Speech anxiety techniques

Anchoring

The internet is full of sites that claim to cure your speech nerves with various speech anxiety techniques but the following example is a tried and testing method that has proved to be a very successful coping strategy for many people.

The key to coping with nerves is to learn how to master your emotional state. The way you feel at a given time, your mood, your emotional state, is often triggered by something, an unconscious stimulus. For example, you may hear a particular song on the radio and it takes you back to a time and place in the past. It can change your mood in an instant.

Anchoring is an NLP technique that allows you to change your emotional state by creating a trigger to bring about an internal feeling or emotion. Anchors can be music, words, people, smells, symbols, pictures and actions.

Great sportsman use anchors or rituals to recreate a good performance and put them into the state required. Think about the rituals Jonny Wilkinson goes through before he takes a kick. How he positions the ball. How he rubs his boot on the back of his sock. He gets himself into the right frame of mind and is totally focussed on what he is about to do. You will often hear sportsman refer to this as “getting in the zone.”

You can create your own anchor using this technique to put you in the right space.

Step 1
Select the ideal emotional state you want to deliver your speech. For example, you want to be totally confident and in control.

Step 2
Think of a time when you were totally confident and in control and that confidence gave you the outcome you wanted. If you cannot think of a memory imagine a situation to bring about this emotional state.

As you recall your memory or imagine your situation to bring about this feeling of confidence use all your senses. See, hear and feel everything so you really re-create the feelings of total confidence that you had.

Step 3
When your experience is at it’s most vivid and you are in the desired state i.e. feeling confident and in control - select and activate your anchor. You can use something external like a piece of jewellery but you must make sure you are wearing it when you want to use your anchor! The easiest way to create an anchor is to take your thumb and little finger of your left hand and press them together hard.

Step 4
Repeat and perfect

The more you repeat this process – the stronger it gets. What you have done here is to re-programme the way you think.

So when the big day arrives you will have done all your preparation and practice for your speech and as you stand up to deliver you will fire your anchor, re-create your confident mood and give a great speech to rapturous applause.

Well done!

Dry Mouth
As the nerves kick in your mouth goes dry and your tongue sticks to the roof of your mouth making it difficult for you to speak properly.

Have a glass of water to hand – yes, water and take a sip of water to lubricate your mouth. Use it as a prop at strategic moments during the speech. So when the audience are laughing at one of your lines pick up your glass and take a sip. It will also make you look extremely composed and very much in control.

Save the alcohol for later. There’s nothing worse than someone slurring their way through a speech.

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