How to reduce stress before speech

How can I overcome my fear of public speaking?

Answer From Craig N. Sawchuk, Ph.D., L.P.

Fear of public speaking is a common form of anxiety. It can range from slight nervousness to paralyzing fear and panic. Many people with this fear avoid public speaking situations altogether, or they suffer through them with shaking hands and a quavering voice. But with preparation and persistence, you can overcome your fear.

These steps may help:

• Know your topic. The better you understand what you’re talking about — and the more you care about the topic — the less likely you’ll make a mistake or get off track. And if you do get lost, you’ll be able to recover quickly. Take some time to consider what questions the audience may ask and have your responses ready.
• Get organized. Ahead of time, carefully plan out the information you want to present, including any props, audio or visual aids. The more organized you are, the less nervous you’ll be. Use an outline on a small card to stay on track. If possible, visit the place where you’ll be speaking and review available equipment before your presentation.
• Practice, and then practice some more. Practice your complete presentation several times. Do it for some people you’re comfortable with and ask for feedback. It may also be helpful to practice with a few people with whom you’re less familiar. Consider making a video of your presentation so you can watch it and see opportunities for improvement.
• Challenge specific worries. When you’re afraid of something, you may overestimate the likelihood of bad things happening. List your specific worries. Then directly challenge them by identifying probable and alternative outcomes and any objective evidence that supports each worry or the likelihood that your feared outcomes will happen.
• Visualize your success. Imagine that your presentation will go well. Positive thoughts can help decrease some of your negativity about your social performance and relieve some anxiety.
• Do some deep breathing. This can be very calming. Take two or more deep, slow breaths before you get up to the podium and during your speech.
• Focus on your material, not on your audience. People mainly pay attention to new information — not how it’s presented. They may not notice your nervousness. If audience members do notice that you’re nervous, they may root for you and want your presentation to be a success.
• Don’t fear a moment of silence. If you lose track of what you’re saying or start to feel nervous and your mind goes blank, it may seem like you’ve been silent for an eternity. In reality, it’s probably only a few seconds. Even if it’s longer, it’s likely your audience won’t mind a pause to consider what you’ve been saying. Just take a few slow, deep breaths.
• Recognize your success. After your speech or presentation, give yourself a pat on the back. It may not have been perfect, but chances are you’re far more critical of yourself than your audience is. See if any of your specific worries actually occurred. Everyone makes mistakes. Look at any mistakes you made as an opportunity to improve your skills.
• Get support. Join a group that offers support for people who have difficulty with public speaking. One effective resource is Toastmasters, a nonprofit organization with local chapters that focuses on training people in speaking and leadership skills.

If you can’t overcome your fear with practice alone, consider seeking professional help. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a skills-based approach that can be a successful treatment for reducing fear of public speaking.

As another option, your doctor may prescribe a calming medication that you take before public speaking. If your doctor prescribes a medication, try it before your speaking engagement to see how it affects you.

Nervousness or anxiety in certain situations is normal, and public speaking is no exception. Known as performance anxiety, other examples include stage fright, test anxiety and writer’s block. But people with severe performance anxiety that includes significant anxiety in other social situations may have social anxiety disorder (also called social phobia). Social anxiety disorder may require cognitive behavioral therapy, medications or a combination of the two.

With

Craig N. Sawchuk, Ph.D., L.P.

 

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1. Social anxiety disorder (social phobia). In: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5. 5th ed. Arlington, Va.: American Psychiatric Association, 2013. http://dsm.psychiatryonline.org. Accessed April 18, 2017.
2. 90 tips from Toastmasters. Toastmasters International. https://www.toastmasters.org/About/90th-Anniversary/90-Tips. Accessed April 18, 2017.
3. Stein MB, et al. Approach to treating social anxiety disorder in adults. http://www.uptodate.com/home. Accessed April 18, 2017.
4. How to keep fear of public speaking at bay. American Psychological Association. http://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/02/tips-sidebar.aspx. Accessed April 18, 2017.
5. Jackson B, et al. Re-thinking anxiety: Using inoculation messages to reduce and reinterpret public speaking fears. PLOS One. 2017;12:e0169972.
6. Sawchuk CN (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. April 24, 2017.

See more Expert Answers

In the past 30 years, I’ve given more than 3,000 speeches to audiences across the world. Presentations have been such a central part of my work that many who know me best have been surprised to learn how much anxiety they used to cause me. After my fourth root canal, my dentist pointed out that I appeared to be grinding my teeth at night. He suggested a mouth guard. Over the next few years, I ground through three of them. Fortunately, materials science advanced faster than my grinding and I eventually received a more durable one. Still, I had almost resigned myself to the fact that fitful sleep, restless legs, and a variety of aches throughout my body were the price of the career I had chosen.

