Reducing Communication Apprehension

Learning Objectives

  • Explain steps for managing anxiety in the speech preparation process.
  • Identify effective techniques for coping with anxiety during delivery.
  • Recognize the general options available for stress reduction and anxiety management.

Experiencing some nervousness about public speaking is normal. The energy created by this physiological response can be functional if you harness it as a resource for more effective public speaking. In this section, we suggest a number of steps that you can take to channel your stage fright into excitement and animation. We will begin with specific speech-related considerations and then briefly examine some of the more general anxiety management options available.

Speech-Related Considerations

Communication apprehension does not necessarily remain constant throughout all the stages of speech preparation and delivery. One group of researchers studied the ebb and flow of anxiety levels at four stages in the delivery of a speech. They compared indicators of physiological stress at different milestones in the process:

  • anticipation (the minute prior to starting the speech),
  • confrontation (the first minute of the speech),
  • adaptation (the last minute of the speech), and
  • release (the minute immediately following the end of the speech).[1]

These researchers found that anxiety typically peaked at the anticipatory stage. In other words, we are likely to be most anxious right before we get up to speak. As we progress through our speech, our level of anxiety is likely to decline. Planning your speech to incorporate techniques for managing your nervousness at different times will help you decrease the overall level of stress you experience. We also offer a number of suggestions for managing your reactions while you are delivering your speech.

Think Positively

As we mentioned earlier, communication apprehension begins in the mind as a psychological response. This underscores the importance of a speaker’s psychological attitude toward speaking. To prepare yourself mentally for a successful speaking experience, we recommend using a technique called cognitive restructuring. Cognitive restructuring is simply changing how you label the physiological responses you will experience. Rather than thinking of public speaking as a dreaded obligation, make a conscious decision to consider it an exciting opportunity. The first audience member that you have to convince is yourself, by deliberately replacing negative thoughts with positive ones. If you say something to yourself often enough, you will gradually come to believe it.

We also suggest practicing what communication scholars Metcalfe, Beebe, and Beebe call positive self-talk rather than negative self-talk.[2] If you find yourself thinking, “I’m going to forget everything when I get to the front of the room,” turn that negative message around to a positive one. Tell yourself, “I have notes to remind me what comes next, and the audience won’t know if I don’t cover everything in the order I planned.” The idea is to dispute your negative thoughts and replace them with positive ones, even if you think you are “conning” yourself. In the end, this is not deception but an optimism that will help you overcome your fears. By monitoring how you talk about yourself, you can unlearn old patterns and change the ways you think about things that produce anxiety.

Reducing Anxiety through Preparation

As we have said earlier in this chapter, uncertainty makes for greater anxiety. Nothing is more frightening than facing the unknown. Although no one can see into the future and predict everything that will happen during a speech, every speaker can and should prepare so that the “unknowns” of the speech event are kept to a minimum. You can do this by gaining as much knowledge as possible about whom you will be addressing, where the speech will take place, what you will say, and how you will say it.

Analyze Your Audience

The audience that we imagine in our minds is almost always more threatening than the reality of the people sitting in front of us. The more information you have about the characteristics of your audience, the more you will be able to craft an effective message. Since your stage fright is likely to be at its highest in the beginning of your speech, it is helpful to open the speech with a technique to prompt an audience response. You might try posing a question, asking for a show of hands, or sharing a story that you know is relevant to your listeners’ experience. When you see the audience responding to you by nodding, smiling, or answering questions, you will have directed the focus of attention from yourself to the audience. Such responses indicate success; they are positively reinforcing, and thus reduce your nervousness.

Clearly Organize Your Ideas

Being prepared as a speaker means knowing the main points of your message so well that you can remember them even when you are feeling highly anxious, and the best way to learn those points is to create an outline for your speech. With a clear outline to follow, you will find it much easier to move from one point to the next without stumbling or getting lost.

A note of caution is in order: you do not want to react to the stress of speaking by writing and memorizing a manuscript. Your audience will usually be able to tell that you wrote your speech out verbatim, and they will tune out very quickly. You are setting yourself up for disaster if you try to memorize a written text because the pressure of having to remember all those particulars will be tremendous. This apprehension will heighten your overall anxiety, making you more liable to forge, thus creating a vicious cycle. Moreover, if you have a momentary memory lapse during a memorized speech, you may have a lot of trouble continuing without starting over at the beginning.

What you do want to prepare is a simple outline that reminds you of the progression of ideas in your speech. What is important is the order of your points, not the specifics of each sentence. It is perfectly fine if your speech varies in terms of specific language or examples each time you practice it. You want to sound natural while still conveying your message clearly and chronologically.

