There are several potential causes of the fear of public speaking. Frequently it's about how you were treated as a child. Children are often told at home and at school to "keep quiet". This means they perceive speaking out loud as incorrect in some way; they are learning "not to speak". Hence, when we grow up and are asked to speak this provokes a conflict in your mind which is suggesting to us that speaking out loud is in some way "wrong". Hence we do not wish to do it.

Confident adult speakers are usually those who as children were encouraged to speak out loud, who were not restricted or told to keep quiet. If you are a parent, allowing your children freedom to express themselves when they are young will do them a great service for their adult life as they are less likely to be scared of public speaking.

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The fear of public speaking can be brought on by trying to be too clever. Only recently I was at a meeting where someone had to speak for 20 minutes. He had clearly prepared his material to try and "make a speech". He had several props that he thought connected his message to his audience. The problem was that these props were difficult to manage easily, plus the speaker spent a great deal of time organising them, fussing with them throughout the talk and trying to get the audience to pay attention to them.

The speaker clearly thought his props were a great idea. His audience, however, had different ideas and thought his fumbling efforts were rather weak. Indeed, talking to people afterwards I discovered that the analogy the chap was trying to make with his props was seen as rather weak and "childish".

No doubt the speaker prepared well; no doubt he thought his ideas were excellent. The problem was the audience disagreed. Trying to hard to be different or original can take your "eye off the ball" for your talk. What the audience wants is to be able to listen to you and understand you. That means simply chatting to them.

If you try to inject "cleverness" of any kind into your talk you will end up being more nervous as you attempt to manage the props, the jokes and the other devices you have used to connect everything together. By being straightforward you will avoid such nonsense and will be more confident as a result.

Labels: causes, confidence

Many people think you can "over practice" a speech or presentation, so they decide to only practice a few times. However, it is this lack of practice which is the cause of so much public speaking fear.

The fear of public speaking is partly there because of entering the "unknown". When you are familiar with a situation you are much less fearful. The first time you drove a car you were much more nervous than you are now if you have been driving for several years, for instance. It's the same with speaking - the more you do it the less nervous you become.

So, for each individual speech you need plenty of practice sessions in order to get rid of any fear of public speaking. Actors take weeks to learn and practice their roles; they don't do it with just a couple of practice sessions. Equally, the best sales people have practised their "lines" in order to get customers to buy. Olympic gold medallists don't win without practice. So what makes people believe they can perform well on the platform giving a speech without any practice?

And remember practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect. Practising in the wrong way only means your speech will be practised wrongly and then when you come to deliver the real thing, you will be nervous. So, practice out loud, with movements, props and your audio visuals. Practice in the room you are going to be in as well.

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Some people appear to believe that the fear of public speaking is something they have to manage, rather than get rid of. They end up only partly dealing with their public speaking fear because they make the assumption that they will always have to "put up with it".

However, the fear of public speaking can be cured. You do not have to manage it, you can get rid of it completely. One of the steps to take is to find out the cause of your fear; is it that you are worried you will forget what to say, or is it that you don't like being "in the spotlight"? These are the two prime reasons for public speaking fear.

Once you have worked out your principal worry, you can then decide how to deal with it. If it is a memory issue you can build you confidence by taking memory enhancing lessons and activities. If it's the "spotlight" issue you need to think why this is the case. Did someone criticise you, for instance, when you were a child, therefore putting you off being on the platform? Find out what the root cause is, and you can definitely eradicate the fear of public speaking.

Labels: causes, confidence

Are there any remedies for public speaking fears? That's a question I often get asked. It seems that people would like to pop a pill, or take a medicine that miraculously gets rid of fear. There is no such thing. Sometimes, actors and musicians are prescribed "beta-blockers" - drugs that affect the cardiovascular system - for severe cases of stage fright. However, when they stop taking the tablets, the symptoms reappear. So these remedies do not attack the main cause of fear. The best remedy you can find is to discover the real, deep seated cause of your fear of public speaking. When you have discovered that you can then deal with rectifying it. I find with the people that I deal with that the main cause of fear is rooted in childhood, being told by parents and teachers to "keep quiet". This tends to make you feel you shouldn't talk out loud; so when you are asked to speak in public it goes against everything you learned as a child. Dealing with this can be time consuming, but largely it is attitude change that is the only thing that is needed. If that isn't easy for you, sometimes you may find that cognitive behavioural therapy is helpful.

Labels: causes, fear, remedies

I often get asked "what are the causes of fear of public speaking?". There are two answers to that question. One is "it depends", the other is, "there is only one cause". The real cause of all the symptoms associated with the fear of public speaking is a rise in a hormone called adrenalin. This hormone gets pumped out from glands next to your kidneys, in your back, when you are under some kind of threat. The rise in adrenalin helps your body to become prepared to deal with the threat by diverting your blood supply away from the central part of your body, to where it is needed most - your muscles. The hormone also triggers a release in energy supplies from the liver and gets your heart and lungs pumping to get the oxygen around your body. Thanks to the rise in adrenaline your body can cope with anything - well almost. Your body cannot cope that well with constant adrenalin - so once you have started to deal with the threat, adrenalin is switched off and you can deal with whatever the problem is. The difficulty for most people with a fear of public speaking is the fact that the threat - the audience - never goes away. Hence adrenalin continues to be pumped around the speaker's body, putting them in an every-ready state. But in order to cope, they need the adrenalin switched off - and with the ever present "threat" of the audience, that never happens. This then leads to excess adrenalin circulating in the bloodstream, which is then responsible for all those nasty symptoms. (If you want more details about the mechanism of adrenalin and some specific measures you can take to deal with it see How to Abolish Your Fear of Public Speaking.)

What can sometimes take time to discover is why an audience is perceived as a threat. For some people it is embarrassment triggered by memories of school-days having to stand in front of the class. For others it is fear of criticism. In fact there are several possible reasons why the adrenalin rise is triggered. But they all point back to one thing - someone frightened of speaking in public sees the situation as personally threatening. Once you have located that specific threat you no longer have to worry what are the causes of fear of public speaking - you just deal with the threat.

Labels: causes, fear