Using NLP For Overcoming Fear of Public Speaking

As you may know already, the number one fear reported by people in public surveys is the fear of public speaking. It ranks higher than any other fear, including fear of sharks, car crashes, death by fire, or even law suits!

Fear of public speaking is actually a complex phobia combining many others; it encompasses fear of open spaces or crowds (agoraphobia), fear of people or society (anthropophobia), fear of failure (atychiphobia), fear of ridicule (catagelophobia), fear of confined spaces (claustrophobia), and fear of social evaluation (sociophobia)!

For something so frightening and so generalized for so many people, how can NLP possibly help?

If you would like to know how to use NLP to overcome fear of public speaking, a good place to start is in understanding some of the basics of human communication itself. In a now-famous study conducted in the late 1960’s, UCLA communications professor Albert Mehrabian concluded that human beings communicate through three primary channels and that each one of these channels has a relatively constant level of impact on the message that is perceived by an audience.

The three channels are: 1) the actual words we use, 2) the voice qualities used in uttering those words, and 3) the body language that accompanies the words. What is interesting to note, and seemingly a little contrary to common sense, is the fact that the words we use have the least impact in terms of the message our audience perceives. In fact, words come in at a paltry 7%, while voice qualities (things like tone, rate of speech, volume, etc.) rank at 38%, and body language (gestures, facial expressions, postures, etc.) fill out the remainder with a total of 55%!

Think about this for a moment if you are one of those folks who gets stuck on the idea that whenever you address an audience you must know ‘the perfect thing to say’ or you will look like a fool. What Mehrabian’s study clearly indicates is something your mother always told you: It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it!

Yes, a full 93% of your communication with your audience will come from your ‘paralanguage’—the things you do around, and in support of, the actual words you say. Your audience will believe and respect your message when your words, voice qualities, and body language all support each other. The great news is that you no longer need to be concerned with having the perfect wording when you address an individual or a group. Mehrabian’s study says that overwhelmingly, they will be listening beyond your words and instead responding to the things you do.

Of course, confidence artists have understood the underlying secret of Mehrabian’s findings well before he ever conducted his research. They have known, since time immemorial, that even a blatant lie spoken with complete confidence and supported by a confident, relaxed, body posture will be mistaken by most people for the truth.

So if you are a sufferer of fear of public speaking, take heart in the plain fact that you don’t need to be perfect at all in what you say. You do, however, need to say it with power, certainty and conviction, and this is where NLP can really help!

NLP for overcoming fear of public speaking can take many forms. One way is to use a pattern called, ‘the Fast Phobia Cure’ which allows an individual to dissociate from and learn from the scary experience at a neurological level. Another approach, and probably the most reliable one, is to build on successful experiences (‘references’) through the reinforcement of what is called an ‘anchor’.

‘Anchors’ are unique parts of an experience that tend to bring back, or trigger, the totality of an original experience. For instance, if you are an American, what words automatically come to mind when I say, “I pledge allegiance to the flag?” If you answered even without thinking, “. . . of the United States of America”, then you have been successfully anchored to recall the American ‘Pledge of Allegiance’. The fact is, human beings are being anchored all the time. Anchors act as neurological shortcuts to help speed up our reaction time and therefore increase our survivability as a species.

A simple NLP approach using anchors to help a person overcome a fear of public speaking, would be to put that same person into a very powerful, relaxed and confident state first. This is done by having the person run a ‘full sensory’ movie of powerful, relaxed, confidence in their mind and then physically ‘acting as if’ they are in that state, or back in that state. The subject would be encouraged to immerse themselves and really get to know all the nuances of how they manifest powerful, relaxed, confidence. Then an anchor, which could be a unique sound, gesture, etc., would be triggered at the peak of that state. The cycle is then repeated, with the empowering feelings growing more and more clear and tangible each and every time, and each time, the unique anchor is triggered at or slightly before the very peak of that feeling of powerful, relaxed, confidence.

With the anchor having successfully been installed, the individual would then be given the task of presenting a relatively simple proposition before one or two people. (This could be done in reality, or just as easily and effectively be emulated through an hypnotic induction.) The focus would be on how one is presenting and what the audience is responding well to. Once again, the anchor is triggered and reinforced every time the audience responds well. This repetition boosts the power of the anchor, turning it into what is known as a ‘ballistic’ anchor because its efficacy increases, rather than diminishes, with use.

Once a person experiences success in speaking to small groups, the cycle is gradually repeated with larger and larger audiences. Each success creates a stronger and more solid reference point that reinforces the beliefs and feelings that tell the individual they are, in fact, great at public speaking. At this point, another NLP technique called ‘reframing’ may be employed to further shift the individual’s beliefs, thoughts, and feelings about what it means to speak before a large audience.

Pretty soon the individual has transitioned from a state of deathly fear to one of positive excitement about the prospect of speaking before a large group! The average person’s deepest fear transformed into one of their most sought-after and anticipated experiences? What could say more about the pure power of NLP than that?!

That is the beauty of using NLP for overcoming fear of public speaking.

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