There is a natural and predictable reaction that most people have to stressful situations, scientists have dubbed this response as the fight or flight response. Meaning that if you’re presented with a stressful situation, or a dangerous situation, your body’s automatic response is to fight that danger or to take flight, to run away from it. For most people, public speaking is not just a stressful situation; it is the most stressful situation that they can think of. In fact, glossophobia, or speech anxiety, is consistently rated as people’s biggest fear. People even rate their fear of public speaking as being greater than their fear of dying. This “fight or flight” response to public speaking situations goes by a particular name in communication studies: communication apprehension. Since communication apprehension is often the most difficult barrier to becoming a great public speaker, it is important that we understand what it is. So, in this lesson we are going to explore the affect that communication apprehension has on the body, and then suggest ways to better manage communication apprehension.
Since communication apprehension is often the most difficult barrier to becoming a great public speaker it’s important that we understand what it is. So in this lesson we are going to explore the effect that communication apprehension has on the body and then suggest ways to better manage communication apprehension. Anyone that has participated in public speaking is likely aware of when they are experiencing communication apprehension, but it is important to realize that this phenomenon is not just happening in one’s head, it affects the entire body.
Mini Glossary
Glossophobia: speech anxiety, or the fear of speaking in public.
Apprehension and the Body
We can now measure very accurately the hormones that are created when you are presented with a potentially dangerous or stressful situation. There are two primary stress hormones: adrenaline and cortisol. It is worth it to think for a second about this as it relates to what we were just talking about with fight-or-flight. When you’re really excited or even a little scared that excitement is your body and getting itself ready for something. Adrenaline increases your blood pressure and your heart rate and makes you more alert generally and is literally preparing your body for a physical event that you might need to do. When you’re in a fight-or-flight response the hormone cortisol does some interesting stuff too. The Los Angeles Times reported in an article titled “Too Stressed to Learn,” that cortisol influences your brain physiology, changing how your brain works or thinks.
It’s kind of crazy when you learn this because cortisol has an effect on the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus which are critical thinking parts of your brain and where learning happens. First, cortisol lowers electrical activity in your brain. Secondly, there’s lower neural regeneration. So, less total brain cells as they’re being remade over and over again. And third, there is a decrease in efficiency. This means that when you’re put into a stressful situation, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, the learning and the critical thinking parts of your brain, are less engaged, there is less electrical activity, less regrowing of new cells, and in general, less efficient. The analytical parts of your brain are inhibited by cortisol and adrenaline because your body, from an evolutionary standpoint, wants you to prepare yourself for some physical action, the fight-or-flight from your threat.
Imagine that we’re walking on a trail through a forest a long time ago and we hear a saber-toothed tiger roar. It’s kind of scary, and immediately your body dumps a bunch of cortisol and adrenaline into your bloodstream. The fight or flight response is happening when we hear a saber-toothed tiger, and we immediately react to it as a threat to us. We have the option to either run away from that tiger or to punch it in the face, or to get our big pointy sticks and chase down that tiger because it’s dangerous to us. If one of our friends didn’t have a stress response, they wouldn’t have a bunch of cortisol or adrenaline in their blood, and they might decide that it was a good idea to find that tiger and pet it. Do you think that would be good for our gene pool for much longer? The answer is probably no. So the release of cortisol and adrenaline is beneficial from an evolutionary standpoint, but there’s a trade-off in stressful situations between getting your body ready for a physical altercation and your ability to critically think.
What’s interesting is that when people are in public speaking situations they tend to react with the same sort of fight-or-flight response as if they were in a dangerous life-or-death situation. This is a little bizarre considering that they are not under the same threat as if they were confronted with a saber-toothed tiger, but it’s the same fight-or-flight response, the same hormones. As far as your body and brain are concerned, public speaking is a threatening situation.
Managing Communication Apprehension
There are many great suggestions for the ways that you could deal with communication apprehension. Social psychologist and Harvard professor, Amy Cuddy, measures how nonverbal communication can lower cortisol and other stress hormones. Cuddy suggests things called power poses. A power pose is a way that you would stand and/or hold your body if it were in a powerful situation. In fact, Cuddy even makes connections between humans and animals doing power poses to display pride or dominance. What is really cool is that we can measure how these power poses literally change the physiology of our brain. By proactively engaging in power poses, you’re literally changing, with training, conditioning and disciplining the way that your physiology and your brain is influenced and responds to stress. It’s fascinating to think that simple exercises can be so powerful and meaningful. Cuddy further explains that the mind-body connection is a two-way street. Your body can control your mind just as your mind controls your body
Another suggestion comes from health psychologist and Stanford professor Kelly McGonigal. Her suggestion is that one might better deal with stress if they were simply to perceive it differently. Specifically, that stressful situations are not necessarily negative to our health. Our perception matters when considering how stress influences our health and learning to overcome a stressful situation can actually add years to your life. It’s not that stress is removed from your life, but rather that you can work better with stress. You learn important skills to be able to address those problems in the future, but they have a marked difference in people’s life spans based on simply how people have learned to deal with stressful situations. McGonigal’s research highlights that oxytocin is released when we make a connection with other people who can support us while we are in stressful situations. The support that this community provides matters. Oxytocin is yet another hormone, and it is sometimes called the bonding hormone, or the love hormone, because it’s responsible for feeling a sense of community. In some way, it helps to balance all of the distracting effects of cortisol. So when you are in a stressful situation, reach out to your friends, classmates, family, etc. Think of people who have been through similar situations and/or people who can help you figure out solutions to the things you’re struggling with.
Communication apprehension is not just your mind playing tricks on you. There are significant physiological factors at work when anyone experiences speech anxiety. Your body is releasing hormones whether you like it or not, and those hormones have a measurable effect on your mood and cognitive abilities. Fortunately, there are methods that deal with this and even overcome those barriers to performing in front of an audience. Physically manipulating your body into power poses and mentally perceiving stress as beneficial have shown to be effective in ways to manage communication apprehension. Consider utilizing these strategies the next time cortisol and adrenaline start coursing through your body.
