73: Speaking of Fear

I recently traveled by plane from Northern California to Grand Rapids, Michigan. I had signed up, a few years ago, to attend a 4-day Speaker Training Intensive. I knew we would be learning about speaking on stage, writing our speech, and speaking on a large stage to an audience while being videotaped. 

I expected I would experience an interesting trip, learn lots of usable information about speaking and speak on stage. No big deal. 

What I did not expect was to feel a level of fear that felt like it was increasing and could stop me from getting on the stage. 

Today on the Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast we are discussing fear and anxiety. You will learn the step-by-step method I used to lower my anxiety and focus on my Speaker Training Intensive. 

Join us in this Feed Your Soul with Kim Podcast where we discuss:

• How my experience on stage can help you reduce your fears.
• 10 specific ways to lower anxiety and fear.
• How to make this your go-to strategy when you feel afraid.

 Please note, if you have a high level of anxiety, fear, and panic- it can be helpful to seek out a licensed psychotherapist. Check your local listings for a therapist near you. 

Watch my speaker video:
Want to see the video that I talk about in this podcast?
Watch the video from this Speaker Training here. 

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Kim McLaughlin, MA

Kim McLaughlin is a psychotherapist. coach, speaker, and author. She helps people who feel frustrated overwhelmed and overloaded, and it shows up in overeating. She has a Master of Arts Degree in Clinical Psychology. Kim is a certified Intuitive Eating Counselor, and she assists people to gain peace with food. 

