The three causes of public speaking fear (and what you can do about them)
Welcome to this blog – my aim is to make a difference to the success of your presentations. If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting! Olivia
Fear of public speaking often feels like it hits you out of nowhere. But I’m going to suggest that there are three distinct causes of speech anxiety.
These three different causes of speaking anxiety relate to three different areas of the brain – the Old Brain (it’s called this in neuro’pop’ books but is more correctly called the Hindbrain), Midbrain and the New Brain (again more correctly called the Forebrain). [Note: I have edited this paragraph to make it more scientifically accurate - thank you to Zen Faulkes who commented on my previous description].
My descriptions are a simplification of the science – in particular, the parts of the brain all interact with each other, so it’s not strictly correct to say that just one part of the brain causes nervousness. But I think it’s a useful model which may help you understand your fear of public speaking and work out the best way to reduce it.
1. Old Brain nervousness
Your old brain is the part of your brain that is constantly scanning the environment looking for threats. Survival is what matters to the old brain.
Many people suffer from ‘Old Brain’ nervousness. In prehistoric times, being part of a group was essential to our survival. So one of the threats to our survival was being kicked out of the group. What might get you kicked out? Standing out in some way, saying something offensive or stupid, or not performing up to expectations.
Fast forward to now. You’re standing in front of a group ready to open your mouth and your old brain goes (metaphorically):
Oh-oh. This is a threatening situation. If you say something stupid, YOU MIGHT DIE!
It’s no longer true that you might die, but your Old Brain doesn’t know that. Your Old Brain activates your survival system: fight, flight or freeze. When it comes to public speaking the most common reactions are flight or freeze:
Flight - You avoid public speaking if at all possible. If you do have to speak, speak as fast as possible so that you get through it as quickly as possible.
Freeze – You feel stiff and artificial as you speak, your mind goes blank.
Here’s what can you do about this type of nervousness:
1. Accept nervousness
This type of nervousness may happen every time you speak. Accept that nervousness may be your ever-present companion. If you fight your nervousness (eg: say to yourself ‘I shouldn’t be nervous’ – see New Brain nervousness below) you’ll make it worse. In this post How to use your fear of public speaking to make you a better speaker I’ve written about three specific ways to accept your nervousness.
2. Get used to it
You may suffer from nervousness less as you gain more experience presenting. That’s because your old brain has gradually realized that this public speaking thing is possibly not that life-threatening. So desensitize yourself – take every opportunity to speak in front of a group.
2. Mid Brain Nervousness
Our emotions are regulated by the Mid Brain. In conjunction with other parts of your brain, your Mid Brain will make you nervous when you’re reminded of a previous nerve-wracking experience. So if you had an experience at school where you were humiliated in front of your classmates, or suffered an embarrassing mindblank in an important presentation, those strong emotional memories may come back to haunt you.
If you can readily identify a previous experience which is causing you to be nervous now, the most important thing to do is rationally evaluate how bad it was. If you continue to tell yourself that it was a terrible, awful experience it will continue to create nervousness for you into the future. So rationally evaluate how awful it was. What were the consequences of it?
Here’s an exercise I use on our courses to help people put these experiences in perspective. You can do this now:
- Think of that nerve-wracking presentation experience.
- How awful was it on a scale of 0 to 100%?
- Imagine, your little finger has just been cut off in an accident!
- How awful is that on a scale of 0 to 100%?
- And now how awful is that nerve-wracking experience compared to losing your little finger.
Most people revise the awfulness of their nerve-wracking experience from somewhere near 100% to somewhere near 0%. They would prefer to relive that nerve-wracking presentation experience rather than lose their little finger. The loss of the finger helps them to put it in perspective. (If you’re happy to lose your little finger, imagine losing your hand, or the finger or hand of a loved one – at some point you’ll gain some perspective).
The rational reality is that most of the things that happen to us in presentations, are not that bad. They’re nothing compared to the other things that can happen to us in life – like relationship break-ups, loss of a loved one, and serious health issues. The most serious consequences of a presentation going badly are losing a large sale, an election or other contest, or your job (though I’ve never heard of someone losing their job because of one bad presentation). These consequences are disappointing – but not catastrophic.
3. New Brain nervousness
The New Brain is the conscious thinking part of your brain. Most of us have patterns of thinking that contribute to our nervousness.You can reduce your nervousness by exploring your patterns of thinking. This is part of the basis of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.
