Niki’s Health Triangle Magazine Articles

Stand Up And Be Counted!

Ask any one you know how they’d feel if they had to stand up and speak to a large group or audience. Most likely you’ll get a grimace or even a horrified response.

It’s a shocking fact that around 75% of people have a degree of anxiety around public speaking, and within that group, there will be those for whom the very idea causes them to experience the classic symptoms of fight or flight: rapid breathing, racing heart, sweating and nausea.

Our natural reaction to anything that makes us anxious or fearful is to avoid it at all costs, but in doing so, the fear remains within us, ready to show itself on another occasion.

There are any number of reasons why we might feel this fear. Most people can remember a time when they were younger, and recognise that’s when their specific anxiety around speaking in front of a group of people began.

For example, being made to stand up in class and answer questions or read aloud. Already feeling a little nervous, a sharp comment from the teacher or being laughed at by classmates immediately heightens the anxious feelings, and the child creates a belief such as: ‘I’m not doing that again if I can help it!’

That belief, combined with the feeling, gets stored in the subconscious mind, which has a strong protective role. In therapeutic terms, this is known as the ‘Symptom Producing Event’ or SPE.

From that moment on, every time the person knows they might be called upon to speak in front of a group, the subconscious mind will replay the feelings of fear, along with that early belief they created, as a way of holding them back and stopping them from getting hurt by others. And every time they listen to it and hold back, then the ‘fear folder’ in the subcon gets fuller and fatter because it has just stored the new feeling of fear.

When doing regression therapy, we always assume there is an earlier root to the fear, sometime before the age of five, and very often unrelated to speaking up. This is called the ‘Initial Sensitising Event’ or ISE, and it is very important to clear this before working with the SPE, as any regression therapist worth their salt will tell you.

So, if this is a fear that is affecting your life or your career, then please do seek help, because it can be permanently cleared after just a few sessions!

Tweet

---

Comments

No comments to display

---

<< Back