection is impossible to achieve.
Avoid impromptu onstage at first. Not everyone has such qualities that allow you to freely improvise, being in the spotlight, but you can learn it.
How to build on your success
So, we figured out a little about ourselves and our properties, analyzed the bad experience, prepared well, chose a good, in our opinion, moment and performed. Now you need to analyze the experience gained. Did you manage to immediately rewrite the bad experience, if there was one? Was your focus on other people sufficient? How many times have we gone wrong and lost our minds? Did you manage to convey what you wanted to say? Just an analysis. Debriefing, so to speak. Now you need to draw conclusions and repeat.
Many people have to perform in front of the public throughout their lives, regardless of whether we have a talent for it or not. Knowing their properties, strengths and weaknesses, any person can overcome the fear of performing and achieve success.
This is how the trainees of the training "System-vector psychology" did it:
