As a consequence, this issue has been in the back of my mind (and potentially the front of my sub-conscious) ever since. I've gradually shifted as far away from management positions as possible, and tried to avoid roles at work that would require me to speak or perform in any nature. I'm terrified of panic arising mid-speech, turning me into a wreck before any presentations. This has begun to spill over into social events, parties, networking meetups, or anything else remotely performative in nature.
The worst part about this is that I was actually quite a natural speaker prior to this anxiety arising, and was often complimented on my speaking ability.
I've tried all sorts of techniques to fix this. Some work better than others - beta blockers help a lot, as does alcohol. Obviously, I don't want to become overly reliant on booze or anything stronger than propranalol, but sometimes the immediate relief feels necessary. Exposure therapy like Toastmasters seems to provide big short-term gains, but the effects fade fairly quickly, and if I don't do it for a few weeks I'm back where I started.
Please share any suggestions! I'd love to hear your own stories.
Avoid BetterHelp and shortcuts, find a real professional. There are no shortcuts to mental health, it's like dealing with any chronic medical condition.
I still have the anxiety, but it's easier to manage. One tip is grounding. Try to distract yourself.
Sleep helps. I find that anxiety from yesterday goes away by tomorrow.
Another is to focus on something you like. It's hard in a workplace setting, but often there's something that you like more than the job itself. It helps (me) to concentrate fully on that.
Just remember that there's not something "wrong" with you. Most people just don't talk about this. I once had a panic attack during an interview phone screen about 7 years ago, and interviews weren't very fun after that.
An understanding manager helps. You could do presentations in written form rather than on stage or verbally. For standups, just keep it brief.
that's all, you 'll notice that you'll be getting better.
wish you the best, cheers from Argentina
You can control: 1. Your actions and reactions 2. Your desires 3. Your character 4. How you treat others
Everything else is outside your control and not worth worrying about.
Do you need to speak or perform? Is the audiences reaction to your performance within your control? No. Are the audiences opinion of you as a person within your control? No.
Is your anxiety within your control? Partially. Is preparing a good speech or performance within your control? Yes Is your character and how you present yourself within your control? Yes. Do you present well? Speak well? Are person of good character worth listening to? Do you treat others well and with respect?
Prepare and perform the best you can, be of good character and treat others well and anything outside of that is not in your control and not worth worry about.
It doesn't have a big noticeable effect, it is not a sedative. It is just that the wave of panic never comes.
https://www.drugs.com/comments/propranolol/for-performance-a...
PS 90% of all presentations are a waste of time, so the world doesn't even need this from you.
I've never participated in a Toastmasters so take with a pinch of salt, but I'd theorise this is happening because you're tackling a symptom and not the cause. Toastmasters is conditioning you to be able to perform a pre-prepared speech, which is ok, but that's not the real issue here. I'd wager the true issue is that you don't feel comfortable or have confidence in your ability to adapt to situations that are impossible to anticipate or prepare for.
I'd suggest taking improv comedy lessons as you'll naturally get used to becoming adaptive to whatever is thrown out there. You could also try playing DnD or some other table top role playing game because again, it's low stakes improvisation in a supportive environment and you can try on different characters and approaches and see what works for you.
But, sometimes I'll feel just scared to open my mouth, and not because I'm sensing that now would be an inappropriate time for whatever reason, just because I feel scared, in the moment.
The trick I developed for myself, so I could keep creating good vibes and not be limited by that occasional fear was as follows: I'd just count to 3 in my head, and then force myself to say it. Like force the air out, and the words out of my chest, throat mouth.
I find, if you wait much longer than that...the "moment" passes, and the relevance of whatever you want to say to the momentary feeling in the air somehow disappears, and if you want to say it and wait, the fear or sense of discomfort just increases. It's never really good to wait for those tiny moments, just grab them!
So that trick I developed helped me to grab those tiny moments and make something good. The more I did it, the easier it got. And unlike some sort-of artificial thing like Toastmasters or whatever that I never liked or joined, it's a natural interaction between people. And it's pretty low stakes, like if it goes bad, "Well, hey, I'm out of here soon, anyway." But if it goes well, now you got the kind of "warm fuzzies" for a little bit, and you brighten someone's day.
But that's a trick, and it's not depending on anything outside yourself.
In general for reducing the kind of body and mind reactions that are not optimal and tend to get in the way of people being their best, most authentic and most expressive selves I've found the following, practiced regularly (like every day), to be most effective (in no order, with a URL or original name provided to allow you to find an accurate description if needed):
- box breathing (https://quietkit.com/box-breathing/),
- alternative nostril breathing (nadi shodhana),
- full yogic breath (3 part breathing, digra pranayama), hatha yoga,
- meditation where you just sit and focus on the feeling of breath at your nostrils (Anapanasati).
