What Phobia Is Stage Fright

Coping With Stage Fright

Despite the fact that your performance may not be affected, it is important to find healthy ways of coping with stage fright. Many performers turn to self-medication, with alcohol or drugs, in an effort to dull the pain. This is never a good choice for anyone;because it can turn into a dangerous cycle and possible addiction for those who perform regularly.

Stop Worrying About Your Nervousness

So, theres no point worrying about whether your listeners will notice your nervousness, trembling, etc. they normally wouldnt. Even if they are aware that youre slightly nervous, nobody takes it seriously. For all this, you dont need to excuse yourself for being nervous at the beginning of your presentation.

Fear Of Appearing Nervous In Front Of The Audience

This is one of the most important points I need to make. Even seasoned performers and successful entrepreneurs get nervous before going in front of their people. Its a natural, normal part of being human.

Is stage fright visible to everyone?

It is important to understand that you may benefit from knowing that it is usually not very visible. This means that your audience cannot usually tell how nervous you are.

Many people are able to overcome their fear by realizing that as long as they appear confident, the audience will assume they know what they are talking about. And that confidence will help you give a powerful presentation.

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When Things Go Wrong

Sooner or later, something will go wrong. Your projector or microphone might stop working. If you already know your content, then chances are that this wont faze you as much. If, for instance, your microphone stops working, dont stress over it, carry on with a louder voice.;Chances are the technical people are already stressing and working to sort the problem out, so you getting worried over the same issue wont help.

How Intended Solutions Backfire

Stage fright is like being heckled mercilessly during your performance, and getting into an argument with the heckler, except that it’s your own mind doing the heckling. You get so involved in your internal struggle that you don’t get involved with the actual performance.

Most people with performance anxiety get tricked into focusing on themselves, struggling against anxiety in a vain effort to get rid of it. To illustrate this point, here’s an excerpt from a consumer review I saw on amazon.com which reviewed a book about the fear of public speaking.

The reviewer wrote that the tips in the book aren’t helpful because

…the tips actually are for speakers who are ALREADY fearless but just need to improve their speech skills: For example: Get immediate response from audience. You know, the last thing I want to do in a presentation is further prolong it by asking what they think of it. My plain goal is just to complete a mediocre if dull presentation WITHOUT anxiety, not get responses from my audience and so forth.

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You Will Learn How To Overcome Stage Fright At Ktva

The #1 solution to overcoming stage fright is to BE GREAT at what you do, you need to master your craft. Here at Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy we provide a safe and encouraging environment in which you will become a monster vocalist.

We take YOUR singing very seriously and we will teach you how to master your craft. It is one of those things that takes time to conquer, but if you stick at it properly and diligently, you WILL get there!

When you enroll in KTVA, you will have taken your first step in overcoming stage fright. You will be enrolled in the most powerful and effective professional vocal school in the world, Ken Tamplin and your community of fellow KTVA vocalists will see to it that you win!

For more KTVA information on how to overcome stage fright, please check out the KTVA forum, and if you are already enrolled, you will have access to the KTVA webinar video on How To Overcome Stage Fright.I myself have over 30+ years of experience singing in front of people and I will show you how to do it with confidence AND have fun with it. Which is why you want to sing in the first placeto have fun!

People With Less Education Are More Likely To Suffer From Stage Fright

There have also been many correlations that suggest that people with less education are more likely to suffer from stage fright. Gallups survey revealed that 54% of people who did not have higher education were more likely to suffer from fear of public speaking. And those who did go on to pursue higher education only had a 24% chance.

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Specific Or Simple Phobias

Specific or simple phobias centre around a particular object, animal, situation or activity.

They often develop during childhood or adolescence and may become less severe as you get older.

Common examples of simple phobias;include:

• animal phobias ;such as dogs, spiders, snakes or rodents
• environmental phobias;;such as heights, deep water and germs
• situational phobias;;such as visiting;the dentist or flying
• bodily phobias ;such as blood, vomit or having injections
• sexual phobias ;such as performance anxiety or the fear of getting a;sexually transmitted infection

Overall Numbers For The Usa:

1- 7% of Americans fear public speaking

2- 6% of male Americans have speaking anxiety

3- 8% of female Americans have speaking anxiety

7% of the US population is a big number; thats about 27 million Americans!

***;Not all the stats on public speaking and social anxiety vary;for many reasons, I am presenting conservative numbers for reference.

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What Causes Phobias

Phobias do not have a single cause, but there are a number of associated factors.

