Emotional stress, otherwise called excitement, anxiety, nervousness in a person, always occurs when leaving the comfort zone. The indicated area, within which the individual is in a harmonious mental balance, encompasses actions brought to automatism or delivering sincere pleasure. Any violation of this framework will be associated with a feeling of inconvenience, unnaturalness of the situation and, as a result, with excitement. But are there any real ways to overcome the excitement and how to apply them in practice?
The excitement algorithm. Low bar factor
In order for a person to feel the excitement, a connection between two obligatory factors of the same significance must arise and signify in his mind.
The first factor is the prospect of failure, the fear of not coping with the task, or even the belief that any attempts to take the heights are doomed to failure in advance. This sensation arises with a low assessment of one’s own chances and, as a rule, with an instantly conducted comparative characteristic between themselves and other people who have no problems with taking this bar.
The excitement algorithm. Impact factor
The second factor is an assessment of the consequences of the obstacle. Seeing an obstacle ahead of him, the individual unconsciously builds a chain of events in which he brings together his capabilities and the complexity of the task. The more important the task is for him, the more unfavorable the last link of this chain looks like - the outcome of the whole operation.
It is noted that the excitement algorithm does not change even if a person has repeatedly had experience in overcoming the promising height, however, factor No. 2 is prevailing here. For example, a well-known fashion model, going out onto the catwalk, will be more afraid of the possible consequences of a defile - falling, unsuccessfully taken from the main camera - than the very fact of walking around the stage. But is it possible to overcome the excitement and how to do it?
Physiology of Unrest
Driven into the framework of social conventions, the human person actually lost the ability to adequately respond to the mechanism of fear, as primitive ancestors did. Excessive excitement, like thousands of years ago, stimulates the individual's desire to respond to danger in two ways: by attacking a potential enemy or by hiding from the threat.
The moment of acute emotional stress in a living creature is always associated with the physiological reaction of the body, expressed by the injection of hormones into the blood: adrenaline, corticoliberin, testosterone, etc. These hormones are responsible for the natural desire to eliminate the danger in one of the above ways.
But man, after all, is a rational being who has learned in the process of evolution to suppress base reactions in himself. Therefore, the question of how to overcome excitement from a psychological point of view has long moved away from the level of the conditioned reflex. But physiology remained in the trembling of the limbs familiar to each of us before the crucial moment, in nervous blinking, in the clenching of teeth, fists and a characteristic chill on the spine.
Why is this happening?
A huge percentage of exciting events occur at the moments of a person's public separation from the crowd with a focus on him. Each of us is faced with such a situation, at least once, and many are familiar with this feeling of constraint and internal panic, which encompasses, at a crucial moment, both body and consciousness. What are the causes of this phenomenon:
- falsely high significance attached to the event;
- disappointing episodes from past experience;
- misconception regarding the hostility of the public;
- subconscious fear not to convey to the listener the essence of the information, to be boring, banal, inexpressive lecturer;
- fear of being inaccurate, confusing important data, or even forgetting the right words, making yourself a laughing stock;
- sociophobia, as a constant factor - the psychological fear of people.
How to overcome the excitement before speaking in public can be figured out only by highlighting the true causes of the origin of fear, and for this you will have to survive at least one episode of a public presentation. By mistake, he will try to simultaneously influence all components of fear, anticipating their possible appearance at a critical moment. This method of random exposure is likely to only worsen the situation.
Instant Excitement Techniques
For people who are prone to panic attacks in the last minutes of waiting for an important event (for example, a couple of moments before reaching the public or already standing next in line to pull an examination question), there are quick response techniques that can calm down an internal tantrum, literally in a few seconds or even event process.
- The technique of "three breaths." It takes a minute and a half from the force, and acts flawlessly. It is necessary to exhale all the air from the lungs, and then slowly collect it, as if driving from the abdominal cavity to the chest. Then, without holding your breath, again gradually, exhale deeply and repeat the manipulation twice more.
- Realization of excitement in motion. At the time of a panic attack, you need to move around, move from place to place. If this is not possible, transfer the process to fine motor skills and sort out, crush small objects in your hands.
