Public Speaking...Phobia or Rush


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I've repeatedly heard that the #1 fear amongst Americans is speaking in public. Personally, I get really energized when I do. There's almost a joy to it--whether I am teaching or speaking. This does not necessarily mean I do it well, but so long as God is somehow glorified in it, it's good.

What are your experiences and thoughts about public speaking.

Also--an interesting factoid. Joel Osteen (the very successful pastor who's church is located in a sports stadium) says that when he speaks he does not try to make eye contact with particular audience members (a common strategy for connecting with the audience). He finds that doing so distracts him, and makes him overly concerned with response. Instead, he just speaks "out there." He's very successful and popular, so I am thinking that the technique works with larger audiences.

Then again, I most often speak to small groups (well under 100). Even at my church, it's less than 200...yet I seldom make eye contact. Maybe Olsteen's on to something?

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I've never been a fan of public speaking, but I was able to do it somewhat until I went to college. There I had one instructor(grad student) who favored the guys over the girls, and nothing I did was right. The other instructor who really messed it up for me said I was doctrinally incorrect on what I was teaching in front of my entire class.

Since then I've absolutely hated it. I've given one talk at church, and like you said, I didn't look at anyone, I didn't look up from the paper I had in front of me.

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I used to show pretty hefty symptoms of anxiety. Almost panic attacks. Couldn't sleep the night before. Shortness of breath, sweating. Had to go sit by myself and decompress after speaking. This was with 2 days to prepare, practicing my lesson out loud numerous times. When I prepared, the lessons went well, and when I didn't, they didn't. But my symptoms were always there.

Then I spent a year teaching Gospel Principles, and had some good successes. These days I would feel pretty comfortable being asked to teach the lesson on chastity to Elder's Quorum 5 minutes before class. Practice and a growing base of evidence that the world would continue, pretty much fixed my problem.

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Used to be a phobia, but no more. I prefer smaller groups 10 - 25 but 200+ doesn't bother me.

In small groups I make eye contact, large groups I just look 'out there'.

LDS have an advantage over other groups as we start giving talks in front of the entire Ward as Young Men and Women, as an adult convert I had a bit of a culture change but I'm fine with it now.

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Neither. I enjoy teaching as long as I'm prepared. Public speaking is fine; I find it a bit intimidating, but I'm happy to do it. I don't get a rush from it. I haven't been asked to speak at Church for years, though.

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Used to be a phobia, similar to LM, but have been able to conquer the issue causing the anxiety with public speaking.

I make eye contact always, however I have never taught in a sport stadium either. I now thoroughly enjoy teaching and asking questions. I learned early on, silence is ok when teaching.

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I hate public speaking, and it makes me pretty anxious to do it. However, most people don't really see that when I do it.

During the last talk I gave, I mentioned that I'm generally a very unemotional person. I received a number of comments from people that it was actually one of the most emotional talks they had heard*. When one person stated that it was the most emotional they'd ever seen me, I had to admit that 80% of the emotion I displayed was due to fear of public speaking.

* Truthfully, it was designed to be emotional for the audience, as it was intended to be a motivational speech. I'm debating if I should write about the construction of that talk or if I explaining the mechanics of it would cheapen the message.

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On a technical note, teaching a class is not exactly public speaking. In public speaking, it is generally held that the feedback from the audience is minimal (and usually restricted to non verbal communication). In public speaking, the speaker typically won't change the message based on feedback from the audience.

When teaching a class, however, feedback from the audience (both verbal and non-verbal) is more readily integrated into the message. Teaching classes would usually be considered group discussions, or perhaps facilitated group discussions. Strictly speaking, they aren't normally considered public speaking.

Regardless of this distinction, the anxiety felt by speakers in either context are often quite similar, though many will report less anxiety being the facilitator of a group discussion than they do with public speaking.

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Most teaching experiences happen within a small group, verses a large group. The smaller the classroom the more comfortable, unless it happens to be specifically 15 individuals (namely: the apostles and prophets, no matter how well prepared I am, I am going to be intimidated...ha). As people we are social mammals, and a classroom with a small amount of participation calms the nerves.

Over the pulpit, you are alone, watching everyone, everyone watching you. You make a mistake, everyone knows it. All eyes your direction.

Picturing the audience naked or in their underwear never worked for me :lol:

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Margin brings up an interesting distinction. I would think that teaching is harder, because it is more fluid, and requires greater awareness of the audience. Yet, most people have more fear of straight speaking. Thoughts on why?

My understanding is that there are three major components to this

1) Group size. Public speaking is typically associated with larger group size (although it can happen with an audience as small as 2 or 3 people). A larger audience usually comes with a greater fear of embarrassment or of being judged.

2) Sharing the burden. In a group discussion, the facilitator can offload some of the responsibility of the discussion to the audience. The discussion becomes a collaborative effort, and many people are more comfortable in such efforts because we engage in them on a more regular basis. We may not always be the facilitator, but we are often a contributor, and so the threshold to cross from participant to facilitator is much less imposing that the threshold from audience member to public speaker.

3) Personal traits. People who feed off of the energy and feedback of a group do well with facilitating discussions. That boost of energy isn't there with public speaking, so all of the energy has to be found internally.

Every individual is going to cite their own personal feelings, but in the courses I took on communication, group size seemed to be the biggest source of anxiety.

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I donno how many times I've sang the Monty Python's Lumberjack Song infront of people... once you sing how you "put on women's clothing and hang around in bars" (I don't)... giving a speech on any old mundane thing becomes a lot less frightening...