It may be a good idea to reinforce this organization through visual aids. When it comes to managing anxiety, visual aids have the added benefit of taking attention off the speaker.

Adapt Your Language to the Oral Mode

Another reason not to write out your speech as a manuscript is that to speak effectively you want your language to be adapted to the oral, not the written, mode. You will find your speaking anxiety more manageable if you speak in the oral mode because it will help you to feel like you are having a conversation with friends rather than delivering a formal proclamation.

Appropriate oral style is more concrete and vivid than written style. Effective speaking relies on verbs rather than nouns, and the language is less complex. Long sentences may work well for novelists such as William Faulkner or James Joyce, where readers can go back and reread passages two, three, or even seven or eight times. Your listeners, though, cannot “rewind” you in order to catch ideas they miss the first time through.

Don’t be afraid to use personal pronouns freely, frequently saying “I” and “me”—or better yet, “us” and “we.” Personal pronouns are much more effective in speaking than language constructions, such as the following “this author,” because they help you to build a connection with your audience. Another oral technique is to build audience questions into your speech. Rhetorical questions, questions that do not require a verbal answer, invite the audience to participate with your material by thinking about the implications of the question and how it might be answered. If you are graphic and concrete in your language selection, your audience is more likely to listen attentively. You will be able to see the audience listening, and this feedback will help to reduce your anxiety.

Practice in Conditions Similar to Those You Will Face When Speaking

It is not enough to practice your speech silently in your head. To reduce anxiety and increase the likelihood of a successful performance, you need to practice out loud in a situation similar to the one you will face when actually performing your speech. Practice delivering your speech out loud while standing on your feet. If you make a mistake, do not stop to correct it but continue all the way through your speech; that is what you will have to do when you are in front of the audience.

If possible, practice in the actual room where you will be giving your speech. Not only will you have a better sense of what it will feel like to actually speak, but you may also have the chance to practice using presentation aids and potentially avoid distractions and glitches like incompatible computers, blown projector bulbs, or sunlight glaring in your eyes.

Two very useful tools for anxiety-reducing practice are a clock and a mirror. Use the clock to time your speech, being aware that most novice speakers speak too fast, not too slowly. By ensuring that you are within the time guidelines, you will eliminate the embarrassment of having to cut your remarks short because you’ve run out of time or of not having enough to say to fulfill the assignment. Use the mirror to gauge how well you are maintaining eye contact with your audience; it will allow you to check that you are looking up from your notes. It will also help you build the habit of using appropriate facial expressions to convey the emotions in your speech. You can use the mirror to practice good posture and some occasional hand gestures. While you might feel a little absurd practicing your speech out loud in front of a mirror, the practice that you do before your speech can make you much less anxious when it comes time to face the audience.

You can also practice in front of friends or family who can give you feedback on your rate, volume, eye contact, and expressions. Practicing in front of a small “audience” before your actual presentation will provide you with tips and build your confidence.

Watch What You Eat

A final tip about preparation is to watch what you eat immediately before speaking. The butterflies in your stomach are likely to be more noticeable if you skip normal meals. While you should eat normally, you should avoid caffeinated drinks because they can make your shaking hands worse. Carbohydrates operate as natural sedatives, so you may want to eat carbohydrates to help slow down your metabolism and to avoid fried or very spicy foods that may upset your stomach. For example, for some it might be a good idea to avoid dairy before a speech, as it can cause irritation in the vocal cords of some individuals and make it more difficult to speak clearly. Be sure to have breakfast, especially if you are speaking in the morning. If you haven’t had anything to eat or drink since dinner the night before, dizziness and light-headedness are very real possibilities.

Reducing Nervousness during Delivery

Anticipate the Reactions of Your Body

There are a number of steps you can take to counteract the negative physiological effects of stress on the body. Deep breathing will help to counteract the effects of excess adrenaline. When practicing your speech, practice breathing all the way out before you inhale. Keep your shoulders back and try to breathe using your diaphragm. Try expanding your abdomen rather than breathing shallowly in and out of your chest.

The anatomy of diaphragmatic breathing.

This “diaphragmatic breathing” will slow you down and, according to speech coach Dr. Gary Genard, give you a “full supply” of oxygen.[3] It will not only help relax your nerves, but will also help you project your voice better. Breathing is key for “good vocal support” and maintaining a “correct volume.”[4] If you make this a habit, you won’t have to consciously think about it throughout your delivery.