One of the most common patterns of thinking that contribute to the fear of public speaking are demands.
Here’s an example of how they operate. A few weeks ago I was running a training course. I knew that the CEO would be one of the participants. I felt myself get a little nervous as we were setting up. When he walked into the room I got hot and my heart started racing. Why would I react in this way? I have a demand around CEOs. It goes something like this:
CEOs are really important and I must have their approval.
My demanding thought made me nervous. What was the result? I messed up the instructions for a simple exercise that we do at the beginning of every course and that I’ve done perfectly hundreds of times before!
Here are some common demands people have about presenting and public speaking:
I must be interesting and engaging
I mustn’t leave anything out
I mustn’t waffle
I mustn’t show I’m nervous
I’ve got to be able to answer every question
These demands make you nervous because you can’t guarantee that the demand will be met. To reduce their power, rationally analyze the truth and usefulness of these demands. For example, with my CEO demand I can see that it’s not essential that a CEO approve of me. I don’t demand that everybody approves of me – and it’s irrational to demand that a CEO must approve of me. I can also see that it’s not useful to have this demand as it made me mess up!
In the post The Seven Thinking Sins of Public Speaking I’ve analyzed other common demands and explored how to defuse them.
I get that fear of public speaking can be debilitating, and can have you avoid opportunities in your life. I hope this post has been useful to you in thinking through how you can best reduce your nervousness.
Please let me know what you found most useful by writing a comment below.
You may never have written a comment on a blog before, after all its similar to public speaking – you’re saying something that many people will read. It may make you nervous… accept that and write the comment anyway. Look forward to hearing from you 
.
Go well with your next presentation. If you found these presentation tips useful subscribe to my RSS feed.
Related posts:
- Why do you have a fear of public speaking?
- Overcome your fear of public speaking the proven way
- 15 baby steps to overcoming the fear of public speaking
- How to use your fear of public speaking to be a better speaker
- 3 Reasons not to use NLP to overcome fear of public speaking
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Whenever a bit of that “Old Brain” fear arises, I ask myself “What am I really afraid of? If something goes wrong, what’s the WORST that could happen?” It ends up not being that bad.
Fear of speaking is also something even the BEST speakers have. In all walks of life, those who are considered the “best” are sometimes more afraid than an amateur. One of the greatest basketball players of all time, Bill Russell, used to get physically ill before each game. Mike Tyson has admitted that he was terrified each time he walked to the ring, even when he was the undefeated boxing champion.
I actually wrote a post about how the fear of speaking motivates me to practice, practice, practice, which I believe is an effective way to quell your presenting fears. You can read it here: http://bit.ly/CjcJq
Hi Jon
Thanks for your input. I think asking yourself “What’s the worst that could happen?” is an effective way to reduce ‘Old Brain’ fear, because it forces you to realise that you won’t die (which is what your Old Brain is telling you.
I also think practice is really useful and I totally recommend it. However, for most people for it to be effective at reducing fear, you have to be practicing in front of an audience similar to the one you’ll face in your real presentation.
Also the impact of practice will depend on what you tell yourself about how the practice presentation went. I’ve worked with people who make small mistakes (like we all do)during their rehearsal. But instead of going ‘Oh, that was a mistake – but it’s not critical’ they go into full disaster mode ‘Oh that was awful, I’ll never be able to do this presentation properly’ etc etc.
So managing your thoughts is just as important as doing the practice.
Thanks for adding the link to your post – good reading.
Olivia
Great post, as usual Olivia.
I would add “Use Visualization” to your list of how to manage the “Old Brain.”
The old brain’s fight or flight has created neuron pathways of predictable behavior. We get nervous or flood or systems with adrenalin when we experience an emotional highjack. The old brain can’t identify real versus imagined fear and responds with nervousness. It goes automatically to our brain neuron pathways.
Practice visualizing yourself as the presenter with emotions in check, cool and clear-headed. See yourself delivering your presentation with success. Visualize this several times a day before your present for several consecutive days. It will create new pathways for your brain to think. This will become your predictable behavior.
Then before you go on stage or start your presentation, see yourself calm, cool and collected and delivering a home-run presentation. Then also think of your favorite place in the world to be and how that place makes you feel. You’ll be flooded with emotions of joy, happiness and peace. It will replace your nervousness and you can walk on stage without an emotional highjack.
Hi Jeff
I agree that visualisation is a useful tool. But I think there’s more to it than just visualising success. That makes you feel good at the time and may make you feel better during your presentation. But it may not always work.
