As I shared in my last post, the process of understanding what the foundations of anxiety are is a critical first step to overcoming our fears. The more that we are aware of the ‘unknowns’ the more we can stop filling in the “What ifs” with false, fear inducing information and then apply practical steps to think and do things differently.
We looked at some of the mental effects of public speaking anxiety last week, about getting caught up in negative thinking and outside of the ‘quiet zone’. We will now turn our attention to the physical effects of public speaking, the physical skills that you can learn to help make a shift in order to be able to speak and present yourself with less and less anxiety and stress.
As soon as the mind sends a signal to the brain that there is ‘danger’ ahead (“What if I mess up, “What if I begin to feel overwhelmed with anxiety, “What if …What if?…) the physical side of anxiety takes over.
Adrenaline kicks in and your muscles tighten up leading to even more physical stress. Your breathing changes, going from your regular slow breathing to shallow and fast breaths.
Your heart rate goes up, your eyes kind of scan, looking in a fearful way around the room. It is as if you are looking for danger. You’re worried about how you are doing. Things begin to feel different. As you present yourself, you begin to feel alone with your feelings, like no one else in the world at that moment feels as anxious as you do.
You then begin to feel more pressure, more stress and more anxiety, maybe even doing the things that you were afraid might happen: You forget what you were saying. You start to worry and feel overwhelmed about things you do not need to worry about. You focus on someone in the audience that has a puzzled look and think “Oh my gosh, they really are not interested in what I’m talking about,” or “I’m really blowing it here.”
Under the pressure of the moment, you begin to change your thinking into negative self-talk and your body simply follows that change by creating all of the physical effects that have such a negative effect on your speaking.
Understanding this Body-Mind connection will begin the process of making the unknowns ‘known’ and puts us in the drivers seat to learning and applying new skills to overcome anxiety.
To learn to master this escalation of anxiety, one must learn and apply 3 major skills that are crucial to helping you overcome your performance anxiety:
1. Focused Breathing
2. Progressive Muscle Relaxation
3. Centering (Focused Presence)
By applying these physical skills together with the cognitive (or Mindset) skills of Positive Self-Talk, Re-writing your Internal Dialogue and Positive Mental Rehearsal, you will have built a solid foundation and ‘Tool Box’ of Skills to help you overcome performance anxiety forever.