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Helping them through the
fear:
A speech instructor’s guide to speech anxiety
I believe that teachers of
communication have a responsibility to help students in overcoming
their fears about communicating and to assist students in
developing more positive perceptions of communication activities.
Stated succinctly, our classes should produce students who are
more confident about reaching out symbolically to others, rather
than withdrawing from them
(Miller, 237).
Introduction
Speech instructors see the effects of speech
anxiety every time students get behind the podium. I’m always
amazed, however, at the number of these same instructors that
choose not to address the issue in their class. I think some of
them are afraid that talking about the fear will cause some type
of contagious problem within their class and those that weren’t
afraid before will be after they hear the lecture. Or as
professionals who have spent years — and sometimes decades —
talking every day in front of others, they simply can’t understand
what there is to be frightened about and dismiss their students’
fears as unfounded.
This paper will address why that
attitude is a mistake and why speech anxiety
needs to be addressed. It does
not — nor should it — be the center of focus of a public speaking
class. There is far too much material to cover over the course of
one semester. But discounting the problem as unimportant leaves a
fair number of students vulnerable and terrified needlessly.
By sharing the techniques
discussed on this website, you are giving students the tools to
fight their fears. Without these tools, most of the students don’t
stand a chance of performing well. With the tools, some may still
fail, but most will succeed far better than they ever dreamed
possible. Most will never like public speaking or become great
orators, but they will become competent. That’s really all we can
ask.
Definition
For the purposes of this paper,
I will make a distinction between speech anxiety and communication
apprehension (CA). Most notably brought forth by James McCroskey,
communication apprehension is often used interchangeably with
speech anxiety in research articles, causing a great deal of
confusion.
According to Phillips (1991),
“it is clear that fear of speaking in public is different from
anxiety about social contact” (p. 7). True communication
apprehension means that the sufferers see more value in keeping
quiet in all circumstances (even conversation) than they do from
talking. I explain the difference to my speech students this way:
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If you
are afraid to give a speech in front of the class, you have speech
anxiety.
·
If you
get terrified in the grocery store when the checker says, “Hi, how
are you today?” you have communication apprehension.
Speech anxiety is a very
targeted fear. “Our sense of public speaking anxiety is closer to
what psychologists and psychiatrists refer to as a phobia than it
is to free-floating anxiety” (Ayres & Hopf, 1993).
Although it is very targeted, it is also very common. A 1977 study
by Wallechinsky illustrated this well. In a widely cited study,
41% of respondents listed public speaking as their greatest fear
while only 19% of respondents’ number one fear was dying.
Similar studies have brought similar results. If thirty to forty
percent of your students were struggling with a concept, you would
slow down until more understood. A similar number of your students
suffer from speech anxiety and need your help, too.
The ability to speak well in public is vital to success in our
career-oriented world. “Empirical studies have linked oral
communication ability to such measures of success as finding a job
(Krzystofik & Fein, 1988) and progressing in a career (Estes,
1979)” (Fordham & Gabbin, 1996). It is imperative that students
become at least competent speakers, and the basic course is their
best opportunity to do so.
Ironically, a lack of speaking skills can fuel students’ fear in
the basic course. Even though they are in the course to learn
those skills, their lack of knowledge feeds those fears.
People report being fearful because
they do not know how to start a speech, how to use transitions, or
how to mesh public speaking activity with the goals they want to
accomplish in a given speech. In a very real sense, these people
are incompetent public speakers and need to learn basic public
speaking skills” (Ayres & Hopf, p. 7).
Types of
Fear
Fear of speaking in public has been shown to be very common.
However, this is not a universal “one size fits all fear.”
According to Wilder (1999), these fears take one of five forms:
1)
Career terror
2)
Perfectionism
3)
Panic
4)
Avoidance
5)
Trauma (p. 9).
Career terror is “rooted in the awful feeling that your job, your
career, your future is on the line every time you step before a
group, enter a meeting, or pick up the telephone” (Wilder, p. 10).
Perfectionism, according to Wilder, paralyzes the speaker when
they demand of themselves that each speech or presentation be
perfect.
Panic is the combination of unreasonable expectations with fear of
failure and real physical symptoms, which I will discuss more in
“Fight or Flight.”
Avoidance “is a self-sabotage that virtually guarantees anxiety,
fear, and diminished performance” (Wilder, p. 15).
Trauma is fear rooted in a long history of being told you’re not
good enough. If parents or teachers were hypercritical, this can
make you fearful of presenting your ideas in front of others.
“Stage fright” is a common term often used
interchangeably with “speech anxiety.” Desberg (1996) defines
stage fight as when “you predict that something bad is going to
happen to you as you perform…Along with this thought is a second
prediction that you will be unable to do anything about it” (p.
27).
The great Sir Laurence Olivier described stage fright
as “an animal, a monster which hides in its foul corner without
revealing itself but you know that it is there and that it may
come forward at any moment” (Ashely, 1996).
