I know how you feel. I used to have the same problem. My body would sweat, my face would feel like it was burning, and I felt extreme fear. In my late teens, I even joined organizations where I had to speak on occasion. Hated it! Made it worse!
I even took up rock climbing believing that if I did a sport that was dangerous, I would be less fearful in other areas. I became a great rock climber, but it had absolutely no effect on my speaking fear. Surprise! Surprise!
Then I actually forced myself to do some speaking in one or two organizations that I had joined, but I was always terrified no matter how much I prepared for these short talks. After about 20 attempts at these minor speaking engagements, the fear was a little better, but I still agonized too much before each event. I still was afraid that, somehow, I would make a fool of myself. I eventually quit on this approach. I got somewhat better after I left home and went to the University. Still, public speaking was avoided whenever I had a chance .
It wasn’t until I switched from research, and went into clinical work as a Behavior Therapist, that I learned the tools for getting over this fear. And the answer was “start small.”
Many years later, I became a Behavior Therapist, and once I learned how fear worked in the brain, I learned how to put the fear to sleep.
And the biggest revelation was learning that fear was not the problem. It was the avoidance and escape behavior that was the problem.
- Your fear, blushing, shaking, and sweating are not under your voluntary control.
- They are part of a very primitive learning system to help you try to escape situations that you tried to escape from in the past.
- So all these embarrassing responses are a product of your past attempts to escape from these embarrassing situations.
- And the more your try to hide these responses, the stronger they are likely to become.
So how do we solve your problem?
You need to practice trying to produce the fear, blushing and sweating rather than trying to escape. You need to practice living with the mismatch of feeling the urge to escape, while you refuse to leave the threatening situation. Obviously you have to be practical how you do this. You need to practice in easy situations before trying more difficult ones.
Here are several suggestions:
- Spend 15 minutes, twice a day, in the privacy of your own home, looking into a mirror while reading aloud a piece of text. at the same time, you are text trying as hard as you can to make yourself feel nervous, blush, make your voice shake, and sweat. Use thoughts about past embarrassing situations to get yourself as nervous as possible. Keep trying to do it. Don’t stop. Some people find it easy; others don’t do so well. It doesn’t matter.
- Do this for about 3 or 4 days, at which time you will probably find that it has become increasing difficult to produce any of the sensations and feelings.
- Now add in new exercises similar to the first one, where you deliberately try to get these sensations and feelings while you are around your friends and family. Do it at odd moments, but if possible try to do it for a total of 30 minutes a day.
- Then try producing the uncomfortable feelings when you are buying things in stores or having to interact with strangers. These later exercises often take less than a minute to do, but that’s OK. Still try to put in 30 minutes a day if you can.
- In general, keep looking for ways where you can interact with anybody, where you are deliberately trying to put in these old defensive responses.
- Usually, if people put in about 30 minutes a day for 3 weeks with this type of procedure, most report feeling quite comfortable
- If people work 30 minutes a day using this procedure, most report considerable improvement after 3 weeks of practice. As time goes on, you should find yourself able to speak up in class, and feel only slight hints of the old nervous responses. I
As you progress, you will notice that the old fear gets weaker and weaker,and is gradually replaced with a feeling of confidence as you act in a calm and relaxed manner.