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Why You Go Blank When You Stand Up to Speak and How to Change It · Moving Minds Forward

• 0:10
  Gary Johannes: People aren't broken, and it's almost never too late to change. I know that because I've lived it. I left school at 14 with no qualifications, one of nine kids. I joined the RF at 16, and then when I left, I went into sales and ran bars and nightclubs and a few restaurants. Not exactly the typical route into mental health and therapy.
• 0:35
  But in my late forties, I met a hypnotherapist, and everything I knew about myself turned out to be a lot more flexible than I'd assumed. I retrained, and I started inspired to change. Later, I took on an MSc, the Psychology and Neuroscience of Mental Health at King's College in London and graduated at 60. This podcast is everything that comes out of all of that. I'm Gary Johannes, solution focused hypotherapist, founder of Inspire to Change, And I train other hypnotherapists through CPHT.
• 1:13
  One condition per episode. What's going on? What's keeping it going? And what actually helps? Let's get into it.
• 1:23
  So public speaking. Here's something I want you to sit with for a moment. You can be brilliant at your job, sharp in a meeting, funny at the dinner table, the person everyone turns to when something needs sorting. And then somebody says, can you just say a few words? And something drops through the floor of your stomach.
• 1:47
  That's the strange thing about the fear of public speaking. It usually has nothing to do with whether you're any good. Some of the most capable people I've ever met go to pieces at the thought of standing up in front of a room. So this episode is about what's really going on there, what that fear actually is, why the brain reacts as if a friendly room of people is a genuine emergency, and what actually helps because it responds very well to the right approach. If this is your first time here, do hit subscribe wherever you're listening.
• 2:27
  One condition per episode. The same honest lens. Now let's get into it. So what is the fear of public speaking really? It's got a proper name, glossophobia, and it runs the full range.
• 2:44
  For some people, it's a flutter of nerves before they stand up, And for others, it's a full blown panic. The kind that has them turning down opportunities to avoid ever being in that position. And here is the first thing worth saying plainly. It's not a measure of your ability, not a sign you've nothing worth saying. It's a fear response, and a fear response doesn't care how competent you are.
• 3:14
  That's why it's so maddening. You can know your material insignia. You know, passionately, that this audience is on your side, and none of that knowing reaches the part of you that's convinced you're in danger. You feel the dry mouth, the thumping heart. The mind goes suddenly, horribly blank, and it feels like proof that you can't do this.
• 3:43
  It isn't proof of anything. It's an alarm going off in the wrong place. You're not alone in this. If public speaking frightens you, you're in an enormous company. Generally, most of the room.
• 3:59
  Around half the population say they have some fear of public speaking. Roughly one in seven describe it as an overwhelming fear. It regularly comes out as one of the most common fears people report ahead of things you'd think would frighten us far more, and it cost people. More than half of those with a fear of public speaking say they've avoided applying for certain jobs because of it. Around forty five percent believe it's actively held them back in their career.
• 4:32
  The promotion's not chased. The room's not entered. So if this has quietly shaped your decisions in your life, you're not weak, you're not alone, and you're one of a very large amount, most of whom are hiding just as carefully as you are. So what's happening in the brain? To understand the fear, you have to go back a very, very long way.
• 4:59
  Because your brain is running software written for a completely different world. For most of human history, the group was survival. If the tribe turned on you or cast you out, you didn't last long. So the brain developed a fierce sensitivity to being judged by other people, Standing exposed in front of the group with everyone's eyes on you was genuinely dangerous. Your brain learned to treat it as a threat to your life.
• 5:34
  That wiring is still there. And when you stand up and speak, the amygdala, your brain's threat detection system, the alarm, looks out at all those faces and reaches the ancient conclusion, exposed, being judged, in danger, it fires. And when it fires, it's immediate and physical. Adrenaline floods in. Heart rate spikes.
• 6:04
  Breathing goes shallow. The mouth dries. The stomach churns. Blood calls away from the places it isn't needed. A full fight or flight package for a wedding toast.
• 6:18
  And here's the cool part. In that state, the brain diverts resources away from the prefrontal cortex. The thinking, reasoning, word finding parts of you, the very part you need to speak well goes quiet at exactly the moment you need it most. That's the blank mind. That's why the words vanish.
• 6:43
  It isn't a personal failing. It isn't a personal failing. It's your biology deciding that running is more important than remembering your third slide in the deck. The alarm doesn't check with your rational brain first. It sees the room.
• 7:00
  It decides, and your body obeys all before the sensible part of you gets a word in. So what causes it in the first place? Often, there's a moment underneath it all, a time you dried up or lost your thread, or someone laughed, or a teacher put you on the spot, and it went badly, the brain, in that moment, learned this thing is dangerous, and it fouled it away. It doesn't matter that it was 20 ago. The file is still open.
• 7:36
  Sometimes it watches rather than doing, seeing someone else struggle up there and your brain quietly noting that this is a thing that can go wrong in front of everyone. Fear of judgment sits at the center of most of it. The sense that you're being evaluated, marked, found wanting. That's why mistakes matter so much. Speaking to a friendly team feels different to speaking to senior people or a big client or a room or family at a wedding.
• 8:09
  The higher the perceived judgment, the louder the alarm. And some of us are simply more wired for it, a more sensitive nervous system, a tendency to social anxiety, a habit of seeing yourself as not a natural speaker. None of that makes it fixed. It just means your starting point is a little different from the next person. So what's keeping it going?
