Managing_Severe_Speech_Anxiety

Managing Severe Speech Anxiety   Introduction Fine public speaking is imperative skill in order to succeed in our present career-oriented world. “Empirical studies have linked oral communication ability to such measures of success as finding a job (Kyzystofik, A. T. & Fein, R., 1988)and progressing in a career (Estes, 1979)” (Fordham, D. R. & Gabbin, A.L., Vol. 59, No. 3, Sept. 1996). Also, research by Kendall described that 55% of the adults interviewed who gave the speech in the last two years, performed the speeches at work or were work related. She indicated that effective public speaking is related to enhanced employment opportunities and income (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993). Definition of Speech Anxiety However, even the best and the smartest have experienced speech anxiety and some experienced severe speech anxiety. According to Joe Ayres and Tim Hopf, the authors of “Coping with Speech Anxiety” (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993, p. 4), the definition of Speech Anxiety is as follows: Speech anxiety refers to those situations when an individual reports he or she is afraid to deliver a speech. This definition restricts the phenomena of speech anxiety to situations in which a person knows what he or she fears (i.e., public speaking). Fear of public speaking thusly defined can be differentiated form situations in which a person experiences anxiety but is not aware of the source of the anxiety (i.e. his or her anxiety is free floating). Our sense of public speaking anxiety is closer to what psychologists and psychiatrists refer to as a phobia that it is to free floating anxiety. Phobias are anxiety disorders “characterized by (a) persistent fear of a specific situation out of proportion to the reality of the danger, (b) compelling desire to avoid and escape the situation, (c) recognition that the fear is unreasonably excessive, and (d) the fact that it is not due to any other disorder” (Rosenhan, D.L. and Seligman, M.E.P., 1984, p. 674). Other terms used to describe speech anxiety Some of the different terms also used by communication researchers to describe this fear include stage fright, reticence, nervousness, and communication apprehension. Speech anxiety is very common among professionals like professors, actors, business individuals. In a 1977 study by Wallechinsky et al, concerning speech anxiety, 41% of the people interviewed listed public speaking as their greatest fear while only 19% of respondents’ indicated the fear of dying as their greatest fear. (Wallechinsky, D., Wallace, D. & Wallace, H., 1977). Different researches of this kind had similar results. Types of Speech Fears In general the speech anxiety is very common among professionals as well as students, however, there is no one kind of speech anxiety and therefore there might require different remedies to them. Wilder, separated the fear of speeches into five different types: (Wilder, 1999) 1) Career terror 2) Perfectionism 3) Panic 4) Avoidance 5) Trauma (Wilder, p. 9). Career Terror First, career terror happens when the individual really believes that their whole career is based on their every performance in front of their colleagues or when speaking to a group of people who are work related (Wilder, p. 10). Perfectionism Second fear, perfectionism, as Wilder says, paralyzes the speaker when they put too much pressure on themselves to be perfect and demands to have flawless performance. Panic Next fear - panic is the fusion of unreasonable expectations with fear of failure. Avoidance Avoidance is what could be called self-sabotage. Avoidance might give comfort for a short while but in the end it will only push the person into higher anxiety and fear. What is more it will weaken the performance by far (Wilder, p. 15). Trauma Last but not least, trauma is fear that is buried in the personality of a person when one is being told you’re not good enough. If somebody close or influential to a person like parents or teachers, were overly critical, this can make the person afraid of introducing their ideas in front of other people. Once one recognized the causes of the fear, it will be much easier to determine what kind of steps to take to overcome it. However, before determining how to overcome the fears, it is beneficial to know what the sings of speech anxiety are. Types of Nervousness and its Symptoms There are two types of nervousness that can be related to public speaking. It is behavioral and cognitive nervousness. Cognitive Nervousness Cognitive nervousness is happening inside of our head only and consists of negative thoughts that come to the person before the speech, and interfere with the speech. The thoughts of negative nature are telling us that we cannot do it and that everything will go wrong. Behavioral Nervousness On the other hand, the behavioral nervousness can be seen on the outside and by the audience. Some of the signs are sweaty palms, dry mouth, butterflies in the stomach, and the use of so called fillers like ‘um’, ‘like’, ‘uh’. People with severe behavioral nervousness might try to avoid any speaking situations in general. Ayres and Hopf describe the physical symptoms as following: In a typical case, heart rate accelerates blood vessels near the skin contract (causing a blanched appearance), the person feels cold (some report experiencing a cold seat), hair stands on end, and the person may shiver. At the same time, the liver releases sugar to provide energy and a clotting agent to reduce blood loss in the event of an injury. The pupils of the eyes dilate, digestive activity is suspended, and person’s mouth fees fry because of the decrease in digestive activity. There is also a tendency to void the bladder and bowels. Physiological reactions of this nature are necessary when physical well-being is threatened —say, when being attacked by a wild animal. However, mobilizing one’s sources in this fashion is not conductive to effective public speaking. It is difficult to talk when your mouth is dry, when you have trouble standing still, and/or when you are shaking and shivering (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993, pp. 6-7) Regrettably, a person with severe speech anxiety will experience the symptoms described above during the preparation of the presentation already. They feel uncomfortable; have a feeling of giving up from the beginning of the process and might feel sick to their stomach. They will look for something else to do, which will give them comfort but what will eventually lead them to failure. (Robin, M. W. & Balter, R. , 1995) It is very natural for any person, with the speech anxiety or without, to try to avoid things that can cause the feeling of discomfort. Therefore it is not surprising that for a person with the severe speech anxiety, the avoidance of the discomfort leads in effect to failure. As Friedrich and Gass write: The act of speaking is not, in itself, a negative act. But if people directly experience or observe that speaking can lead to embarrassment or other forms of psychological discomfort, they will develop avoidance patterns. Thus a college student who has learned that speaking in public may cause discomfort will postpone enrolling in a speech class until it is absolutely necessary. These avoidance patterns, over time, become habits. By continually avoiding certain communication situations people reinforce their feelings that these situations are noxious […] thus becomes a vicious cycle — and a difficult one to break (Friedrich, G. & Gass, B., 1984, p. 183) Consequently, the challenge for the person with severe speech anxiety disorder is to overcome and get over the fear of public speaking that causes the fear and/or discomfort, and face the problem. According to Desberg (Desberg, 1996, p. 78) form all the different conflicts that psychologist have dealt with, the problem of avoidance because of feeling of discomfort versus approach is the hardest to treat. Human being most of the time decides to avoid than approach the discomfort. Remedies to Overcome the Speech Anxiety - Behavioral For many people with severe speech anxiety it probably seems impossible to overcome it, however, there is a list of solutions to the problem. Most likely one will not work by itself. But in combination they will have much stronger impact and success. Different researchers and speakers have different approach for managing the speech anxiety and some may work for some but not the others, yet they are definitely worth trying. Some of the easy remedies are: • Physical Activity – when the anxiety level rises, the level of adrenalin rises too. Unless you use up the high level of adrenalin, it will cause these shaky, nervous feelings. To lower the effect of increased adrenalin it is good to do some light exercises before the speech and/or presentation. The exercise will get you body back to a more normal state. The pulse will slowly return to stabilize and the person will look and feel more confident. Some of the examples of the physical activity one can do are neck rolls, short but quick walk or arm swing. Any of these exercises should release the stress and help bring the balance. (Sprague, J. & Stewart, D., 1984) • Progressive Relaxation –by tensing different parts of your body, starting from your toes and working the way up, for couple seconds and then releasing the whole body will help reduce the tension in your body. (Sprague, J. & Stewart, D., 1984) • Learn how to breathe – Forgetting about breathing when we are under stress is a very common side effect of stress before the speech presentation. One should try to take deep breaths evenly and slowly through the nose to get the heart rate to slow down. (Leeds, 1988, p. 11) Remedies to Overcome the Speech Anxiety – Cognitive The methods described above will help to get hold of your-self and get the body composed. However, another question that comes to mind is how to get the negative thoughts out of your head that will pound your self-esteem to the ground' What to do when the problem is not behavioral but cognitive' When one had the bad experience of performing publicly in the past, he or she cannot help the negative thoughts going through their head of the next failure. This kind of behavior will lead to severe speech anxiety and concentration on the negative and will take the attention of the performance itself. The remedy for this is to learn how to turn this negativity around, into positive, so they will help the performance, not hurt it. The authors of “Coping with Speech Anxiety”, Ayres and Hopf, suggest three different approaches. The approaches given by them are rational-emotive therapy, cognitive restructuring, and visualization. Rational-Emotive Therapy Rational-emotive therapy is a technique designed to ease cognitive fear of speaking in public by getting the speaker to replace irrational thoughts about speechifying with more rational, realistic thoughts. (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993) There are three steps to this therapy. 