Arts & Sciences

Spch 1113 Help for Speech Anxiety

Help for Speech Anxiety

Imagery Desensitization

The most effective way to overcome a phobia is simply to face it. Continuing to avoid a situation is what keeps the phobia alive. Facing a situation that scares the living daylights out of you is tough, but it can be done by breaking it down into small steps and by facing it first in your imagination instead of in real life. These tips will help you get the process started.

Desensitization is the process of unmaking the connection between anxiety and a particularsituation. To achieve desensitization, you must enter a phobic situation while you're in a relaxed state. With imagery desensitization, you visualize your being in a situation that causes anxiety. If you feel anxious, you can always leave and instead imagine yourself in a very peaceful setting. The point is to

(1) unmake the connection between a phobic situation and an anxiety response and

(2) reassociate feelings of calmness and relaxation with that same situation.

Repeatedly visualizing a phobic situation while relaxed will allow you to overcome your tendency to be anxious and fearful. If you can train yourself to relax in a certain situation, it will no longer bother you.

Imagery desensitization also helps you overcome anticipatory anxiety. This is the anxiety you feel waiting for a particular phobic situation to occur. Hours or days before making a speech, you may experience anxious thoughts and images about the speech. Dwelling on these thoughts and images only worsens your anxiety long before the situation ever arrives. By training yourself to relax, you can lower your anticipatory anxiety substantially.

Success with imagery desensitization depends on four things:

1. Your ability to attain a state of deep and true relaxation.

2. Constructing an appropriate hierarchy, i.e. a series of situations relating to your phobia. These situations are ranked from mildly to very anxiety-provoking.

3. The vividness and detail with which you can visualize each step in your hierarchy and your peaceful scene.

4. Your patience and perseverance in practicing on a regular basis.

Constructing an Appropriate Hierarchy

1. Choose making a speech as your phobic situation.

2. Imagine having to deal with a speech in a limited situation that hardly bothers you at all (giving a speech in front of a friend or family member, going to the location of the speech without anyone else there, or imagining the feeling you have one month before the speech). Try to create a very mild instance of your phobia and make it the first step in your hierarchy.

3. Now imagine the strongest and most challenging scene relating to your speech phobia and place it at the opposite end of your hierarchy. For example, the highest step for speeches may be having to speak in front of a group of strangers for a specific amount of time with someone grading you. After this, try to develop scenes of varying anxiety.

4. Take these scenes of varying anxiety and rank them according to how anxiety-provoking they may be. Try to make them match what you will actually be doing later. Place them between the two extremes you already have. Then write everything down on your Hierarchy Worksheet.

Phobia About Giving Speeches in Class

Visualize:

1. Preparing a speech you don't give.

2. Preparing a speech and giving it in front of a friend.

3. Preparing a speech and giving it in front of three friends.

4. Giving a brief speech in front of three classmates at school whom you know well.

5. Same as in Step 4, but a longer speech.

6. Giving a brief speech in front of 10-15 classmates.

7. Same as Step 6, but a longer speech.

8. Give a brief speech in front of three or four strangers.

9. Same as in Step 8, but a longer speech.

10. Give a brief speech in front of 10-15 strangers.

11. Give a brief speech in front of 50 strangers.

Practicing Imagery Desensitization

1. Relax. Spend 10-15 minutes getting relaxed.

2. Visualize yourself in a peaceful scene. This place can be anywhere or anything, even something completely imagined. Spend about one minute there.

3. Visualize yourself in the first scene of your phobia hierarchy. Stay for 30 seconds to 1 minute, trying to picture everything as if you were right there. Do not picture yourself as being anxious. If you are in the scene, picture yourself as calm and collected.

4. If you experience mild to moderate anxiety, spend 30 seconds to one minute in the scene, allowing yourself to relax to it. Use regular deep breathing or repeat an affirmation such as "I am relaxed" or "I can handle this" or "I am calm." Picture yourself handling the situation confidently.

5. After up to a minute of exposure, leave the phobic scene and go to your peaceful scene. Spend about 1 minute in your peaceful scene to relax. The repeat your visualization of the phobic scene as in Step 4 for 30 seconds to one minute. Return to your peaceful scene. Keep going back and forth until the phobic scene causes only some very mild anxiety or no anxiety at all.

6. If visualizing a particular scene causes you strong anxiety, do not spend more than 10 seconds there. Return to your peaceful scene and stay there until you are relaxed. Expose yourself gradually to the more anxiety-causing scenes in your hierarchy, going back and forth between them and your peaceful scene. If you cannot get past one scene, insert an intermediate step before it.

7. Continue progressing up your hierarchy step by step in imagination. Do not proceed to a more advanced step until you are fully comfortable with the preceding step. Practice for 15-20 minutes a day. Begin with the last step you completed, not with a new step.