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Transcript

Kim McLaughlin: 0:01

Welcome to the feed your soul with Kim Podcast. I'm Kim McLaughlin your host and today we are talking about speaking of fear. I recently traveled from Northern California to Grand Rapids, Michigan, to attend a four day speaker training intensive conference, I was challenged with fear and whether I was going to be able to get up on stage. Today on the podcast, you're going to learn how my experience on stage can help you reduce your fears, 10 specific ways to lower anxiety and fear and how to make this your go to strategy when you're feeling anxious. Let's get started. Welcome to the podcast, I am so glad that you're here. I know that it's not an accident that you're here and that this is the perfect subject that you all need to hear. And today we're talking about speaking of fear. And sometimes people think that sense I am a public speaker, I speak on Instagram and Facebook, I do webinars, I'm on podcasts, that I don't get fear. But that's just not true. And I have a story of what happened recently and what I did. And I think it will be a great opportunity for you to get in touch with your fear and anxieties. And what you might do with that. I had this experience recently where I traveled by plane from Northern California to Grand Rapids, Michigan, it was about a five or six hour flight. And I had to transfer over a couple of times, that's not a big deal. I've done that before. I had signed up for this four day speaker training intensive. It was this kind of training where for four days from morning till night, you learned about speaking on stage, you wrote your speech, you spoke every day, to a smaller audience. And then in preparation for the end of the week, where you spoke on a large stage while being videotaped. And I was surprised that my fear started to show up as I started the travel part of this experience. And so I just noticed this anxiety and fear building up as I was traveling, and as I was thinking about the rest of the week, and I got to the hotel a day early. So I had a day in between the travel day and starting the conference. And I wanted to get situated and get food and get ready for the week that we were going to have. I was surprised that as the morning that I woke up there in Grand Rapids, I started to feel really fearful. And I started to think about the conference. And I was scared of speaking on stage and fearful of what people would think and really having a lot of negative thoughts going on in my head. And what I started to notice was, the more I started to think about it more and ruminate on how scared I was how fearful I was, the less I wanted to get out of bed. And the less I wanted to go do anything. And it also made me wonder why was I there? And did I really want to do this. I found that so fascinating. Because this really had been a bucket list kind of thing that I wanted, I wanted to do a large speaking conference where I spoke on stage that was really something that I wanted, I want to get better at and the only way to get better at it is by practicing it. What I noticed is that my anxiety was moving from a one which I like talking about any feelings on a one to 10 scale one meaning it pretty much doesn't exist to attend means it's really out of control. Five is you could kind of go either way. So I noticed in the morning, in between the day that I traveled and the day that we started the conference, the anxiety was moving from one to two to three to four to five to six. The more I started to think about how scared I was and really wondering why in the heck did I make this long trip? Why did I pay money for this conference? Why in the heck do I really want to get up and speak on stage and I was sick surprised at how fast and furious those thoughts came on. I know being a psychotherapist by training that I know about fears, anxiety and panic. And I've seen it happen in my clients and I help them through it. And it's always interesting when it shows up for me because I then have to practice everything that I talk about with my clients. And it became clear to me that I knew I needed to really lower my fear before it turned into panic and panic is that feeling where you feel shortness of breath out of control, really feeling a feeling of out of control. And I knew that if I allowed this fear to keep moving up from one to 10, that that would be the experience for me. And then I would be really unsuccessful at speaking on stage. And I would really sabotage this whole experience. And I didn't want to do that. I what I did when I was laying in bed starting to feel these, this fear building and building and building, I I really started with the one of my tried and true techniques. One of the first ones is to notice and name the fear. And I remember lying there thinking, okay, Kim, what's going on, you're feeling more fear, you're, you're increasing into that kind of panic stage, what is going on, and I had to really name the feeling. And that was the first part of me freeing myself from this feeling of overwhelming fear and anxiety is starting with naming the feeling. And I could acknowledge that this fear and anxiety were really building because I was fearful of speaking on stage in front of people I didn't know being videotaped. I really was connecting with the fear of being judged, and the fear of people looking at me and maybe not liking what I was saying or not liking me, I noticed that feeling. I also noticed the fear of being out of my comfort zone of being in this new city and being in this hotel, practicing speaking with people that I don't know. And knowing that I would have to be in the conference from nine in the morning till nine at night really made me feel very far out of my comfort zone. I guys, this is Kim and I want to let you know that the emotional eating solutions eight week course is open now you can find it on my website at feed your soul unlimited.com. Go to the work with Kim tab and click on that. This is the time to get peace with food. And I know this course will help you. You also can find the link in the show notes to the emotional eating solutions, eight week self study course. My second tried and true techniques that I used in this in this experience was I decided to move through the fear. I decided that since I had signed up paid for this trip paid for the conference that I was going to take full advantage I said earlier that I had written on my bucket list that I wanted to attend an in person speaker training and learn all the ins and outs of speaking. And I decided that I had to move through this fear in order to meet my goal, which was speaking on stage. And I acknowledged that yes, it's fearful. Yes, most people think this is fearful and, and it was still the goal of what I wanted to do. That hadn't changed even though I was feeling more of this increasing fear. So the techniques, I noticed the name the fear, I decided to move through the fear. And the third thing I did that worked really, really, really well is I told myself, it was okay to not want to stay. I told myself, I could leave, I had an out. If I wanted to go, I could go. But I decided that if I was going to leave, if I was going to fly back home, I need to do it before the conference started. I was either going to be all in or all out. I knew that if I spent the week at the training not being fully present and fully engaged, then it wasn't going to work. So I should just go home. That giving myself the out worked really well because then I could make a commitment one way or the other. And so the fourth tried and true technique was once I moved through the fear, I could be all in giving myself that permission to leave took the pressure off. And I could then think about was this really what I wanted to do was this really going to be what I thought it was going to be, and give me the learning that I wanted. It's interesting to me about this fear about speaking most everybody tells me that, you know, their biggest fear is getting up on stage. And I thought about that, about how this just is a big fear for people. And I acknowledge that to myself that I had this fear, it was a big fear. And I could not do the thing that was really scaring me that was okay, if I decided not to do it. The way that I work through that fear also was getting up and moving around. So I find that if I laid still or laying in bed or sat in a chair, I was really thinking too much. And I needed to get up and move my body. I needed to get up and move around. I didn't know where I was going to go or what I was going to do. But I knew that I had to get up, move around, because that would stop a lot of that negativity in my head. The negativity that I can't do this, I'm not good enough. This will never work. Why am I really here, I could get that out of my head. If I started to move