You can still place symbols in your notes, like “slow down” or ☺, to remind you to pause and breathe during points in your speech. Make it a goal to breathe slowly before the start of your speech and to take deep breaths with each sentence you say. Check out this video for more on the importance of breathing.

It is also a good idea to pause a moment before you get started to set an appropriate pace from the onset. This will help calm that “fight-or-flight” response and stop you from rushing into your speech. Look at your audience and smile. It is a reflex for some of your audience members to smile back. Those smiles will reassure you that your audience members are friendly.

Physical movement helps to channel some of the excess energy that your body produces in response to anxiety. If at all possible, move around the front of the room rather than remaining imprisoned behind the lectern or gripping it for dear life (avoid pacing nervously from side to side, however). Move closer to the audience and then stop for a moment. Take a step forward or backward during your speech to emphasize a point. If you are afraid that moving away from the lectern will reveal your shaking hands, use note cards rather than a sheet of paper for your outline. Note cards do not quiver like paper, and they provide you with something to do with your hands.

Vocal warm-ups are also important before speaking. Just as athletes warm up before practice or competition and musicians warm up before playing, speakers need to get their voices ready to speak. Talking with others before your speech or quietly humming to yourself can get your voice ready for your presentation. You can even sing or practice a bit of your speech out loud while you’re in the shower (just don’t wake the neighbors), where the warm, moist air is beneficial for your vocal mechanism. Gently yawning a few times is also an excellent way to stretch the key muscle groups involved in speaking.

Immediately before you speak, you can relax the muscles of your neck and shoulders, rolling your head gently from side to side. Allow your arms to hang down your sides and stretch out your shoulders. Relax your body from your head all the way down to your toes. Isometric exercises that involve momentarily tensing and then relaxing specific muscle groups are an effective way to keep your muscles from becoming stiff.

Focus on the Audience, Not on Yourself

During your speech, make a point of establishing direct eye contact with your audience members. By looking at individuals, you establish a series of one-to-one contacts similar to interpersonal communication. An audience becomes much less threatening when you think of them not as an anonymous mass but as a collection of individuals.

A colleague once shared his worst speaking experience when he reached the front of the room and forgot everything he was supposed to say. When I asked what he saw when he was in the front of the room, he looked at me like I was crazy. He responded, “I didn’t see anything. All I remember is a mental image of me up there in the front of the room blowing it.” Speaking anxiety becomes more intense if you focus on yourself rather than concentrating on your audience and your material.

Maintain Your Sense of Humor

No matter how well we plan, unexpected things happen. This fact is what makes the public speaking experience so interesting. When the unexpected happens to you, do not let it rattle you. Learn how to go with the flow. At the end of a class period late in the afternoon of a long day, a student raised her hand and asked me if I knew that I was wearing two different colored shoes, one black and one blue. I looked down and saw that she was right; my shoes did not match. I laughed at myself, complimented the student on her observational abilities and moved on with the important thing: the material I had to deliver.

Stress Management Techniques

Even when we employ positive thinking and are well prepared, some of us still feel a great deal of anxiety about public speaking. When that is the case, it can be more helpful to use stress management than to try to make the anxiety go away.

Positive Visualization

One general technique for managing stress is positive visualization. Visualization is the process of seeing something in your mind’s eye; essentially it is a form of self-hypnosis. Frequently used in sports training, positive visualization involves using the imagination to create images of relaxation or ultimate success. Essentially, you imagine in great detail the goal for which you are striving, say, a rousing round of applause after you give your speech. You mentally picture yourself standing at the front of the room, delivering your introduction, moving through the body of your speech, highlighting your presentation aids, and sharing a memorable conclusion. If you imagine a positive outcome, your body will respond to it as though it were real. Such mind-body techniques create the psychological grounds for us to achieve the goals we have imagined.

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Some experts in psychology advise using visualization to imagine the worst-case scenario for your speech. For example, if you are extremely nervous about your upcoming speech, you might imagine yourself dropping all your note cards in front of your audience. What would happen then? Well, you would still be up there in front of the room; you’d still have your notes, and you’d still possess the time needed to deliver your speech. Talking yourself through these worst-case scenarios can ease your apprehension towards speaking. This can then be replaced with positive visualization to remind you of the goals you wish to achieve.[5] As we discussed earlier, communication apprehension has a psychological basis, so mind-body techniques such as visualization can be important to reducing anxiety. It’s important to keep in mind, though, that visualization does not mean you can skip practicing your speech out loud. Just as an athlete still needs to work out and practice the sport, you need to practice your speech in order to achieve the positive results you visualize. Watch this video for more on positive visualization.

