Bandwith…on the run

we are doing way too much when we speak

When someone anxiously stands up to speak, we don't just focus on the task in hand. Like a mad juggler we try to handle way too many balls at once.

Here are just some of the balls we are juggling with…

The audience, real and imagined

The blank faces that look hostile even when they're not. The worry that everyone can see the anxiety. And the harsh audience the speaker has been imagining for weeks, already assembled, already judging like a machine gun.

What the brain does automatically

Attention is hijacked toward threat. (That's what anxiety is doing)
Mind-reading that always assumes the worst. We think we know what people are thinking!

Our relationship with anxiety

Thoughts like: I don't want to feel this. I shouldn't be feeling this. There must be something wrong with me for feeling this. Other people don't feel this way. It's a weakness. We are telling our bodies we don’t want to feel the feelings that we are having and making it bigger when we struggle with it.

Our relationship with ourselves

Thoughts like: I'm not good enough. I'm just wasting people's time. Others can do this better. A harsh inner voice that was up and running long before the speaker walked in the room and it’s taking up huge amounts of bandwidth.

What we demand of ourselves

I've got to be perfect. This is a performance, which means I have to be better than I normally am. I've just got to get off quickly.

Not in the present, thinking elsewhere

Ruminating. Catastrophising. Remembering last time. A history of avoiding moments like this one, which the brain has quietly filed as evidence.

Way too many balls in the air at the same time.

We don't have the processing capacity to handle all of this.

No wonder the brain goes blank.

So when the typical advice is "just be yourself, you'll be okay"...
Now you know why it doesn't work.

The answer isn't to perform better. It's to simplify. And to learn to have a better relationship with our feelings and our inner voice.
Fundamentally, we need to move public speaking away from performance and towards a chat. To learn to love blank faces. And to understand that the audience our minds create isn't the real audience. It's a nightmare version of it.

Our brain hasn't been upgraded for 100,000 years. That's not your fault but it is your problem to think about. What our anxious brain gives us isn't very helpful, so we need to learn some new skills to be with our wonky, normal brain.