1. Analyze the situation or event at which the speech is to be delivered. Try to pinpoint the reason that makes you feel the anxiety – being judged by people you don’t know, or maybe because you do know the audience and if something goes wrong, everyone will know. 2. Identify the source of your irrational beliefs. If your attitude is that the whole audience has to believe in everything you related to them, with no exceptions then this is the irrational belief. It is a good thing that one wants to convince everyone in the audience with the message they conveying, however, one must realize that they will not get everyone on their side. 3. After identifying the first two, the third step is to identify the consequences of the irrational beliefs. One needs to realize that all the irrational thinking and believes will lead to severe speech anxiety and will cause the fear of failure. When all of the issues are located one can start looking at alternating and overcoming the way of thinking. (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993) Cognitive Restructuring The second approach is cognitive restructuring, which involves replacing “the negative thoughts that interfere with public speaking with positive thoughts that enhance positive reactions to the public speaking situation.” (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993, p. 20) For instance, thoughts like: “I will fail and everyone will see it” or “I will forget what I am supposed to say”, should be replaced with “ever one in this situation would feel the same”, “I am not alone in feeling this way” or “I am doing well and I am almost done”. When one can replace the negative with positive, the process of restructuring is taking place. (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993) Visualization Thirdly, the visualization therapy is recommended in overcoming speech anxiety. Visualization technique is to have a positive picture of the speech in your head before and during the presentation. If one can imagine successful image of speech delivery where the audience is happy and supportive, this will help the speaker to feel confident and deliver the speech with enthusiasm for the topic and friendliness towards the audience. In contrast, if the person giving the presentation has a vision of hostile audience and the speech going badly, the message sent is that the person is not really interested in the topic and they do not like their audience. The key to any of the three approaches to be effective is picturing and thinking of your-self as a confident, successful speaker that can achieve anything. (Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. , 1993) Skills Training In addition to all the techniques described above, there is one more very important one to know – Skills Training. Sometimes the reason for speech anxiety that might transform into severe anxiety is simply the lack of skills needed to perform successful speech or presentation. Person might blame their character or personality for not performing well during speeches, in realty however, the main reason might be the lack of proper skills. Skill training is a strategy that teaches individuals to become more competent in organizing a speech, developing ideas clearly, practicing the speech, maintaining good posture while speaking, maintaining eye contact with the audience, and incorporating the right gestures and vocal variety during presentation. (McCroskey, 1993, p. 35) Nearby college or university would offer public speaking classes that would present the individual with help with this training. Conclusion In conclusion, one has to remember that severe speech anxiety is possible to improve. It might be hard and difficult road but doable. There are millions of people around the world that have the same problem. Some people might be able to control the signs of anxiety on the outside better but inside there will be still anxiety and different side effects taking place. For different people there are different kinds of fear and often one has to choose different approach to try to overcome them, depending on the personality and how severe the anxiety is. However, thinking positively is the first key to success for everyone. One should try to turn bad and negative into positive. The second skill to master is to know how to practice and compose your-self and the end product will be success.   Bibliography Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. . (1993). Coping with speech anxiety. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub. Desberg, P. (1996). 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