I knew I had turned a corner 10 years ago when I was invited to speak to a prestigious business audience at Radio City Music Hall. I slept peacefully the night before. And when I stepped through the crimson curtains to face 6,000 nattily dressed executives, my former panic and dread were replaced with a sense of exhilaration and gratitude.

As I came to realize that presentations would be a permanent facet of my career, I began accumulating tactics to increase my pleasure while reducing the pain. Here are six that have made an enormous difference for me:

1. Bless, don’t impress. I discovered that much of my stress was more about my motive than the event. I would fret and stew more about what I imagined people would think of me than whether I would effectively serve them. I was most stressed when my motive was more about looking good than doing good. I recall pulling to the side of the road in the hills above Silicon Valley on the way to a retreat with a tech executive team that I was especially worried about. I asked myself, “Why am I doing this?” As I looked out at the Valley, the tightness in my chest disappeared. A sudden clarity overtook me. My errand was not about me — it was about them. I focused on the important ideas I hoped to share. I no longer cared if I did it perfectly — I only hoped I would do it well enough that they would be blessed by the experience. My stress subsides when my motive is to bless rather than impress.

2. Rehearse, but don’t obsess. I’ve learned to discern when over-rehearsing is counterproductive. I provoke more stress in myself when my preparation moves past the point of diminishing returns. When it’s an obsession, not preparation, it’s time to simply disconnect and engage in some distracting activity. If I am giving a new presentation I will practice it three times: Once when I finish preparing it, again the day before, and finally a few hours before I go “on.”

3. Create rest stops. For three weeks prior to my first three-hour-long presentation, I could hardly digest my dinner. How could I possibly avoid losing my place for so long? I later discovered that while a 180-minute presentation can seem like an uncrossable minefield, a series of 10 minutes chunks feels more doable. I began to organize my material in smaller chunks that built logically on one another.

4. Make it a conversation. A related discovery that brought relief was that audiences hate protracted monologues almost as much as I fear giving them. Audiences disengage when your monologue yawns on. There are hundreds of clever ways to engage the audience that amplify the persuasiveness of your presentation, relieve the tedium of a lecture and reduce your anxiety by giving you rest stops. I combined this and the previous insight by breaking all of my lectures into small chunks separated by brief, relevant and topic-appropriate involvement activities.

You and Your Team

• Stress

  Don’t let it get the better of you.

Involvement activities can invite participants to think with you, feel with you, help you, or try something with you. For example, you could share data and invite the group to make sense of it with you (think); show a brief video that provokes relevant emotion on your topic (feel); ask someone to read a pertinent quote from an expert and comment on it (help); or attempt a skill you’re teaching in a safe and structured way (try). I’m often told that “sophisticated groups” don’t want to be involved. That’s baloney. They don’t want to be involved in silly or worthless ways. But they love a structured task that is relevant to the topic that makes them feel smart and respected.

For example, when I’m teaching the skills of our Crucial Conversations Training to an executive team I start out by pairing them up and asking them to show how they’d respond to an abusive physician in a brief video clip. I limit their response to one sentence, so they don’t feel they have to take on a dramatic role — and allow them to be playful if they prefer, rather than serious. That interaction anchors the subject I want to involve them in and warms up the room immediately. It also takes the pressure off of me for a moment while I get my bearings.

5. Know thyself. There’s nothing intrinsically stressful about a presentation. The stress is usually self-induced — often because it triggers some trauma you carry from a painful life experiences (i.e. the audience snickered when you squeaked rather than sang during a choir solo in third grade) that your mind conjures a connection to. Over time, I became aware that my self-imposed demands for perfection and craving of universal approval were my primary generators of anxiety. As I’ve developed sources of peace and a sense of worth that are independent of these unattainable goals, I’ve found it easier to focus on blessing and surrendered the need to impress.

6. Breathe. Psychologist Amy Cuddy gave me a very practical stress-reduction tool. In controlled experiments, she demonstrated that before entering a high stakes meeting, you can substantially reduce stress hormones in your blood by simply breathing deeply and slowly while assuming a powerful pose (think Wonder Woman or Superman). When last minute jitters take over, I’ve found a bathroom stall and used this one to great benefit.

Over the years, these tactics have helped me learn to connect in a meaningful way with groups, turning once-stressful presentations into some of the most gratifying experiences of my life. As I’ve learned to get out of my own head, ground myself in more intrinsic sources of worth, connect to my deeper motives for sharing, and just breathe, the experience of standing in front of an audience is no longer a curse, but a blessing to me.