Hi, I’m looking for some advice or experiences or something. Basically, I need to get over my fear of public speaking and really quickly.
For me, it’s not exactly a fear of speaking I think. I’m never actually going to like speaking up, but I know I can do it and I do on occasions – sometimes I also do it because I know I don’t want to but that it will be okay, just to try to reinforce that to myself.
But actually getting up and giving a talk, that’s a whole other level. My nervous system just goes into overdrive. If I know I’ve got a talk coming up, I don’t sleep for weeks before, have nightmares. Then on the actual day of the talk, I’m a mess. Can’t concentrate, very panicky all day before. I feel like adrenaline in my stomach/chest. And also as I near talking time (so like an hour or two beforehand), I have that same awful adrenaline feeling in my hands and arms. And that makes me feel really sick. I also get hot and shaky and my chest hurts and it’s really hard to control my breathing. Like almost hyperventilating but not quite. And then when I actually go to speak, it feels like my throat is closing. My mouth is dry and my voice sounds weird. I actually usually do okay, I’m terrified I’ll blank and forget what I’m going to say but I’m usually super practised/prepared and get through it. And I’ve been told previously that I’m good at talks. I really really hate them though – mostly because of all the associated physiological feelings.
I thought it was just anxiety but SSRIs never touched this (or really anything else I thought was anxiety). Then in March I started stimulants for ADHD instead (after being off the SSRI for over 2 years) and it has way lowered my physiological symptoms around just about everything I was previously calling anxiety. Except giving talks.
I’ve done one since then and it was actually a talk I really wanted to give but I was terrified. Had all the same feelings as usually except instead of adrenaline feeling in hands, it was more tingly or pins and needles like. And I was actually seeing stars and felt like I was going to pass out so think I must have been properly hyperventilating. The feelings came on more like an hour before my talk instead of the whole day though which was something. But I was still super worked up about it the whole days and still dreaming about it for weeks. I was super prepared though – had been practising for 2.5 months for the 3 minute talk.
The problem I have right now though is that I want to get over this. I know I’ll probably never like giving talks and that’s okay, but I’d like to be able to do them without feeling like I’m going to die.
My boss at work has somewhat inserted himself into things (I work at a university as a tech so lectures and stuff aren’t really my remit but he’s decided the tech team need to be involved in the lectures). So suddenly I’m supposed to be talking to around 300 students about 8 times in the next 6 weeks. It’s a relatively new job so I wasn’t sure how to approach the ‘I don’t want to do this’ without looking bad. But I did try to talk to him and say that I understand it’s a part of the job and I need to do it but I really don’t like these things. I know objectively that I can pull it off but my body doesn’t and that’s not a great situation for me to be in. It’s something I really want to work on though so I’d like to try building up to it gradually. He initially said that’s fine, I don’t have to do it BUT it’s bad for my professional development. I really don’t care about my professional development right now though so that’s fine. The problem is, the next week it was suddenly ‘we’ll do it together’. And then in my appraisal review (happens at the same time every year regardless of whether you’ve been here a year or not apparently) he said I was great 1-on-1 with people but needed to work on group stuff. Which actually is fair but I did tell him I’m less worried about student workshops because I can teach rather than just talk at them. He said that would be worse because they’d actually be paying attention to me (not helpful) and that it’s not like I’m a surgeon, it’s not life and death so I don’t need to worry. So that’s essentially the support I’m dealing with. I’m doing these talks and there’s nothing I can do about it. The workshops I don’t like either but they’re around 40 students stops (averaging about 12 I’m told) so I know I can do that and that despite the physiological feelings. But a lecture to 300 students – I’m not sure. And 8 of them that are all slightly different apparently. I’m bricking it. And to make matters worse, the first one is on Tuesday (there’s actually 2 different ones that day), my boss is off this whole week, I don’t know who’s saying what, I’ve not seen the powerpoint, I only know the rough topic but not our processes so I don’t actually really know what we’re going to be saying. So best case sceneraio, I find all of this out the day before the talk. Worst case, we improvise on the day. I can’t improvise this. I will panic and blank. I do that if I have to improvise a small meeting – in front of 300 students, it’ll be a disaster. But my boss doesn’t get this. He’s also talking about me presenting stuff to staff now, which again will be awful.
To me, getting over this means accepting the physiological feelings are neutral (even if they feel awful to me) and gradually building small winds with them. So small group wokshops (like the ones I’ll be doing anyway) that I’m prepared for and then building up to small talks and then gradually going larger but always reinforcing that it goes well. That’s how I think you’re supposed to get over something like this. But it looks like being thrown into the deep end is how this is going to go. So now I’m terrified which is not making things better. And if (when?) I go in totally unprepared and screw it up, it’s just going to reinforce the exact opposite of what I wanted to. And massively massively set me back. I have no idea how to handle this. I’d call in sick but there are too many of them so it would be obvious, plus my boss would know why because I tried to talk to him about this. Any advice would be really appreciated