How to Get the Most Out of Desensitization

1. Spend about 15-20 minutes each day to practice imagery desensitization.

2. Make sure that you are fully relaxed and that you fully recover from any anxiety after the practice session.

3. Visualize each phobic scene as if you were really there. If you don't know what to visualize, ask yourself these questions:

What objects or people are in the scene?

What colors do you see in the scene?

Is the light bright or dim?

What sounds can you hear in the scene?

What is the temperature?

What are you wearing?

Can you smell or taste anything?

What other physical sensations are you aware of?

What are your emotions within the scene?

4. Stop a session if you feel tired, bored, or overly upset.

5. Try to practice every day.

6. Even if the first few scenes don't cause any anxiety at all, you must still go through them. Imagery desensitization works even when you're not feeling any anxiety. You still make the connection between relaxation and your phobia.

Summary of Things to Do

1. Build a hierarchy consisting of at least 8 scenes for your speech anxiety.

2. Practice imagery desensitization for your phobia five times a week.

3. When you've progressed about halfway up your hierarchy in imagination, you'll be ready for real-life desensitization.

4. If you have difficulty reducing your anxiety during imagery desensitization, the problem may lie in four areas. You may have to

Be more completely relaxed before you begin.

Work on visualizing your phobic and/or peaceful scenes in more detail

Become completely desensitized to one step before moving on to the next one, or

Add additional steps in your hierarchy.

Although imagery desensitization is an important first step, actually facing the situations you've been avoiding in real life is essential for success. Nothing works better toward overcoming a fear than facing it--and the result never disappear. Once you've completely desensitized yourself, you will remain free from fear. Exposure is not a particularly comfortable process to go through, and not everyone is willing to undergo the unpleasantness of phobic situations. Exposure treatment requires some commitment on your part. If you want to recover from your phobia, you must be willing to

Take the risk to start facing situations you may have been avoiding for years.
Tolerate the initial discomfort that comes with phobic situations.
Persist in practicing exposure on a consistent basis (despite setbacks) over a long enough period of time.

Set Goals

Start out by clearly defining your goals. In your case, you want to be able to give a speech in front of the class without racing through the speech, choking, crying, leaving out parts of the speech, or becoming all confused about what to say next. Once you've set goals, set up timelines. When would you like to have achieved a certain goal? Give yourself a time frame with which to work and the commit to stick with it. Write down your goals and time frames.

Once you have done that, you're ready to develop hierarchies for each goal. Use the same guidelines that you used for imagery desensitization. If you have difficulty getting started with exposure therapy, begin with an even less challenging step than your planned first step. For example, you can watch a video of someone giving a speech before you even go to the classroom.

Giving a Speech

1. Go to the classroom with a friend when no one is in it and look around.

2. Enter the classroom with a friend and hang around for five minutes.

3. Let your friend stand at the lectern and talk with her/him for five minutes.

4. Stand at the lectern yourself and chat with your friend for five minutes.

5. Stand at the lectern alone and look around the room for a few minutes.

6. Stand at the lectern and talk with your friend who sits in the back of the room.

7. Stand at the lectern and talk with three friends near the front of the room.

8. Stand at the lectern and talk with three friends near the back of the room.

9. Stand at the lectern and tell a story to your friend.

10. Stand at the lectern and tell a story to three friends.

Procedure for Direct Exposure

1. Move into your phobic situation up to the point where you can feel moderate anxiety. Even if you feel uncomfortable or your anxiety feels a little unmanageable, stay as long as it is tolerable.

2. Retreat from the situation when your anxiety feels like it might get out of control. Leave for the time being and return once you feel better. Do not run or avoid the situation altogether.

3. Recover. Wait until your anxiety level subsides. Give yourself time. Walking or deep breathing may help.

4. Repeat. After you recover, reenter your phobic situation and continue until your anxiety once again becomes hard to manage. If you are able to stay longer, fine. If not, don't sweat it. This is a normal reaction. In a couple of days, you'll be able to continue your progress.

5. Continue going through the Expose-Retreat-Recover-Repeat cycle until you feel tired or bored. Come back the next day. Don't worry about slow progress or no progress at all--this is perfectly normal. Keep at it.

Making the Most of Exposure

1. Be Willing to Take Risks. There is no risk-free way to face your fears and overcome them. Starting with small, measured steps will make this process much easier.

2. Deal with Resistance. Look at exposure therapy as a way to rid yourself of long-standing fears and phobias that may have held you back. Don't delay getting started or find excuses why you cannot do it. Yes, entering a phobic situation may bring up anxiety, but think about what you'll gain once you've desensitized yourself.