For example:

• a phobia may be associated with a particular incident or trauma
• a phobia may be;a learned response that a person develops early in life from a parent or sibling
• genetics may play a role there’s evidence to suggest that some people are born with a tendency to be more anxious than others

How Common Is It

Social anxiety is very common, with one in eight suffering from it. It can significantly reduce the quality of life, preventing building new relationships and negatively impacting studies and work.

As you can see, it is quite common; ;its considered one of the most common psychiatric disorders in every three people. The results of different studies vary in a range from 1.5 to 13%. According to population surveys, 50-70% of women suffer from social phobia, but most men ask for professional help.

Ruscio, Brown, Chiu, Sareen, Stein & Kessler conducted a survey in the US in 2001-2003 involving 9,282 people. The study revealed that social anxiety disorder is quite common, but also undertreated, which results in significant functional impairment. According to the study, the stage fear or the fear of speaking in front of others is the worst of the remaining social fears.

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Why Do People Struggle With Public Speaking

When individuals are scared of public speaking, their fear arouses the autonomic nervous system, triggering a fight-flight-or-freeze reaction. In addition, false beliefs about public speaking and negative thoughts about oneself as a speaker can lead to poor performance. Situational factorslike a new location or different audiencecan also be detrimental. And the speakers confidence in their skill level can play a key role how well they perform.

More Glossophobia And Speaking Fear Statistics

With Glossophobia or fear of public speaking as a major part of SAD, we can infer more stats about the implication for the sufferers. Here are few.

According to a publication by Columbia University, social phobia has a dampening effect on several aspects of career and life.

Social phobia has a;10% impairmenton your wages;. ;And a ;10% impairment on your graduation rate from college; and a;15% impairment on your ability to obtain a;managerial and leadership positions;at your company;. If you have SAD, its holding you back, and it does not have to.

Because public speaking fear is a large subset of social phobia, we can use the same numbers to approximate the negative impact of public speaking anxiety on individuals.

I suffered from social phobia and public speaking anxiety for most of my life. I struggled with it and found a way out. I know you can too. It saddens me most when I look at the research and see that only 8% of people suffering from social anxiety or public speaking fear seek professional help.

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Stage Fright Decreases With Age

According to my fear of public speaking research conducted in 2013 47.3% of baby boomers suffers from an average or a above average level of glossophobia. Those percentages are significantly higher for Generations X and Millenials . Have a look at the table and chart below.

Table 1: Stage fright levels among different generations

Use Visualization To Overcome Stage Fright

Visualization can help reduce stage phobia and stage fright. By visualising your performance in a calm environnement, you give yourself a chance to relax and enjoy your performance.

When you have stage phobia or performance anxiety, simply thinking about your performance can make you feel nervous. By relaxing deeply and putting yourself in a state of inner calm, you will be able to visualize your performance without anxiety. So you will dissociate the feeling of anxiety fromm your performance, and associate a positive feeling instead.

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Why Do People Feel Compelled To Perform In Spite Of Stage Fright

It can be extremely difficult for nonperformers to fathom why anyone would choose a career or hobby that causes such obvious distress. If you suffer from stage fright, you have probably dealt with endless questions from family and friends as to why you put yourself through the torment.

The answer is simple. Performing is in the blood. Most performers cannot imagine not performing, as it is what they feel they were born to do. The love of the work is powerful enough to overcome the lack of stability, the endless rejections, and the early morning auditions. Stage fright is just another obstacle that must be handled in the pursuit of the dream.

Why Do I Have Stage Fright Or Stage Phobia

There is 2 aspects of performance :

1. The activity itself : This is what you do, and probably enjoy doing. Thats when youre acting and having fun. Thats the activity you can accomplish for fun.

2. The consequences of the activity on you and people around you : booking or suceeding in a scene, receiving positive or negative feedbacks, etc

You might be surprised to learn that you can induce performance anxiety in a child by giving him compliments on something he enjoyed doing. This is because you change the reward from internal, the pleasure and enjoyment, to external, the compliment. Thats where stage phobia and stage fright begins : instead of looking for an internal satisfaction like your sensations, youre looking for an external satisfaction.

I have stage fright when i focus more on what others think of my performance rather than my performance itself.

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It Can Grip An Actor Of Fifty Years Experience As Easily As A First

stage fright THE STRANGEST PHOBIA

It can grip an actor of fifty years experience as easily as a first-time TV panelist. Its harder to cure than the common coldand just about as common

GARGARA MOON

There is no misery quite like stage fright except perhaps seasickness, which is also a circumstantial affliction that can make a normal, healthy person wish he could die immediately.

The occasion of stage fright, for most people, is the waiting period just before performance and, they feel, judgment.

