Coaching practices for Public Speaking Anxiety

Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Public Speaking Anxiety, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.

Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?

• The hardest moments are the joins and the exits
• There’s a big thing coming up
• When I’m nervous I talk fast and high and pile on "um" and "sorry" and "I think maybe"
• Right before I walk into the presentation I’m jittery and small, and I want a quiet minute on my own to physically settle into feeling steady and grounded, so all the prep I did actually shows up instead of getting swallowed by nerves.
• I’m so wound up about nailing this presentation that the pressure to be good is exactly what makes me freeze

Practices that may help

1. Build scripts for situation entry and transitions
   Prepare simple, natural openers and transitions so you’re not improvising from scratch under pressure.
   Overcoming Shyness: Philip Zimbardo’s Framework
2. Apply EFT to specific performance anxiety triggers
   EFT has the strongest self-guided evidence for test anxiety, public speaking, and sports performance stress.
   EFT Tapping: What It Is, How to Do It, and What the Evidence Shows
3. Use voice pacing and tone as accessible, real-time confidence levers
   Speaking slowly, at moderate volume, with deliberate pauses signals confidence to listeners — and partially to yourself.
   Power Posing Revisited
4. Set your posture before high-stakes moments
   Take a private moment to settle into a confident posture before a presentation or hard talk.
   Posture and Confidence, Honestly Explained
5. Use paradoxical intention for performance anxiety
   Before a performance, commit to performing as badly as possible — notice what happens to the anxiety.
   Logotherapy: Paradoxical Intention
6. Write about your worries before a high-stakes performance
   Offload performance anxiety by writing it out in full immediately before the event.
   Choking Under Pressure, Made Practical
7. Use a 30-second micro-grounding version for public settings
   In public or meetings, a single-sense version — three named things you can see — takes 30 seconds and shows nothing.
   The 5-4-3-2-1 Grounding Technique
8. Situational attentional refocusing: shift from self to situation
   In anxiety-provoking situations, actively redirect attention outward — to the task, the other person, the environment.
   Metacognitive Therapy, Made Practical
9. Run the "did it matter?" check 24 hours later
   Before assuming a social blunder is remembered, wait a day and ask if it was ever mentioned.
   The Spotlight Effect: Why You Think Everyone Is Watching
10. Balanced, compassionate self-talk
    Talk to yourself as you would to a friend — accurate and kind, not harsh or falsely cheery.
    The Anxiety Toolkit, Made Practical

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