There is a three-stage process that a performer goes
through when under the influence of stage fright:
1)
You make a prediction that there is
something threatening or dangerous in the performance situation
that can lead to failure.
2)
You experience anxiety as a result of your
fear-provoking thoughts.
3)
You use the anxiety and discomfort you feel
as evidence confirming the accuracy of your original prediction (Desberg,
1996, p. 12).
Whether you refer to what your students are going
through as “speech anxiety” or “stage fright,” it is important to
understand how, if left unchecked, this fear can escalate out of
control. Referred to as the “panic spiral.” Wilder (1999)
describes the plight of a speaker caught in the panic spiral:
Anticipation created a physical
reaction. That physical response led to more insecurity. That
escalated her heart rate and she found it hard to breathe. She
went blank and her knees buckled (p. 14).
Fight or
Flight
The physical symptoms produced by speech anxiety are
unpleasant or downright terrifying, depending on the level of fear
being experienced by the speaker. These symptoms can be credited
to fight or flight, a response literally related to our caveman
ancestors. Our body’s response to fear is more closely related to
the things that frightened our ancient ancestors than what
frightens us. Every symptom was intended to get our ancestors to
safety and away from whatever danger was pursuing them.
Unfortunately, our bodies have not adapted to modern fears, like
public speaking.
Fight or flight is explained by Ayres & Hopf:
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 (p. 6-7).
Unfortunately, the fearful speaker can experience
these fight or flight symptoms even when preparing for their
speech. The student begins preparing for the speech, but feels
sick to the stomach or generally uneasy. They put aside the speech
preparation in favor of something that causes no discomfort. This
results in the cycle of failure.
Cycle of Failure
Humans are good at avoiding the things that cause them discomfort.
This can lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure. Friedrich
and Gass explain:
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…[it] thus becomes a vicious cycle — and a difficult
one to break (p. 183).
But as mentioned above, avoidance is often applied to
preparation, because even the seemingly innocuous act of taking
notes on a speech topic can increase unpleasant symptoms in
someone prone to speech anxiety.
Robin & Balter (1995) believe that students mistake
their fretting and worrying as a substitute for concrete
preparation.
These students make an interesting
and very common error in logic. They assume that the amount of
time they spend in worrying or anxiously procrastinating is
somehow equivalent to the amount of time that another person
spends in preparation or rehearsal. Unfortunately, while it’s
certainly the same amount…it generally doesn’t produce the same
results. Four hours of rehearsing your own misery and stewing in
it generally makes you more miserable, or at least contributes to
further misery. It certainly doesn’t help you master a new skill
or maintain an old one (p. 89-90).
The challenge for students is to overcome their
overwhelming urge to walk (or run) away from that which causes
fear or discomfort. “Of all the conflicts that psychologists have
studied, approach-avoidance conflicts are about the most difficult
to treat…In approach-avoidance conflicts, the tendency to avoid is
almost always stronger than the tendency to approach” (Desberg, p.
78).
How to Help Students Beat the Fear
Simply telling your students there is nothing to fear
is pointless. In most respects, speech anxiety is an irrational
fear — unless one of your students has really had something bad
happen to them while speaking, which is quite unlikely.
Being an irrational fear, it does not respond to
logic. If you have a terrifying, irrational fear of spiders,
having someone point out that you are thousands of times bigger
than the spider will, quite likely, have no effect on your fear
and may help build your resentment toward the foolish person who
simply can’t see how terrifying arachnids really are.
So, the first thing for you to do is to try and
understand the fear. According to Phillips (1991):
It may not be so much the act of
performing as the thought that someone is watching them that
bothers stage-fright sufferers. They anticipate that someone will
think critical thoughts about them and maybe even express them.
They are particularly afraid that someone will notice their
nonfluencies and nervous mannerisms (p. 7).
Leary has created an equation to help measure the
amount of stage fright a performer will feel.
Stage fright = Importance of consequences of the performance
Prediction of a successful
performance (p. 13)
It’s important to note that both factors are totally
subjective. Using this formula, the way the student frames the
situation is the sole determinant of how nervous he or she
becomes.
It is the concern about how the speaker will be
perceived by the audience that seems to be at the root of most
speech anxiety. The student with butterflies in his or her stomach
or knees shaking violently behind a podium live in terror that the
audience will see these signs and interpret them for what they
are: fear.
However, research shows that these fears are
unfounded. Behnke, Sawyer, & King (1987) concluded two important
points for nervous speakers to understand:
1)
Speakers report higher levels of
performance anxiety than what is attributed to them;
2)
The level of speaker anxiety is not very
accurately detected by these audiences (p.139).
Bormann &
Bormann (1972) believe that the attitude the speaker takes toward
his or her nonverbal cues makes all the difference in audience
perceptions.