• 8:37
  This is the important bit. Because once a fear like this is established, it's very good at keeping itself alive, avoidance is the engine of it. Every time you find a reason not to speak, you pass a presentation to a colleague, you slip out before the toast, you turn down the role that involves pitching, you feel relief. Instant. The dread lifts, and your brain fouls it away.
• 9:06
  Avoiding is working. Avoiding is the right move. Do it again. But every avoidance also whispers something underneath. That really was dangerous, and you were right to run.
• 9:20
  The fear stays fully intact, and it never gets a chance to be proved wrong. Then there are the safety behaviors. The things people do to get through it without really facing it. Reading every word off the page so you never look up, rushing through at double speed so you get it over with, gripping the lectern, avoiding eye contact, keeping the lights low. They take the edge off in the moment, but they keep the message alive.
• 9:52
  I only survived that because I protected myself. The brain never learns it could have been fine, and the anticipation runs the whole show. People with fear just don't suffer on the day. They lose the week before, the sleepless nights, the stomach that turns every time an event comes to mind. The brain has learned to treat the thought of speaking as the threat.
• 10:20
  So the fear is running long before you're anywhere near the stage. Underneath all of it sits a story. I'm just not a speaker. I'm the quiet one. I go to pieces.
• 10:33
  And the more the cycle runs, the more true that story feels. But it isn't a fact about you. It's a pattern, and patterns can change. So what actually helps? Dislute from focus approach doesn't start by shoving you in front of a room to sink or swim.
• 10:55
  Fear under pressure rarely resolves. Mostly, it just gets bigger. It starts somewhere else entirely, and it starts with a question. What would it look like if this fear wasn't running the show? Picture yourself standing up steady, saying what you came to say, and sitting back down, having been fine.
• 11:20
  What would that make possible? The job you'd go for, the toast you'd give without dreading it for a month. The version of you that has a voice in the room, getting clear on that gives the brain a direction to move towards, something to aim not just something to escape. Then there's a mental rehearsal. And this is where hypnotherapy does something genuinely useful.
• 11:48
  In trance, the body drops into a deep, calm relaxation. But the prefrontal cortex, the thinking brain, stays switched on. From that calm place, we rehearse it. We walk through standing up, beginning to speak, feeling steady, being fine over and over while the nervous system stays out of threat mode. And here's why that works.
• 12:18
  The brain doesn't sharply distinguish a vivid rehearsal from a real experience. So every harm, confident run through lays down the pathway for the real thing. You're quietly building the evidence your brain has been missing. The evidence that you can stand there and be alright. We're refiling the memory, moving it out of the danger door where it never belonged, and doing it from a place of safety rather than panic.
• 12:52
  The three pillars do a lot of the lifting too. Positive interaction, arriving early, chatting to a few people before you start, so the room stops being a wall of judges and becomes a set of faces you've already spoken to. Positive action, the movement and the preparation that burns off the energy anxiety and gets you into a doing state rather than a frozen one, and positive thinking, deliberately building the picture of it going well rather than rehearsing the disaster on a loop. One more shift matters. Take your attention off yourself and put it on your message.
• 13:32
  The fear feeds on self focus, on monitoring every wobble in your voice. But you're not there to be judged. You're there to give the room something. Turn the spotlight outwards onto what you've got to say and the people you're saying it to, and there's suddenly a lot less room for the fear. And I'll say this from the other side of it.
• 13:56
  I stand up in front of rooms for a living now, lecturing, training, this podcast, and there's still a flicker before I begin. The flicker never fully leaves, but it stops being fear and starts being readiness. And that changes everything about what you can do with it. Before I close, one thing you can take away today. The next time you feel it start, the racing heart, the dry mouth, the jitters in your hands, I want you to try relabeling it.
• 14:32
  Because here's the thing your brain has got slightly wrong. The racing heart and the surge of adrenaline, they're almost identical to excitement. The same fast heart, the same energy, the same buzz. The only real difference is a word you put on it. So instead of I'm terrified, try telling yourself, I'm ready, or this is my body helping me, not as a trick, but because it's actually true.
• 15:04
  That surge exists to sharpen you, to give you the energy and the focus for something that really matters. You'll find it far easier to move from nervous to excited than from nervous to calm, Because you're working with the energy that's already there rather than fighting it. Same feeling, different meaning. And meaning is something you get a saying. Try it.
• 15:32
  Next time it rises, name it. Ready. Notice what happens. If public speaking has been quietly shrinking your world, the opportunity's passed up, the moment's avoided, I want to say this clearly. You're not a bad speaker.
• 15:50
  You're someone whose ancient alarm system fires in front of a modern audience exactly as it's built to. That's a pattern, and a pattern can change. The brain that learned this fear can learn something different, steadier, calmer, and far more like the person you already are when the pressure's off. Understanding what's going on is where it starts. You've just done that, and quietly, that is a step forward.
• 16:22
  That's it for this one. If it was useful, do hit subscribe if you haven't already. Every episode, one condition, the same honest lens. What's going on? What's keeping it going?
• 16:35
  And what actually helps? There's a lot more to come. And if the fear of public speaking is something you'd like some help with, Inspired To Change has solution focused hypotherapists across The UK, in person and online. Everything's at Inspired To Change blog biz. Have a look at what we do, read our blogs, and book in for a free initial consultation when you're ready.
• 17:00
  See you on the next one.