Social Anxiety Help: Losing your breath because of the fear of public speaking

If you need social anxiety help with the specific social anxiety symptom of feeling that you cannot finish your sentences due to losing your breath when put in the spot-light to talk, you’re in luck.  You just found one of two places on the internet where the solution is available. 

I’ll cut straight to the chase.  You probably already know that the symptom is a reaction to excessive adrenaline, but it’s rare enough that few “experts” on the fear of public speaking really know what you’re talking about when you explain the symptom.  When your body goes into the fight or flight mode, you instinctively start to breath faster, but you also hold a pocket of high pressure air at the top of your lungs.  That pocket of air causes you to feel like you can’t breathe or can’t finish a normal-length sentence.   

Right before you begin to say the first sentence of your speech or presentation, breathe out about a quarter of the way to relax your lungs into a more natural speaking state.  Think of your lungs like a balloon.  You want to be able to use the full capacity of the balloon to speak long sentences.  You are holding your breath and feeling the urge to breath faster at the same time, which creates the problem you have with breathing during public speaking.  It’s like you are starting with a balloon that is at full capacity and you are trying to take another in-breathe after letting out only 10% of the full capacity. 

The other thing you have to do besides breathing out before speaking is to prepare during the five minutes preceding your presentation.  Prepare by breathing out all the way (slowly to a count of seven or eight seconds) and then breathing in slowly to a count of seven seconds.  This controls the fight or flight reaction, effectively reducing the impulse to over-breathe from panic or anxiety about being in the spotlight.  Don’t take huge breaths in, instead, focus more on blowing your air all the way out. 

This kind of slow diaphragmatic breathing also innervates the vagus nerve, with slows down your heart-rate.  If that’s not the most valuable piece of information you’ve ever found on the internet, then you may think you’ve got me beat, but you don’t.  The most valuable information on the internet for social anxiety sufferers is contained within the Social Anxiety Secrets System available only to those who are willing to make a small payment in exchange for the compilation of the most valuable secrets out there.  Get your copy within five minutes by learning more about the system here. 

Be Courageous!

Dr. Todd Snyder