If you want something that isn't focused on breath, energy or meditation but is more just physical I recommend:
- child's pose where you rest arms on floor by your legs is particularly soothing (Bālāsana),
- or just sitting in "Easy Pose" (Sukhasana), the seated meditation posture (but not meditating or doing anything special). Just note that for many of the breathing exercises above it helps to sit in "Easy Pose", and amplifies the healthy and relaxing effects.
In Easy Pose, there's even more you can try! You can experiment with variations where you have palms up, palms down, one palm up one palm down, and use no mudras (finger positions: for example to different simple ones you can experiment with: touch (or nearly touch but comfortable apart) tips of index and thumb together; touch tips of ring finger and thumb together) or different mudras. These can produce different kind of healthy relaxed states.
I've also heard you should ask your doctor first, in case you have an immune related disease with which Ashwagandha could interfere with.
- Rejection therapy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_Therapy): get rejected by another person at least once per day. Great practice.
- Gardening. Shut off the computer and leave the phone at home. Plan to have several hours doing something you enjoy (for me that is gardening, hikes, beach, ocean) with no screens
- Exercise. Even if you don't do it at all, start like a child. Choose an activity you can imagine yourself realistically doing for the next few years. Bouldering, Biking, Power Lifting, Crossfit, Running, Yoga, Calisthenics.
- Treat your body and mind like a temple. As you consume something (food, digital) ask yourself: 'is this serving me?'. If it isn't or gives pause, explore alternatives. One of many reasons I don't drink anymore.
- Toastmasters (https://www.toastmasters.org/) or Improv club. I had a few years where I noticed my speaking skills plummeted. Toastmasters was recommended and I loved the playful club.
- Lunchclub (https://lunchclub.com/). Casual way to chat with other people in tech and other industries. Lots of people there are also working on social skills
Also, for some people, performance anxiety does not go away but at best can be managed. Even professional theatre actors can be nervous to the point of throwing up right before going on stage. People suffer through it because of their ambition - it's practically a requirement for being in management. You need to decide for yourself if career advancement is worth the pain it causes you - some people enjoy the challenge and the pain, some prefer more chill life.
Also, my suspicion is that a main cause of stage fright is that it puts your internal self fully exposed in front of people. In the context of a presentation in a tech company, the presentation is basically a direct transmission (from your brain) of your understanding of the problem you're presenting on. Perfectionists and people who worry a lot can often be frightened by the fact that the presentation will expose their shallow understanding of the subject - in a presentation you're basically streaming in real-time, so there's no time to edit and cover up your weak spots etc. Obviously, the best recipe for that is to have the presentation prepared and practiced beforehand, right down to every couple of sentences. Only the very experienced people can wing a presentation with minimal preparation and have it come out ok (they can usually do it because they know the subject inside out).
I had no academic background and no school qualifications. I had to take an access to Higher education qualification in Psychology to gain the basics of maths, english and psychology.
When I started my first classes I felt useless. All those educated and erudite people being able to eloquently speak on the subject matter. They all seemed to hand in perfect essays. Whereas, I usually spent days on end trying to perfect the perfect essay, rewrite after rewrite without success. My essay margins were full of tutors remarks.
I mentioned my frustration to one of my tutors.
She told me this: "You will never be an expert in our field. Everything that you want to write has already been written by some extremely clever and intelligent people who have spent there entire lives in academia."
"Stop trying to compete with them. I want to here and read what you have to say about Psychotherapy. I want to hear your unique views. It is not a competition, its about "being good enough" and that is all we can expect of ourselves as human beings. Perfectionism is a goal that can never be reached."
I wrote about those things which I had knowledge about and over the years, little by little, book by book, client by client, this developed into a vast ocean of understanding of my subject.
I learned to be me. I developed a sense of personal confidence. I even felt confident doing oral examinations and presentations.
Being good enough is all it takes. It is all we can really be.
I am a clasic introvert with an anxious avoidant personality traits. I used to spend my days staring at the floor.
The other half is speech. Once you become confident you must modify your ability to speak in a way that reflects such confidence. You must think ahead, on one hand, in order to know what to say. On the other hand you must remain slow and in control to fully regulate your spoken words such that each word is deliberately delivered with the desired timing and emphasis. This takes practice, but is less challenging than it sounds. If you can write with confidence, you can speak with confidence. If you cannot write then I would work on that first.
The book is difficult to summarize succinctly but it addresses a systematic approach to building confidence both in terms of a background mental state and in terms of execution. The methodology involves constantly mining the past and present for positive material to build a “bank account” of these moments. One exercise that I find helpful is the ESP journal (Effort, Success, Progress) It’s a structured daily journal done in bullet format that links up honest skill-building effort to observable progress and then success, however narrow. Other parts of the method involve detailed visualization exercises.
