Don't Let Your Anxiety Block Speaker Confidence
- Victoria Hogg
- Nov 21
- 3 min read
Dear Bag of Nerves, |
You're about to present to an audience. Your palms are sweaty, your mind's racing, knees weak, arms are heavy - Mom’s spaghetti… hang on, these are just Eminem lyrics! Jokes aside, when the adrenalin hits you on stage, even your own name hits weird as you say it. Welcome to the wonderful world of presentations anxiety. If you’ve ever thought, “Why am I so good at chatting in the office kitchen but I freeze around a PowerPoint deck?”, you’re not alone. A Chapman University study in 2022 showed that 77 percent of people experience anxiety re. public speaking, making it one of the most common social fears in the world. “If you’ve felt embarrassed during a speech, your brain expects that again - unless you actively create a new experience”Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett, neuroscientist When you're about to speak publicly, your brain's amygdala (the almond-shaped part that deals with fear) lights up like an Olympic torch. It sends a signal that you're in danger, even though there’s no sabre-toothed tiger - just Poppy from Accounts looking mildly skeptical. This triggers your sympathetic nervous system, releasing cortisol and adrenaline, which flood your body and create that fight-or-flight response. Here’s the twist: your brain doesn’t distinguish between real threat and perceived threat. According to neuroscientist Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, “Your brain uses past experiences to create predictions. If you’ve failed or felt embarrassed during a speech before, your brain expects that again - unless you actively create a new experience.” And that’s where applied improvisation flies in like a caped hero, whispering “What if we play with this, instead?” |
Don't Let Your Anxiety Block Speaker Confidence
TRY IT OUT! 💘 Our weekly tip, from applied improv to you.
🦍 Name It To Tame It 🦍
We dubbed this game after the term and technique coined by Dr Dan Siegel MD, Mindsight Institute director, where you’re invited to label your emotions out loud. Why? Because when you say, for instance: “I feel nervous because this talk matters to me!”, your brain ‘hears’ you, and the act of speaking the feeling will lower amygdala activation and bring your rational brain online.
How to play: If there’s more than one of you, run an improvised scene in pairs. The action can begin anywhere: on a ski lift, in the office kitchen, at the circus. You decide.
The game? To say out loud, before each ‘line of dialogue’, the FEELING you feel and the REASON WHY you’re feeling it. With active listening you’ll likely feel a full range of emotions as the actions unfolds. You can also run this alone: simply listen actively to what you’re saying and react truly to the story. Be in the present moment with each new sentence.
Reflections: Was it harder to name some emotions than others? Did you forget to say what you were feeling? How could you apply and practise this in your everyday life?
Download: The ‘Name It To Tame It’ cribsheet! Enjoy.
Something in the water...
Both Paul and I (Vic) are big fans of stand-up comedy. It’s more of a solo sport than improv’s team endeavour. Stand-up demands ego and status and a much more aggressively resilient ‘push and pull’ than its nerdy gentle cousin improv.
But it’s useful to borrow some of that chutzpah that both stand-up and clowning demand. When we run sessions, we see people actively transform from timid folk to stagey beasts in mere hours.
It’s all to do with connecting with your emotions and owning them - even if you have to then shove them out the door again when those feelings aren’t helpful in that session.
Next time you’re in a meeting of any kind, pay attention to what others are feeling. Can you read the emotions? What’s on the surface? What’s underneath? What’s useful and what’s not? And why do you feel what you feel?
It could be key to you being less stressed, more safe in a presentation scenario.
Vic n Paul