Meditation

Another technique for managing stress is meditation. Meditation is a practice of mindfulness with goals that include easing physical symptoms of anxiety and focusing one’s inner mental and emotional states. This technique often involves consciously slowing your breathing, closing your eyes to help focus, and counting or mentally repeating a word or phrase. It may sound silly, but even repeating a simple phrase to yourself, such as “I’ve got this, it’s all gonna be okay,” can help you before your speech! This is similar to the “positive self-talk” discussed earlier in this chapter, and you can incorporate this as well as positive visualization into your meditative practices to de-stress. One meditation professor recommends meditating prior to public speeches because it can help you become “physically relaxed for the task at hand and mentally focused in the moment.”[6] You can use mindful meditation to “clear your mind” before delivery.

Body scanning is one technique used in meditation to connect with your body by noting your physical sensations and areas of tension. By paying attention to your body in moments of stress, and using similar tactics like progressive muscle relaxation and autogenic training, you can help slow your heart rate and breathing and alleviate symptoms such as excessive sweating or tense muscles. It’s important to be aware of your physical reactions to stress, as well as your psychological responses, when preparing for public speaking. For more resources on stress relief, visit HeartMath.org.

Systematic Desensitization

Systematic desensitization is a behavioral modification technique that helps individuals overcome anxiety disorders. People with phobias, or irrational fears, tend to avoid the object of their fear. For example, people with a phobia of elevators avoid riding in elevators—and this only adds to their fear because they never “learn” that riding in elevators is usually perfectly safe. Systematic desensitization changes this avoidance pattern by gradually exposing the individual to the object of fear until it can be tolerated.

First, the individual is trained in specific muscle relaxation techniques. Next, the individual learns to respond with conscious relaxation even when confronted with the situation that previously caused them fear. James McCroskey used this technique to treat students who suffered from severe, trait-based communication apprehension.[7] If you’re highly anxious about public speaking, you might begin a program of systematic desensitization by watching someone else give a speech. Once you are able to do this without discomfort, you would then move to talking about giving a speech yourself, practicing, and, eventually, delivering your speech.

The success of techniques such as these clearly indicates that increased exposure to public speaking reduces overall anxiety. Consequently, you should seek out opportunities to speak in public rather than avoid them. As the famous political orator William Jennings Bryan once noted, “The ability to speak effectively is an acquirement rather than a gift.”[8]

KEY TAKEAWAYS

  • There are many steps you can take during the speech preparation process to manage your communication apprehension, including thinking positively, analyzing your audience, clearly organizing your ideas, adapting your language to the oral mode, and practicing.
  • You can employ a variety of techniques while you are speaking to reduce your apprehension, such as anticipating your body’s reactions, focusing on the audience, and maintaining your sense of humor.
  • Stress management techniques, including cognitive restructuring and systematic desensitization, can also be helpful.

EXERCISES

  1. Go to http://www.hypknowsis.com and practice a few of the simple beginning visualization exercises presented there.
  2. Make a plan for managing your anxiety before and during your speech that includes specific techniques you want to try before your next public speaking assignment.
  1. Witt, P. L., Brown, K. C., Roberts, J. B., Weisel, J., Sawyer, C., & Behnke, R. (2006, March). Somatic anxiety patterns before, during and after giving a public speech. Southern Communication Journal, 71, 89. ↵
  2. Metcalfe, S. (1994). Building a speech. New York, NY: The Harcourt Press; Beebe, S.A., & Beebe, S. J. (2000). Public speaking: An audience centered approach. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. ↵
  3. Genard, G. (2016, July 3). Speak with confidence using this simple breathing technique. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.genardmethod.com/blog/bid/89587/Speak-with-Confidence-Using-this-Simple-Breathing-Technique ↵
  4. Lumen Learning. Public Speaking. "Delivering Your Speech: Vocal Aspects of Delivery." 2018 ↵
  5. Corning Community College psychology professors Debra Borden and Harold "Benny" Hunziker. ↵
  6. Corning Community College meditation professor Elaine Corwin. ↵
  7. McCroskey, J. C. (1972). The implementation of a large-scale program of systematic desensitization for communication apprehension. The Speech Teacher, 21, 255–264. He found that “the technique was eighty to ninety percent effective” for the people who received the training.McCroskey, J. C. (2001). An introduction to rhetorical communication. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 57. ↵
  8. Carnegie, D. (1955). Public speaking and influencing men in business. New York, NY: American Book Stratford Press, Inc. ↵