“As soon as I found out I had to do yet another presentation, my heart sank. I worried about it all the week before. I practised it about 30 times and developed a line-by-line script, which I tried to learn by heart, so I could present perfectly. The talk was in the board room. As I started the talk, I felt shaky inside. I knew everyone could see how anxious I was. I had an image in my head of looking like a nervous wreck. At a few points, I nearly forgot where I was in my script, which made me even more anxious. I felt embarrassed about how I was coming across, so I tried not to catch anyone’s eye in the audience. That evening, I spent ages thinking about how badly I’d done.” Sam, Corporate lawyer (pseudonym)
If you feel anxious about giving presentations, it can help to understand what keeps this type of anxiety going. We can use that knowledge to come up with some tips about how to cope. These tips are based on an evidence-based treatment for social anxiety. We will use the example given above of Sam (pseudonym) to help us understand what might have kept Sam’s difficulties going and what he decided to do about it.
What keeps the problem going?
What we think
Fear of public speaking is often maintained by a vicious cycle of thoughts, self-focused attention and behaviours. Some of the thoughts that Sam had were these:
- ‘If I look anxious, people will think I’m not up to the job’
- ‘Unless I seem polished and speak perfectly, people will think I’m incompetent’.
Where we focus our attention
Instead of focusing on the content of the talk or the audience, a person may start to focus inwards on how they are feeling. Typically, people become aware of physical symptoms of anxiety, such as feeling shaky, hot or sweaty. Sam was particularly aware of feeling shaky.
Using how we feel to predict how we are coming across
This focus on feelings can lead someone to generate an idea, sometimes in the form of an image, of how they are coming across to people. Sam, for example, had a very clear image of looking like a nervous wreck.
A key insight from social-anxiety research is that this internal information is a poor predictor of how someone is coming across – the idea or image is typically inaccurate and does not match reality.
While Sam assumed he looked like a nervous wreck, there was no evidence of this other than the fact that he felt anxious. Sam believed that the image was accurate, though, which set up a vicious cycle. The more Sam had the image, the more negative thoughts there were and the more his attention turned inwards, making the image more believable.
What we do in response
It is understandable that when we feel anxious, we do things to try to help us cope. Sometimes these behaviours can make the problem worse. For example, Sam developed a script for the talk and tried to learn it by heart. This could cause problems for Sam in a few ways. It stops Sam finding out whether his thought ‘Unless I seem polished and speak perfectly, people will think I’m incompetent’ is accurate. It can also make the situation worse: having a line-by-line script that he had to remember perfectly made him feel more anxious when he thought he might forget the next line.
There were some other behaviours that may not have helped Sam. He avoided eye contact, which stopped him from finding out how others were responding to the talk; it also increased his self-focused attention. After the talk, he spent the evening ruminating about how badly the presentation had gone, even though the only evidence he had was how he felt during it.
What can help?
If anxiety about presenting is maintained by a vicious cycle of thoughts, self-focused attention and behaviours, making changes to each part of the cycle can have beneficial effects.
Examine your thoughts
Working out what beliefs you have about presenting and then asking about the accuracy or helpfulness of those thoughts is a useful way to start. Some questions to ask yourself are these:
- ‘What are my beliefs about presenting?’
- ‘How do I know if they are accurate?’
- ‘What would I say to a friend who had the same beliefs about presenting?’
Sam used these questions to come up with alternative thoughts:
- ‘No one really expects a presentation to be completely perfect. It’s fine to be less than perfect’
- ‘I’d understand if someone else was not perfect. I would not assume they were incompetent. I am applying standards to myself that I would not apply to others.’
Focus attention externally
If internally focused attention can increase anxiety, shifting your attention outwards can help. Rather than focus on internal feelings, focus on the room you are in, the slides you are talking to, and the audience.
Remind yourself that how you feel is often a poor predictor of how you are coming across
One of the most useful things to remember when presenting is that how we feel is a poor predictor of how we appear. When Sam had the image of himself looking like a nervous wreck, he reminded himself that this was based on how he was feeling, so was not a good predictor of how he was coming across. He then refocused his attention externally.
Change what you do in response
It can also help to ask if there are things you are doing that are keeping the problem going or ultimately making matters worse? If they are, it can help to practise dropping those behaviours.
This can often take the form of a ‘behavioural experiment’, which can help you find out whether the thoughts you have about presenting are accurate or not. A behavioural experiment involves doing something (the behavioural part) to test out a belief (the experiment part). For example, Sam decided he would no longer create a detailed script that he would try to learn by rote. Instead, Sam developed a broad plan of what he would cover and reduced the number of times he ran through the talk in advance to four rather than 30. Sam discovered that not having a script meant he used more conversational, everyday language, which to his surprise made him feel less anxious, because the talk seemed more natural and spontaneous.
He also decided to work at reducing the amount of time he spent ruminating about the presentation afterwards, reminding himself that he did not have much information to go on, other than how he felt, which was not a good predictor.
Getting more help
If presenting makes you feel very anxious and you would like further help, there are several options. The approach outlined here, a type of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT), is based on an evidence-based model of social anxiety . There is evidence that this approach, when delivered by a suitably trained health professional, successfully reduces social anxiety, including fear of public speaking. You can speak to your GP about getting a referral to this type of treatment or discuss the other forms of help that are available.
Dean McMillan is a Professor of Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Addiction Research Group, University of York
Reference: Clark, D. M., & Wells, A. (1995). A cognitive model of social phobia. In G. Heimberg, M. R. M. R. Liebowitz, D. Hope, & F. Scheier (Eds.), Social phobia: Diagnosis, assessment, and treatment (pp. 69–93). New York: The Guilford Press.
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