That’s because while you’re busy visualising your presentation going wonderfully well your mind may go “But maybe it won’t go so wonderfully…”
Visualising success also doesn’t have you prepare for when things go wrong. Imagine a sports team only visualising success! They’d be in big trouble with an opponent mounting an aggressive defence. It’s useful to think about what could go wrong and prepare accordingly.
I realise I’ve got quote a lot to say about visualisation – I’ll write a full post on it soon.
Olivia
Olivia:
Of course you can’t be successful as a presenter if you don’t have your preplanning done, have your presentation prepared and have practiced it. Wouldn’t it be great if it were that easy.
Your post was about nervousness and I was referring to how to use visualization to combat nervousness and an emotional highjack. Obviously, I didn’t explain myself well.
Oops – it was me who didn’t explain myself very well. I didn’t think for a moment that you were advocating that you didn’t need to prepare or rehearse – but I can see how you could take it that way. My apologies
.
What I was meaning to say (but didn’t) was that there are different types of visualization and some are more effective than others for long term reduction of nerves. I’ve now written a post about this The truth about visualization for public speaking success.
Olivia
Olivia,
Great insights. I like how you connected two concepts I knew about (models of the brain and fear of public speaking) in a way that’s new to me. Thanks.
When you list people’s “musts” about public speaking (”I must be interesting and engaging,” etc.), I think of “shoulds.” And I think of an essay Karen Horney wrote called, “The Tyranny of the Should.”
Shoulds — I should be perfect, I shouldn’t make mistakes, I should know the answer to any question anyone asks — are rooted in an idealized sense of self that would be undermined by anything less that perfection. Shoulds shut us down. They keep us from being who we really are. Shoulds and the underlying need to be perfect, paradoxically, make us perform more poorly.
My breakthrough as a speaker came when I made a mistake and realized that people liked me, not in spite of the mistake but because of it. I seemed real to them. They could relate to me.
Chris
Hi Chris
Thanks for you input. I think musts and shoulds are interchangeable in this context. We’re talking about the same thing. And yes, the quest for perfection is not useful when it comes to public speaking. Audiences prefer us to be human.
Olivia
Pardon me while I be pedantic for a moment.
The “common brain model” you describe here is better called a “neuro myth.” It’s Paul MacLean’s “triune brain” hypothesis, and there are a lot of problems with it.
For instance, it suggests that the entire reptile brain is essentially the mammalian hind brain. This is not supported by modern neuroanatomy. To give an example, in MacLean’s model, the limbic system is characterized as a “lower mammalian” part of the brain. There is evidence, however, that reptiles have a limbic system (Bruce and Neary, 1995; Lanuza et al., 1998).
Of course, this does not make the advice contained in this post any less valid. Presenters should be much more interested in their behaviour than their neuroanatomy.
References
Bruce LL, Neary TJ. 1995. The limbic system of tetrapods: A comparative analysis of cortical and amygdalar populations. Brain, Behavior and Evolution 46(4-5): 224-234.
Lanuza E, Belekhova M, Martinez-Marcos A, Font C, Martinez-Garcia F. 1998. Identification of the reptilian basolateral amygdala: an anatomical investigation of the afferents to the posterior dorsal ventricular ridge of the lizard Podarcis hispanica. European Journal of Neuroscience 10(11): 3517-3534.
Thank you Zen for pointing out this research to me and other points of view on the triune brain hypothesis. I will read some more about it.
Olivia
Hi Zen
I’ve updated the post to reflect your comments. Thank you for letting me know that I was using an outdated model. Olivia
Your notes are very interesting and some of this rings true for me based on my knowledge of neuroscience. Would you share your references with us so I can dig in more detail?
Mark Levinson: I did include a couple of references above, but I don’t have any more right at my fingertips. And some of these issues are very technical, so I don’t know of an easy “key” to look into this question.
I suppose a good place to start might be to look in a university library for a textbook like “Comparative Vertebrate Neuroanatomy: Evolution and Adaptation” by Butler & Hodos (Wiley-Liss).
I have an unfair advantage. I get to mingle regularly with scientists who do comparative neuroanatomy, because I do some of that myself (mostly invertebrates though).
I know return you to your regularly scheduled presentation discussion.
Hi Mark and Zen
I found this useful summary article from Scientific American http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=one-world-many-minds.
Olivia