How can I overcome my fear of public speaking?

It’s actually pretty easy when you use the right tool for the job, the problem is just that – finding the right tool.

And it’s really interesting when I look back because this subject has followed me throughout life and has become a pet topic of mine. It’s almost like life primed me to be ideally equipped to help people shift this common challenge.

I’ve been in so many roles where I got to witness this fear in people, and then later on, assist them to overcome that fear.

What I want to share with you today, is what the deeper cause of the fear is, and why just following the advice that is commonly shared seldom removes the fear, and how even repeated practice can still leave you terrified.

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Why does it matter?

You may think….why does it matter if I’m scared of this? I don’t want to be a public speaker.

The thing is, you may never have to address a room full of people, but we all have to speak in front of people at some point in our lives.

It might be a job interview, a wedding speech, a meeting at work, a networking event, on a zoom call, delivering a presentation, on a sales call, as a manager or business owner, at a family event, at a school or community event. It may even just be an important conversation with a loved one. You never know when it might crop up.

And when it does, the fear that most of us have will have us lost in anxiety, heart racing, palms sweating, brain spinning, and not communicating in our best manner let’s say.

You know the feeling I mean. The one that totally overwhelms you, then you either didn’t end up saying what you wanted to say, or you can’t even remember what you said because you were in a blind panic?

On the other hand….

If you don’t have that fear, and you are comfortable and confident to calmly say what you want to say, you now have the ability to connect to people powerfully with your words, and that gives you a huge advantage in life.

It enables you to give a great account of yourself at the job interview, you smash the presentation at work, you connect deeply with your team in your business, you speak from your heart at a family event and create a magic moment of connection with them, or maybe you even do deliver a killer speech in front of a room full of people.

So what’s in the way of that?

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Scarier than death?

According to many psychological studies, the fear of public speaking comes in number one above the fear of death. There is some debate about the reliability of these studies, but even if it’s not true, most people that I speak to are pretty scared of it and avoid it at all costs. And when you get to the root of what causes it there’s no wonder, as we are deeply conditioned on a nervous system level to avoid those kind of feelings.

More on that later…..

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Introducing my case study

Recently, I had a conversation with a client who experienced remarkable success in overcoming their debilitating fear of public speaking. They said I have permission to share whatever I feel would help other people.

So here we go…..

When I started working with them, they had been doing their best to cover up this fear for most of their life. They had some success pushing through the fear, but it had held them back in many areas and had taken the enjoyment and sparkle away from the things they had managed to do.

They had tried what seemed like everything at the point we started the trauma and emotional work.

They had always pushed themselves to face this fear and had taken on life choices and roles that had them in front of people quite a lot. They played music and were in bands as a youth and ended up being a professional musician which had put them in all kinds of difficult social situations. The roles they had in business had always pushed them and forced them to present in front of people. They were an expert in their field of work and were flown abroad to run workshops and present to major clients. They constantly went to networking meetings and business events and spoke in front of people whenever possible.

They signed up for Toastmasters and other speaking workshops. They created their own course with a friend and delivered it to small, intimate audiences. They attended countless self-development and mindset workshops and went to see people speak whenever possible to pick up hints and tips. They even took a job as a trainer, travelling the country and running workshops for people.

And ironically, because they were so good at faking it and appearing confident, the company promoted them to the job of buddying new trainers to help them get over their fear of presenting. Yet for the 2 years they did that job they laid awake in the hotel the night before, unable to sleep due to the adrenalin coursing through their veins as they worried about the next day and everything that could go wrong.

And by the way, not only did their fear make speaking in front of people hard, but it stopped them wanting to make phone calls, do Zoom calls, or record video and audio as they couldn’t stand how they looked and especially hated the sound of their voice – something I commonly hear with the people I work with.

So, after trying what they thought was everything, they had got to the point where they thought this was just who they were, and that they would have to just learn to live with the horrible feelings that took them over whenever they were in front of people.

The feelings that took the pleasure away from something they actually loved.