around. I also found my tried and true technique of taking time to center myself as awesome as possible was really, really helpful. I started that day of having quiet time really centering myself and being in my breath. And having time to get centered. I talk about that a lot on this podcast about coming back to the breath to when all else fails, when you're feeling anxious is take a deep breath. Breathe in and breathe out. What happens when we breathe in and out is we come back into our body. And out of that chatter in our head. That works for me really well. And I actually use that throughout the week when any time when I was in the speaker training or getting ready to go speak on stage, I would get quiet in my body, take a deep breath, take time to get centered. And then I could come back and do what I wanted to do. It was really a way of it felt like releasing that anxiety from out of my body. So that's another tried and true technique that I find super helpful. As I was thinking about this talk, talking to you on this podcast about what worked that week to really lessen my anxiety, I realized that one of the things that really worked for me was eating nourishing food. And I don't think I would normally put that down as something that would call my anxiety. But I realized that if I knew that I had food that was going to be nourishing to my body and make my body feel good. I would be at my optimal performing capacity. And then I would literally come to the stage in a better place. So eating nourishing food was one technique that I didn't realize actually works with my anxiety but it actually did. What happened for me was that that morning when I got up, I was in this new city, I decided to take a walk to Trader Joe's which is actually just down the street. And I bought food for the week for me to have in my hotel room and to take to the speaker conference. Since it was a conference from nine in the morning until nine at night. I was concerned about going out and eating and eating food that just wasn't my normal food. It wasn't bad. I didn't wasn't gonna have bad food or anything like that. It was just not my normal food. And I knew that I wanted to have my tummy feel good and have the energy to do the things that I need to do. I know that if I eat food sometimes that don't doesn't feel good in my stomach that actually can can exacerbate any kind of anxiety. So eating nourishing food was was a real big win for me. The other thing I realized that I never thought of as being connected to anxiety was to drink lots of water. What I was doing was I I like to drink coffee and I would notice that when I would have coffee in the morning during this conference, I would start feeling that anxiety He's starting to increase mid morning. And I realized that the caffeine was making me feel more nervous. We know that caffeine increases anxiety, right or you know, you know kind of physical heart raise, kind of jitteriness, it can increase any of that. And I was already prone that week to anxiety. So I had more than anxiety coming up after I was having coffee in the morning. So what I did was I stopped having as much coffee, and I had more water, and I added lots of water, I made it really a conscious thing, actually, one of my wins that I like to do when my tummy is feeling because I carry anxiety, I can carry it in a lot of places. But one of the places I carry it is in my stomach where my stomach just feels butterflies and fluttery. And what helps me is warm water, just warm, plain water. And I drank that throughout the day. And that was a game changer for me that made my body feel really good. Because anxiety is really a physical, there's a lot of mental with it, too, that we just talked about earlier. But there's a lot of physical that goes with it, that I find I need to move that anxiety out of my body. And so taking a walk, eating nourishing food, drinking water, those are things that really helped my body move through the anxiety. The ninth tried and true techniques that I used is connected to thoughts. And you could hear me talking earlier, when I talked about the thoughts that were in my head, the thoughts that were really bothering me, and they were negative statements to myself about how I was not going to be successful and that people weren't going to like me, and they weren't going to like my talk on and on and on and on. And what I did was I asked myself, is this true? These things that you're thinking, Kim, are they true? And that gave me a chance to re imagine what I thought about this whole thing. And it helped me move through these feelings or these thoughts in a way that wasn't a kind of bulldozing through it and just saying I need to stop, I need to get these thoughts gone. It was more of a Okay, Cam. So you're thinking that you're not a good speaker? Is that really true? You're thinking that people aren't gonna like you? Is that really true? Right? I asked myself those things. And then I could of course say, No, those things aren't true. None of those things are true. And I could then move through that anxiety in terms of the the mental ability or the the mental things that were showing up because I knew that if those thoughts continued, I wouldn't do good on stage. And remember, my whole idea was I wanted to get on stage, I wanted to learn a lot. And those negative thoughts, were not going to help me do a good job on stage. And, and so I needed to help move them out of my body and out of my head. The last thing I have that I did that, once again, I would not have thought about it for anxiety and fear. But it certainly did work well. It's another part of the physicalness of of the anxiety is getting sleep and rest. I was at a four day conference in New City I had been traveling across the country to get there I was meeting new people and staying in a new place. So I really focused on making sure I got good sleep and rest. This was going to be critical if I was going to be on my A game. And it really worked. I didn't go out at night, I made sure to go back to my room I focused on once again on eating that nourishing food and having things in my body that really helped me feel settled and balanced throughout the day, which also helped me feel settled and balanced at nighttime. This was extraordinary. And I want to let you know that those were the things those those 10 things were were critical for me and in the end on. On Friday of the conference. I shot my video I felt victorious. I felt so satisfied and happy with myself and happy with everybody else because everybody did such a good job and I realized how much using these 10 tools these 10 Tried and true techniques. Really were a game changer for me to get me to that end goal. While walking through the anxiety, I wonder, what is your fear? And is there a fear that's maybe stopping you from moving forward. And I want you to consider these 10 techniques, these 10 Tried and true techniques that I did myself recently, and seeing whether they can work for you, you don't have to do something as big as speaking on stage. That's just my example of how I used all these techniques, but something that is your scary thing, what is that and see what techniques you can use in order to help lessen that anxiety and lessen that fear. If you're having extreme anxiety or panic or fear, I do recommend you see a psychotherapist there are lots of psychotherapist in in all the areas wherever you live, just look up psychotherapist, licensed psychotherapist on Google and see who's local to you and get that help if if it feels like it's just too much for you to manage. Because there are techniques and skills that you can do and ways to move through that anxiety. And a trusted, licensed professional can really help you with that if it feels like it's more than what can be managed by what I was just talking about. I really hope you try these techniques. I hope you do them. I am putting the link to my talk in the show notes. So I would encourage you to to watch my video. I feel very proud of it. It took a lot to get that video up for me as you can tell by by this podcast and by all the fear and anxiety and the leading up to all the tips and techniques that I'm talking about. So I hope this was helpful for you and that you were able to move through some anxiety that you have. I'd love for you to send me a message at info at feed your soul unlimited.com or leave a review in the show notes and let us know what you think and what you're going to do differently. I look forward to seeing you next time on the podcast. Bye now. Thank you for joining us on the feed your soul with Kim podcast. We come to you every Monday with fresh new ideas to help you end emotional eating and put food in its proper place as nourishment. Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and review it and let us know what you think. Thank you for joining us