Avoiding fear is our most common means of coping with the threat.īut this also means that if we don’t expose ourselves to our fears, we don’t get to learn that actually we can cope with them.įrightening, bad public speaking experiences are horribly common – including for myself in the past. Unfortunately, our brain’s amygdala which triggers the fear response is there to help us literally survive in the world it acts like a sledgehammer when it thinks we’re under threat…when in most situations we don’t need that level of response. We can learn a fear memory instantly and it will last for the rest of our life – if we don’t do something about it. Michael Davis, an Emory psychologist, tells us that ‘fear learning’ is probably the strongest memory system we have. She was so humiliated that she fled the room and went and sat in the toilet for two hours until everyone had gone – and ever since then the memory has stopped her in her tracks. My client’s been struggling with a really bad experience she had as a student: she froze in front of an audience that included not only her student peers but also lecturers in her subject.
#Overcoming your fear of public speaking online courses how to
One part of her wants to do the course and face her fear in front of a group, but the other part of her is fighting the whole idea – her mind is telling her that this is a really bad idea! How to overcome public speaking fear I’ve been speaking with one of my private coaching clients this week, who’s trying to decide whether or not to join my course and we ended up having a chat about what she calls her “avoidant tendencies”.
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What can be done about it? Is it even possible to learn how to overcome public speaking fear? Fear in general – and public speaking fear in particular.