When things hit rock bottom

Things really hit an all-time low at a breakfast network meeting and it was this that eventually drove them to find an answer.

They had spent months helping to build a new business network in a town close by. They had taken the role of the trainer so they got to speak for 10 minutes every week. This was so powerful for them at the time and they were doing great in the role.

The group was up to about 20 people and they were confident speaking in front of the group each week as they felt safe within the growing team.

After around a year, the group decided to do an open day and invite lots of guests to fill the missing business categories in the group. Everyone invited a few people so they ended up with over 50 new people.

What my client didn’t realise is that, as the trainer, their job would be to MC the event. And this is a very structured event, so they would be required to read it all out from a script. I guess for most people this would have been preferable to just speaking, but to them, it was a nightmare because part of their fear was connected to reading out loud as they weren’t very good at reading.

So, as the people started to come in there was a great buzz and lots of noise as people found their seats and started to introduce themselves to each other.

Then, the director got on the microphone and thanked everyone for coming and did the introduction and then welcomed my client up to the stage.

They were given a warm welcome, then it all went quiet. They looked out, thanked everyone for coming, and then looked down at the page with the script on it.

This time, with all of these new faces, they felt anything but safe.

As they stood there, their heart was racing so hard that it felt like it was about to break out of their chest. Their brain was scrambled and also racing at a 100 miles an hour. They tried to read the first line but no sound came out of their mouth. They stopped, took a deep breath, and managed to get the first line out. But then, the overwhelming feelings and blind panic took over and they said sorry and walked off.

They went into the other room followed by one of their friends. After mumbling something unintelligible to them, they made a sharp exit, got into their car, and drove off as fast as possible.

They only made it across the road to the train station car park where they stopped and burst into tears – absolutely gutted to leave like that after spending over a year building the network and those friendships.

This was the last time that they saw any of those people as they were too embarrassed to go back after that.

This destroyed their self-confidence at the time.

The search for the cause

Because they had done a lot of work around their fear, they were quite aware of some of the traumatic events that may have led to this.

They said that they remembered loving being on stage acting in plays as a child, then all of a sudden they didn’t want to do it anymore.

They had a good idea what had caused this as they could remember a teacher standing them up in a class and shouting at them until they cried and then the kids laughed at them. After that, they never wanted to be up in front of the class again.

They could see that this was the root of the problem. A problem that had been reinforced and compounded by 1000’s of similar, feeling-level experiences in their life. A problem that brought with it a feeling that was very familiar to them. In fact, a feeling that was so familiar, that to them, it just felt like it was who they were. It had become part of their identity.

And although they knew this consciously and unconsciously, and had worked on it a lot with speaking therapies, hypnotherapy, timeline therapy, tapping, coaching and all manner of mindset techniques, the fear still fired off in varying degrees when faced with speaking in front of people. Be it a crowd, or maybe just a couple of people sometimes.

All they had really learnt were coping techniques, but the problem was still there.

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Herein lies the problem

The problem was still there because the only place that they had been working on was in the mind, yet the problem was on a whole nervous system level. The same as every other fear-based problem when you dig deep enough.

And when you realise that the primary concern of the nervous system is around safety and survival, there is no wonder that people fear those feelings so much.

You see, the nervous system senses speaking in front of people as a real threat, so it fires off all of the systems that are designed to deal with threat, and keep you safe – especially the fight, flight, or freeze trauma response. This is why they were having such a strong emotional reaction and feeling the anxious, panicky feelings.

Then it got emotional

So, everything they had done up to now had been in the thinking world, now it was time to venture into the realms of feeling.

So, as we approached this from the perspective of feeling, they soon had a much deeper access to the root causes and could easily plug into how it made them feel back at the age of 6 or 7. They were blown away when they noticed it was the exact same feeling that they felt to this day – not just similar, but the exact feeling.

