My stutter doesn’t usually affect my day to day life anymore and whenever I talk to somebody about it they say that they wouldn’t have even known I had a stutter if I didn’t tell them. I don’t worry about it at all when I’m entering a social situation. However presentations have always, always been the bane of my existence in school and I have one on Wednesday. This is the first time I’ve presented anything in over a year and the last 3 or so times I presented something it was in front of like 5-8 people and this is going to be around 45 students and 10 professors which will be far and away the largest audience that I will have had during presentations.
I’ve always been nervous about them but during my childhood and throughout high school I usually got through them fine. Even in my senior year of high school I got pretty good at it and speaking out in front of the class to the point where I would wing presentations in English class without any nerves. I don’t know what happened but something switched in my first year of undergrad. I had 2 presentations in the first semester and one went fine but in another individual presentation I got up on stage, got super flustered, and told the professor in front of everyone that I couldn’t do it and wanted to do it in front of him. I started the introduction just fine and probably even sounded confident then just froze. That was over 8 years ago and I still think about it every time I have a presentation.
I can’t have that happen again, especially not this time. This presentation is in front of my cohort that I’ll be stuck with for the next year and a half along with professors from my faculty. I have three partners in this project and it would be extra humiliating to have their grades suffer because of me. In the end part of the reason why I came to this program (it’s a masters degree in psychology) was to get out of my comfort zone and face my fears but this is the one thing that just completely alludes me even though I’ll only be talking for 5-6 minutes.
I hate feeling this way. I really don’t miss this feeling.
Does anyone have anything to say that could help calm my nerves or help me succeed?
3 comments
Yes. You can’t banish the feeling of nervousness or nervous tension. But you CAN reframe what the feeling means. So recognize your tension/nervousness, and inform your brain that it is excitement/ENTHUSIASM for this awesome presentation you’re going to give. Visualize your future self giving a great presentation.
Your brain doesn’t necessarily know what bodily signals mean, so TELL your brain what you want it to be.
Just remember…the crowd is on your side. They want you to do well. They are rooting for you. They would love to hear anything you have to say. Really, you are in front of friends. So if you are nervous, laugh about it and joke about it…they will laugh with you
I use to find some one who reminded me of me in the crowd and imagine I was practicing the lecture to my self. seeing some one my glasses or hair .
I spend my nervous energy worring were they actually me ?
I always thanked them after or complimented them