If the speaker regards his own
nonverbal cues as showing that he worried about his performance
the audience will get the correct impression that the speaker has
stage fright…Interestingly enough, the same body motions, if
perceived by the speaker as symptoms of his intense involvement
with, and high regard for, his subject and the occasion, can make
a strong positive impression on an audience. We cannot stress too
much the importance of how the speaker perceives himself. This
perception of yourself is the first thing you communicate to any
audience (p. 89).
Of course, it is naive to believe that an audience
will never perceive nervousness on the part of the speaker. If the
anxiety escalates to a high enough level, it can actually cause
the audience discomfort. This is referred to as the “crossover
point”:
The audience no longer regards the
presenter’s nervousness as an endearing life sign but, instead,
sees it as a darkening cloud. The nervousness of the presenter has
become so worrisome to the audience that it has, in fact, made
the audience nervous (Hoff, p. 51).
Just think of the tension you’ve seen in your speech
classrooms when a nervous speaker is wilting at the podium. It’s
as if the entire audience is willing the speaker to do well,
leaving everyone drained after the experience.
In fact, some researchers believe that the nervousness
of one speaker can actually “infect” others. Hatfield, Cacioppo
and Rapson explain that “facial, vocal and postural expression”
are powerful transfers of information and that individuals can
“catch others’ emotion as a consequence of such facial, vocal and
postural feedback” (1992, p. 154). Given this theory, it isn’t
hard to understand the importance of helping those students in the
class who suffer from speech anxiety.
I urge instructors to take the time in their course to
address the problem of speech anxiety. One day spent in lecture on
the methods discussed on this website offers the nervous student a
“toolbox” with which to face their fears. The reasons for
addressing students’ symptoms are threefold:
1)
Getting rid of pain and discomfort is
worthwhile for its own sake.
2)
Relieving symptoms helps keep fear from
escalating.
3)
Symptom relief helps you overcome avoidance
(Desberg, p. 19).
Be sure to
communicate an acceptable environment in your classroom. If
speakers understand that everyone in the room — especially the
instructor — are rooting for them, it makes it easier to take that
long, frightening walk up to the podium.
The presenter’s best chance to win
is by offering his or her knowledge, talent, ideas, wisdom openly
— in a heartfelt desire to help rather than a
self-protecting fear of being outgunned or sold down the river
(Hoff, p. 60).
Works Cited.
Ashley, J (1996). Overcoming stage fright in everyday life.
New York: Clarkson Potter.
Ayres, J. & Hopf, T. (1993). Coping with
speech anxiety. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Pub.
Behnke, R.R., Sawyer, C. R. & King, P.E. (1987). “The
communication of public speaking anxiety.” Communication
Education, 36, April.
Bormann, E.G. & Bormann, N. C. (1972). Speech communication:
An interpersonal approach. New York: Harper & Row.
Desberg, P. (1996). No more butterflies: Overcoming stage
fright, shyness, interview anxiety and fear of public speaking.
Oakland, CA: New Harbor Pub.
Estes, R. (1979). The profession’s changing
horizons: A survey of practitioners of the present and future
importance of selected knowledge and skills. The International
Journal of Accounting Education and Research, 14,
47-70.
Fordham, D. R. & Gabbin, A.L. Skills versus
apprehension: Empirical evidence on Oral Communication.
Business Communication Quarterly, Vol. 59, No. 3, Sept.
1996, pp. 88-97.
Friedrich, G. & Gass, B. (1984). Systematic
desensitization. In Avoiding communication: Shyness, reticence
and communication apprehension. Daly, J.A. & McCroskey, J.C. (Eds).
London: Sage Publications.
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T. & Rapson, R. L.
(1992). Primitive emotional contagion. In M.S. Cark. (Ed.),
Emotional and social behavior, pp. 153-154. Newberry
Park: Sage.
Hoff, R. (1988). I can see you naked: A
fearless guide to making great presentations. Kansas City:
Andrews & McMeel.
Kyzystofik, A. T. & Fein, R. (1988). Does
your firm use the right approach in hiring campus recruits?
Journal of Accountancy, 166, 83-88.
Leary, M. (1983). Understanding social
anxiety: Social, personality and clinical perspectives.
Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.
Miller, R. (1984). Some (moderately)
apprehensive thoughts on avoiding communication. In
Avoiding communication: Shyness, reticence and communication
apprehension. Daly, J. A. & McCroskey, J. C. (Eds). London:
Sage Publications. Pg. 237-246.
Phillips, G. M. (1991). Communication
incompetencies: A theory of training oral performance behavior.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Robin, M. W. & Balter, R. (1995). Performance anxiety:
Overcoming your fear in the workplace, social situations, the
performing arts. Holbrook, Mass: Adams Pub.
Wallechinsky, D., Wallace, D. & Wallace, H. (1977). The
book of lists. New York: Bantam Books.
Wilder, L. (1999). 7 steps to fearless speaking. New York:
John Wiley & Sons.
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