Its symptoms are a stirring in the pit of the stomach, a taut whine along the nerves, palsy, cold sweats, nausea, breathlessness, a parched aching throat, smarting eyeballs and that buzz of bright, terrible unreality that usually comes with fever, or with looking into a childs three-dimensional stereoscope. All this is accompanied by emotions of wretchedness and apprehension.

Considering the number of performers who arc prey to the malady it’s a wonder that show business has managed to survive at all.

Other performers tremble only under the stress of an unfamiliar situation. The beautiful, inscrutable Swede, Greta Garbo, was so nervous on starting her first German film that her cheek twitched uncontrollably and all the close-ups had to be reshot. Comedian Charlie Chaplin, aghast at the

prospect of his first radio audience, roamed the studio muttering over and over, Tw-enty million people. Twenty million people.

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Van Cliburn prays

How Serious Is Stage Fright As A Health Disorder

Generally, stage fright is not hazardous for your health. However, it can be damaging to your career goals, especially if you work in a position where you are required to speak in front of others. It may become more hazardous to your health if it causes you to have full-blown panic attacks.

Recommended books

If you are someone that experiences full-blown panic attacks, it important to note that this condition is more severe than average speech anxiety-related problems. And if you think you are experiencing panic attacks, talk to your doctor.

Panic attacks are typically much more severe than common stage fright symptoms and therefore may require long-term medical treatment and talk therapy.

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Exercises To Help You Relax And Control Your Breathing

Relaxation and breathing techniques are useful when trying to calm your nerves before speaking in public. When we are nervous, we tend to talk quickly and only take short, shallow breaths, causing our lungs to only partially fill. This reduces our vocal range and makes us sound nervous. Therefore slowing down our breathing and learning to relax are very important.

Here are some exercises from the British Council on overcoming your fear of public speaking.

Exercise 1 â Learning to relax

Find a comfortable place and lie on the floor. Close your eyes and concentrate on relaxing every part of your body, starting with your feet and legs and working upwards to your shoulders, neck and head. Now bring your attention to your breathing. To begin with, just be aware of breathing in and out.

Now try to imagine a place that you can associate with calmness. Picture this place and hear the sounds, smell the smells.

Once you have become familiar with recalling this special place, it can be somewhere to go whenever you are feeling nervous â such as just before you go on stage to make a speech.

Learning to relax takes time but it will really help, especially if you do this exercise regularly. After a while, you’ll be able to recall the feelings of relaxation anywhere.

Exercise 2 â Cantering yourself

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, your hands hanging loose, shoulders down and head relaxed on your neck.

Exercise 3 â Get to know your space

What Is Social Anxiety Disorder

We should start with what is the difference between social anxiety disorder and social phobia. In fact, theres no difference other than the use of the term social anxiety disorder today, while the term social phobia was used mainly until the mid-1990s.

• The term social phobia was used mainly to describe a diagnosis where a person was extremely awkward or afraid of performing in front of others.
• In the mid-1990s, it was decided that the term social anxiety disorder is more appropriate as it describes the diagnosis of an individual who feels awkward in a variety of social situations.

SAD is characterized by a strong fear of the situations where, for some reason, it is necessary to stay in the spotlight. The individual is anxious about a mere thought of saying or doing something that could humiliate or embarrass them. Such individuals are characterized as perceiving things from the inside, from the point of view of other people.

For example, a person is afraid of appearing as stupid, so they are imagining that everyone around them thinks they are stupid. These moments can be very brief but awaken very strong feelings.

Therefore, SAD means constant fear of embarrassment or humiliation in which sufferers avoid attending events they believe can be stressful.

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Avoid Or Limit Caffeine & Other Mood

You may assume that a cup of coffee will perk you up. Or, an alcoholic drink may tempt you to help take the edge off.

Be careful with these habits- any mood-altering substance can aggravate your nerves and actually worsen your anxiety. If you feel nervous, its best to avoid anything that could disrupt your headspace. That said, in most cases, its important to try to eat something . A healthy snack or meal will provide you with the energy you need to perform.

Is Stage Fright A Form Of Anxiety

Stage fright, also known as performance anxiety, is generally considered a subtype of social anxiety;because it involves fear of social situations. However, people who have stage fright do not necessarily have trouble with other common types of social anxiety, like meeting new people or eating in public.

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So What Are The Public Speaking Fear Stats Then:

Public speaking is the largest form of social anxiety.;Faravelli et al. found that 89.4% of patients with social anxiety disorder had a fear of public speaking.

Knowing this, we can adjust our numbers for public speaking fear accordingly

Adjusted public fear stats for the USA

Male: 6%

Adjusted public fear stats for Sweden

Male: 11 %Total: 13.5%