Using the sensation of the feeling as a guide to take them to the location of the trauma, a bit like a satellite navigation system for the unconscious mind, we were able to connect to that old emotional splinter and pull it out. As soon as we did, they had a rush of emotion that had them, what I call, laughcrying. That’s when pure emotion just pours out and is often accompanied by an odd combination of laughter and crying. And as the laughcrying calmed down they experienced a lightness and excitement they’d never felt before.

I then got them to go back to the thing that happened in the classroom, and they just laughed – a bit hysterically actually as the emotion continued to pour out of them. It was pure excitement and freedom from that old feeling. We then went and cleared up anything else that had been attached to that feeling until it felt totally neutral.

I then got them to imagine speaking in front of a huge room full of people and asked how they feel. They just lit up like a Christmas tree with a beaming smile because inside the way they were feeling before had now completely changed.

Now they were truly excited and couldn’t wait to speak.

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How did this play out?

The first time they really noticed that change was when they attended a training workshop a few weeks later. At the beginning of the course, the trainer said. “Who would like to share a little bit about themselves”.

They immediately said “I would”, and shared effortlessly with the other delegates with no racing heart, or fear of being judged or fear of being laughed at. Previously they used to wait until last and by the time it got to them, they were terrified and could barely speak.

There were many times in the coming months that this effortless new behaviour showed up. When they were working on retreats, hosting group workshops on zoom, doing talks and workshops in person. But then 1 particular talk really showed them that things had really shifted.

A friend of theirs asked them if they would come and do a talk as part of a mental health series. They said “Sure, how many people will be there”. They said typically 10-15 people usually show up.

When they got there they found out that more than the fire limit had signed up and not everyone would be allowed in the room. This would have sent them into a blind panic in the past, but as the room started to fill up, they felt calm, relaxed, and at home.

Eventually, the people stopped coming in. It was standing room only and they even had people sat around them on the floor – they were literally surrounded.

As they started to speak, they slowly turned and made sure they connected with each person in the room. And when it got to the part of the talk where they spoke about their social anxiety and fear of speaking in front of people, they had a deep realisation. They said to the crowd “Who would like to swap places with me?”

Everyone looked anxious and pulled away.

They said “Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you to. It’s just to illustrate a point. Not so long ago I would have wanted to run away too. But now as I stand here, I feel completely comfortable in my own skin, calm, and deeply connected to you all as you do with your closest friends and family. It’s so amazing – I didn’t even imagine that was possible”

In that moment the true depth of the shift they had experienced hit them – they had never felt so self-empowered. And these results were so meaningful to them as speaking is a big part of who they are, and they have an important message to share with the world. A message that they now knew they would be able to share.

What an incredible transformation.

And that is the power of using the feeling system to resolve the emotional trauma so that it no longer triggers the unconscious mind into feeling threatened. When you feel safe in front of people, or in any other situation, you can now be yourself and express yourself freely.

Now you can be who you really are.

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Rounding up

So before we finish, there is something I haven’t told you about my client.

Remember I said that they hated the sound of their voice?

Well, you’re listening to that voice right now.

That’s right, I was my first client and I now love and appreciate my voice so much.

And, although I was talking about myself as if I was a client – all of those stories are 100% true and were my real experiences of working through my challenge.

And since doing this work, my quality of life has improved beyond belief.

Feeling comfortable in my own skin and being able to express myself authentically, powerfully, and clearly in any situation has transformed my relationship with life, my relationship with myself, and the relationships I have with the amazing people in my life.

Plus, you can’t imagine how many doors it’s opened for me over the years.

So, I guess it’s no surprise that public speaking and self-expression are my favourite subjects to help people with, as I’ve deeply experienced it and the difference it’s made in my life.

And because of that, I’ve attracted and had the privilege to work with 100’s of people in overcoming their fear so they can fully love and embrace being radio presenters, YouTube influencers, stand-up comedians, DJ’s, workshop leaders, coaches, healers, mediums, presenters, or just to be more comfortable in their own skin and able to express themselves authentically in all areas of life.

So, I’ll leave you with a question.

How would you show up differently and how would it affect your life if you felt comfortable and free to express yourself authentically and powerfully in all situations?