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Public speaking gives me some anxiety but if I have ample time to prepare it isn't too bad. I do fairly well at informative speaking, but my persuasive speaking is a bit lacking. I'm speaking of extemporaneous style speaking (at least as the communication department here at IUPUI calls it), the anxiety goes up for impromptu speaking.

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I have hard enough of a time speaking inside of groups, being the center of focus would likely place me into a full blown anxiety attack. No seriously, this past semester just having my name called out for attendance, and having to say the simple word "here" would often choke me up, leave me perspiring, and my heart racing.

I tell you what happens when I have to give a speech, my mind loses any ability to form thoughts outside of extreme fear, my voice starts to quiver, my eyes start to swell, I sweat profusely, I shake, and eventually start to lose all my strength. Sometimes the fear becomes overwhelming, and I pass out. It really sucks, even the thought of going in front of a group of people freaks me out.

You guys are brave, I have no clue how you do it.

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It's neither for me. Like Dravin, I sometimes experience some anxiety right before I get up, and may skip points I want to say but I'll take giving a talk over teaching a class and have really enjoyed speaking in Stake Conference of 2000 or so.

I like classes less in my home ward because of the lack of member participation most times.

I was an instructor in the Navy for 3 years, demonstrated and facilitated a number of groups around 300 and was quite confident and comfortable.

Level of prep, the audience, whether I feel like a subject matter expert, barometric pressure maybe.

It just depends sometimes on intangibles.

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I'm guessing that RMs, as a group, have a much easier time with public speaking--and especially with facilitating discussions--due to the extensive practice they get (at least on the small scale).

Even though the mission work speaking is usually to groups of 1 or 2, getting the ball rolling can often help people overcome their generic fear of the activity.

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I don't mind public speaking at all when it is a subject I'm very familiar with. I used to do public speaking in front of hundreds of military personnel and their families before ships deployed overseas. But it was a subject I knew inside and out so I was okay with it.

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I prefer to give talks at Church. I am a bit nervous - afraid I won't be heard. Our PA system is the A B S O L U T E P I T S. Now that I have new full upper dentures, I am afraid I will whistle too much, listhpth too often or heaven forbid- have them slip around. :eek:

I am not able to just make a few notes then speak for 15 to 30 minutes, AND stay on topic. So I write out the entire talk and read from it, and I need a minimum of two weeks to prepare a talk.

Prayers, on the other hand are impossible for me to do publicly. When called on at the time, I do it ~ but I am shaking, sweating and barely speak above a whisper.

Matter of fact, I will be giving a talk on Mother's Day. Forgot to ask how much time they want me to use. Only know that there will be a youth speaker - so sent out an email asking if there will just be the two of us, and how much time.

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Public speaking and teaching to me are just... something that needs doing. Like washing dishes. It doesn't make me nervous or get me exhilirated or anything like that.

But I may have a different take on this because I was trained as a very little girl to talk in public. My father is the campaign manager of several of my uncles' political carriers. I was only 4 years old when my dad asked me to sing infront of a jillion people for "entertainment". I'm a terrible singer. But when you're 4, everybody thinks it's cute.

And I was about 7 when I was picked to read the readings in the Catholic Church. It's just reading the Bible infront of a jillion people, so no big deal. Except that, the first time I ever did this, the microphones stopped working and so I had to read the readings out loud without microphones. Now, imagine a Catholic Cathedral... with those soaring vaulted ceilings, stone walls, cavernous size... I read that reading with such resonance that every single person in the Church heard me and some even thought it was a "spiritual miracle"... you know, Filipinos and their superstitions. LOL.

I was about 12 when I entered my first oration and declamation contest. No big deal, my uncle wrote the speeches, I memorized them and delivered them from memory. Then I joined the debate team. No big deal - lots and lots of research and preparation going on so words just flow out of my mouth without a problem.

I got a teaching job when I was 16 - teaching DBase, FoxPro, and Clipper to a bunch of IBM'ers in their 40's who resented their bosses for putting them through the "indignity" of being taught by a kid and took it out on me. I was always the "arrogant" type so I took it on as a challenge and refused to be intimidated.

And on and on it goes.

I had training though, so I don't know how it would feel to just go out there and talk not knowing "how" to do it. Like, I feel terrible sometimes for some of our ward members who gives talks in sacrament meeting with hands and voices shaking, some of them murmuring into the mics, some of them never looking up from the paper that they're reading for fear of losing their place, some of them so nervous they just read the paper word for word not even noticing anymore that there's a period in there somewhere, some of them completely losing the topic when they open the talk with stories about how they prepared the talk instead of the talk itself so that they had to "restart" the talk when they get to their topic... etc. etc.

I was taught to make eye-contact with the audience when giving the talk. If it's a prepared speech and I am using paper notes/index cards, I only glance at the paper/index cards as sparingly as possible so that I can maintain eye contact for up to 90% of the time. I don't target one person. I maintain eye contact with one person to issue one thought and then move to another person for another but don't zig-zag back and forth across the room... just slow gradual encompassing of the room. It's a way to try to put some urgency into the speech to make that one person I am looking at understand what I am saying. I have to say, this is not easy to do when giving a testimony. It's so much more different than a prepared talk. When I'm giving a testimony, I tend to "look into my brain" for the proper words to express what I feel so I can't maintain eye contact. All my testimonies are unprepared - I just go up there and say what comes to me. I have a general idea of what I'm getting at but it is soooo personal that it's difficult to really express what is going on inside me and make it a coherrent talk.

Edited by anatess
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I think I've only spoken to a large audience twice in my life. I spoke at my BIL's funeral (his wife is my LDS friend from high school). I was very nervous, dry mouth, fast heart beat, etc. My 2nd time was at my daughter's wedding last year. Just a little nervous but nothing like the funeral.

M.

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