3. Be Willing to Tolerate Some Discomfort. Facing situations you've been avoiding for years is not a particularly pleasant experience. Therefore, you will experience some anxiety. At the outset, you might even feel worse. This does not mean that you're going backwards; on the contrary, it means that the therapy is working. As you gain more skill in handling anxiety, your practice sessions will become easier.

4. Be Willing to Retreat. You are in control of the situation. If the anxiety becomes too intense, leave. Then wait until you recover and try again. Retreat is not failure--it is simply a good way to master your phobia.

5. Plan for Contingencies. To avoid the worst possible situation, plan ahead. Make sure that the classroom will not be used when you come for exposure therapy.

6. Trust Your Own Pace. The goal is not to see how fast you can overcome your phobia. Do not pressure yourself; move on to the next step only after you are fully comfortable with the previous step.

7. Reward Yourself for Small Successes. Give yourself a new piece of clothing or a dinner out when you have reached one of your goals. Rewarding yourself will help keep your motivation going.

8. Learn to Cope with the Early Stages of Panic. Use breathing and positive self-talk to get you through this situation. As soon as you can, retreat.

9. Use Positive Coping Statements When Entering a Phobic Situation. Repeating positive statements over and over can be quite helpful. Repetition takes your attention away from physical symptoms. Such statements encourage a confident attitude that will help you throughout your therapy process.

10. Practice Regularly. Practice three to five times a week if possible. Longer sessions tend to produce better results. Regular practice is the key to fully overcoming your phobias. When you find yourself making excuses, write them down and discuss them with a friend to find arguments that will refute these excuses.

11. Expect and Know How to Handle Setbacks. Setbacks are part of a recovery process. There will be times of moving forward and times of going backward. Do not let this discourage you. Chalk it up to a bad day and look at the progress you have made so far.

12. Be Prepared to Experience Stronger Emotions. Facing phobic situations often brings up strong emotions. Allow these feelings to surface and express them. Accepting, expressing, and communicating feelings is a normal part of the process.

13. Follow Through to Completion. Finishing exposure therapy means that you have reached a point where you no longer feel anxious in situations that you had previously avoided. To have lasting freedom from phobias, you must get to the point where you can go into a situation that nonphobic people regard as tolerable and regard panic reactions as manageable and not at all dangerous.

Factors Which Promote Your Success

1. Cooperation of Your Partner or Spouse. When your partner or spouse supports your efforts and is willing to assist you, results are often excellent. If you feel that your partner may be interfering with your progress through indifference, lack of cooperation, or open or concealed opposition, you might want to consider a couple's therapist who is trained in the treatment of phobias.

2. Willingness to Tolerate Some Discomfort. You will feel more anxiety when you begin to confront phobic situations in real life. Exposing yourself to phobic situations is hard work. Don't be tempted to give up or to not even begin.

3. Ability to Handle the Initial Symptoms of Panic. Fear of panic is the greatest deterrent to succeeding in your desensitization. Develop some techniques to help you cope with the early stages of panic.

4. Willingness to Retreat When Retreat Is Appropriate. Moving too fast or pushing yourself too hard can backfire. Take your time, pace yourself, and retreat when your anxiety begins to rise.

5. Ability to Handle Setbacks. Some people quit their programs after they experience one or two setbacks. Setbacks are normal, and your ability to tolerate them will be a crucial element of your therapy.

6. Willingness to Practice Regularly. Consistent practice three to five times per week is the crucial factor on your road to success. There is no way out of this. There is no problem that cannot be overcome with persistence and commitment to practice. If you practice, you will succeed.

Summary of Things to Do

1. Practice imagery desensitization of your speech phobia before you begin real-life desensitization.

2. Establish a hierarchy with at least eight steps for your phobia. Use the same hierarchies you developed for imagery desensitization.

3. Learn to retreat and recover when our anxiety becomes too intense.

4. Practice three to five times per week. Monitor your progress by writing down when you complete the steps on your hierarchy. Practice regularly.

5. Rely on a support person (spouse, friend, classmate) when you begin your therapy and also every time you begin a new step.

6. Make sure that you fully understand all of the factors that contribute to your success.

(The material on desensitization is adapted from: Bourne, E. J. (1990). The Anxiety and Phobia Workbook. Oakland: New Harbinger.)

Hierarchy for Speech Anxiety

Directions: Start with a mild instance of your phobia. Develop at least eight steps which involve more and more challenging exposures. The final step should be your goal or even a step beyond your goal. Write down the date on which you complete each step.

Step Date Completed

1.____________________________________________________________________________

2. ____________________________________________________________________________

3. ____________________________________________________________________________

4. ____________________________________________________________________________

5. ____________________________________________________________________________

6. ____________________________________________________________________________

7. ____________________________________________________________________________

8. ____________________________________________________________________________

9. __________________________________________________________________________

10. ___________________________________________________________________________

11. ___________________________________________________________________________