How CBT Can Help With Public Speaking Anxiety Insights from Harley Street psychologist, Dr Vanessa Ruspoli
Introduction Does your anxiety about speaking in public inhibit you in your work and personal life, and make you adapt your behaviour to avoid certain feared situation and feel safer? Public speaking anxiety is the most common form of social phobia. Most people are nervous about of some forms of public speaking, from giving a presentation at work to talking to a group of our colleagues or friends. This fear may limit you in your personal life to the extent that you find you are nit living life to the full or giving your best.
Fear of Public Speaking • Public speaking anxiety is the most common form of social phobia, and most of us have a fear of some kind of social speaking, like speaking at meetings or interviews. • Even chatting to a group of colleagues or peers can cause social anxiety, but it is very treatable with the use of CBT, a type of very fast intervention therapy. Dr Vanessa Ruspoli | Harley Street Psychology | www.dr-‐ruspoli.com | (+44) 7747-‐ 777361
• This fear may make you limit yourself in your personal life with avoidant behaviours, and you may often find yourself in situations where you are prevented from giving your best. • Cognitive Behavioural Therapy will help you to understand and manage your situational anxiety through learning and doing, so you will no longer experience symptoms such as trembling, sweating and fear. • Other symptoms include a shaky voice, abnormal breathing, a dry mouth, nausea, blushing, muscle tension and panic. Your mind may even go blank, or you can start talking too fast. • If you believe you have many of these symptoms, you are a perfect candidate for CBT. It will focus on extreme emotional upset, fight or flight response and avoidant behaviour.
How does CBT help? • Social phobias or anxiety come from a distorted ‘irrational’ perception of a situation, which can be seen as threat, causing a panicky physiological response, otherwise known as fight or flight. • This fight or flight response is because of the perception of the threat, but then this response becomes the threat, and you start to be fearful of it as well. Dr Vanessa Ruspoli | Harley Street Psychology | www.dr-‐ruspoli.com | (+44) 7747-‐ 777361
• Remember to use deep breathing when experiencing fight or flight, as many of the symptoms are caused by an overload of oxygen, so this exercise will calm the body down. • Mindfulness and visualisation can help to distract and calm us down when experiencing anxiety, so try to relax with the use of imagery to regain your confidence in social situations. • Try to practice regular relaxation by setting regular routines where you do something relaxing. Your body will have a great physical response, releasing chemicals that reduce stress hormones. • Sufferers believe the way they are explaining everything to themselves is completely rational, but they are actually using emotional reasoning and memories to figure out what they should be threatened by. • Sufferers will piece together evidence, experiences and feelings that aren’t true, to be afraid of, but there is a way you can rewire and change this fear conditioning quite easily. • CBT can help you handle situational anxiety, either by controlling it so it is manageable, or by minimising the strength of your emotional response, ideally eliminating the fear altogether. • CBT will challenge the irrational thinking so that you have a proportional and manageable response, such as having butterflies or experiencing a mild adrenaline rush like many public speakers. • In order for CBT to be successful, and to eliminate your public speaking anxiety, you have to change your mind to change your mood, and remember that feelings aren’t facts.
Dr Vanessa Ruspoli | Harley Street Psychology | www.dr-‐ruspoli.com | (+44) 7747-‐ 777361
The Outcome • Through CBT you will develop new skills in self-‐management, and your entire view on public speaking won’t be seen as scary or threatening anymore, completely changing your outlook on things. • You might even see public speaking as an opportunity or a challenge that is exciting to you, opening new doors for you to develop in your professional and personal life. • All of this can be achieved through the use of CBT. Improvement is completely attainable, even if you goal is just to manage social speaking situations better through coping skills. • If you feel you are not coping with speaking anxiety, or would like to know more about CBT and how it can help you, please get in touch with me. Dr Vanessa Ruspoli is a chartered counseling psychologist offering therapy for a range of conditions and issues, including self esteem, depression and CBT for fear of public speaking. She has worked with cognitive behavioral therapy for a number of years at her Harley Street psychology practice in Central London’s prestigious, historic medical district.
Dr Vanessa Ruspoli | Harley Street Psychology | www.dr-‐ruspoli.com | (+44) 7747-‐ 777361