He also talks about the immediate pre-performance routine that you can run through, CBA. C = Cue your mantra (“I’ve got this. Time to shine.) B = Breathe deeply into the body. A = Attach your attention. CBA. I find the attention part the most helpful. The anxious mind spins off into every unproductive direction imaginable. By consciously deciding to focus the mind to a particular element of the performance you can help prevent that. In music it would be something like the decision to focus only on the attack of each note. In standup presentations, sometimes else, vocal quality, the sense of groundedness in my feet, etc.
He also has a chapter on post-performance review. Unsurprisingly, it’s about letting in only positive aspects. There’s a role for taking an honest look at what can be done to work on skills; but it’s all cast in the light of positivity. Much of confident performance is about deluding oneself into that state…
Sorry this is a little scattered; it’s from memory. I’ve recommended the book to many students and colleagues.
For me that came the hard way when transitioning from a strictly product role to a customer facing role where I had to be “on” every single day in customer calls. Eventually you realize that even your mistakes aren’t the end of the world and they’re truly nothing to be nervous about.
One small trick that helped me in the beginning of that change was typing everything I wanted to say multiple times without over practicing
Best of luck!
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/328325503_Impact_of...
The Long Road: get back to the root cause, analyze the panic attack systematically. Include your psycho-social environment from childhood and youth. Your subconscious mind needs to understand the issue deeply before it can debug and or rewire itself.
I had paralyzing anxiety in personal situations for almost 20 years, turned into a crippled shadow of myself every freaking time. No issues in school/university/business/work presentation, though. It took me a few years in isolation and two years on modafinil and learning to code (only intermediate, pre-production-ready-level but it was CRUCIAL) to analyze and fix the issue as well as 8 sessions with a shrink and two nights with a psychology student (friend of my bro, lots of booze, diazepam, the only sex I had in too many years, I underperformed for the last time in my life since) to fill a few gaps.
Techniques will only run concurrently to whatever causes the anxiety and panic. Get to the network of roots that cause the problem amd understand them on a proper level, including it's neuro-chemical consequences on a rather SUPERFICIAL level.
I was a complete noob when I took the long road, which is why it took me so damn long. You'll do it in under 200 hours, resulting in fixing your issue and a lot of added value.
For presentations, there are books and videos to learn from. But what matters is practice, which can be done in safer spaces and smaller groups.
Lastly, this sentence in Steve Jobs's commencement speech at Stanford in 2005 [1] could help:
> "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose."
Realizing that everything is impermanent, and that whatever you think today may not stay around in a decade or two from now, also helps. It is ok not to be good at presentations or speaking to an audience. Not everyone is cut out to be a great speaker or a good presenter. Focus on your strengths and derive satisfaction from those. Frame this or keep this around in some form: "This too shall pass".
[1]: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/steve-jobs-stanford-com...
First step is cut out all drugs (yes even our beloved alcohol). As a depressant it might work in the short term, for the same reason long term it will make things worse.
Toastmasters is a good idea. Have you tried talking to a therapist?
The older I got and the more I forced myself to get up there and do public speaking the easier it got.
That whole "imagine them naked" thing is a hilarious hoax for what its worth.
Performing.
I started doing open mic comedy.
Five minutes of free expression, and they're flashing me in the front row, replacing the mayor, and I'm able to crank out code like it's the goddamn Matrix -- confidence is a hell of a drug.
Didn't get me a JOB -- I actually got evicted due to nonpayment of rent because I got laid off and my family cut me off... but at least we knocked out some local party officials who used to hand out money to children at the halloween parade and had fun doing it!
So try public speaking op. Not in the tech context. Wander into an open mic you saw a sign on a pole for and just... let loose.
Worst case, you'll bomb.
But, if folks aren't assholes then (and you aren't a hateful little fuck) then worst case they'll probably just quietly move to the next person and let you try again next.
Again, I cannot emphasize enough: I'm just a sample size of one.
Getting flashed will make you code better, especially if it's after literally screaming to a room full of undergrads "rumors I'm an Israeli spy are greatly exaggerated, but electricity, like driving is a privileged and elections are not optional -- so get with the fucking program, or get in the ground with Jeffrey Epstein!"
Someone pulled me aside after and explained most people don't just rant every week, they iterate on a specific act but... I guess that's why it's improv technically, not comedy, but the line is blurry.
Just make sure they're not gonna film it, or you'll be worse off than when you started... true comedy isn't about getting onto netflex or whatever, it's about making people laugh so hard they forget to look into what you did with the WiFi
;-)