- Switching attention. You need to force yourself at least for a moment to escape from the excitement and listen to what people are talking about or, having looked at the page of the social network in your phone, flip through new events.
How to overcome excitement and fear, if you can’t disconnect from the upcoming episode? We need to try to crank it mentally, building an algorithm of events in the most optimistic and profitable light for ourselves. Such an exercise is useful to do at home, in front of a mirror, especially to people who often catch themselves on insecurity and have low self-esteem.
Work for the future
When public speaking is associated with ongoing activities, emergency measures to remove fear will not be enough. It will be necessary to eliminate the fact of excitement, and not just its manifestations. By the way, work for the future is considered the most grateful, because during constant trainings, a lot of new good habits are developed and many psychological problems go away.
- The first way to overcome the excitement will be a full, regular and, what is very important, night rest, during which all internal processes of the body are adjusted and mental functions are streamlined.
- One should make it a rule to interrupt every episode of fear with a positive event. We felt anxiety or excitement - we immediately remembered a funny joke, watched a funny movie on the Internet, smiled at the reflection in the mirror.
- Well, if there is an opportunity to do yoga or one of the types of oriental gymnastics. They work out respiratory rhythms well and all anxieties after that seem insignificant.
- You can’t talk about absolute peace if you are not sure that everything will go as planned. Therefore, it is important to learn to control your life and all the events in it.
How to overcome the excitement in front of the audience, if one view of the full hall is already inspiring fear? It will be correct to teach yourself to substitute images. For example, presenting the buzzing crowns of an oak forest instead of a noisy audience. To give a lecture in the forest is not at all scary, but such a technique requires good imagination and long home training.
Public shakes
All of the above, one way or another, refers to performances with prepared speeches or according to an already created script. But how to overcome strong excitement while reading spontaneous improvisation, when the attention of a live audience directly depends on timely answers, on the ability to keep the audience?
Communicating with a vibrantly responsive, thinking audience is exciting, but can be an insurmountable test for a person unprepared, constantly afraid to stumble. It is impossible to hide fear, and if the lecturer does not want to plunge the audience into perplexity from the first phrases, he needs to stop perceiving the listener as one terrible organism, and learn to see individuals in the mass.
Psychologists, answering the question of how to overcome the excitement on stage with a large crowd, offer a simple method.
No need to work for everyone at once - for example, there are 500 people in the hall, how many of those who are really interested in the lecture?
Suppose half of all come. So, the number of potential listeners decreased to 250 people. The rest can not be considered, they came for their own personal reasons, not related to the lecture.
Now from the remaining 250, it is necessary to separate those who will act as passive listeners, and there are always the majority. Let's say there are 150 of them.
For further filtering, only a fifth of the audience remained, but this is not all. Indeed, only half of them have primary memory, that is, they will vividly respond to the topic and analyze what they hear immediately. And this means that only a small part of the remaining 50 people will be able to ask questions in essence and catch every word of the lecturer.
So, from a huge audience you can quickly create a fairly narrow circle of people united by a common goal, and it is quite possible to cope with the residual excitement about such an audience.
Breathing technique
How to overcome the excitement before the performance? Simple breathing mantras will help. All exercises should be performed while sitting, in a relaxed atmosphere, but for an experienced participant in public events it will be quite enough just to move a little away from the bustle.
First, you should sit back in a chair, relax, close your eyes. The exercise begins with a full exhalation to the tension of the abdominal muscles. Now you need to take a slow breath, stretching it to the mentally thrice-repeated rhythm phrase "one-and-two-and-three." At the end of the journey, when the lungs are filled with air, a pause is made (“three-four-five”). Now you also need to slowly exhale ("five-and-six-and-seven") and again go to a new circle.
This technique can be called the main one, since only 3-4 rounds of breathing count, normalize the blood supply to the brain, remove the nervous tremolo from the extremities and make you look at the upcoming test without nervous tension. However, for home training, it is better to use breathing mantras, which tune in to a long positive look and to self-realization.
Respiratory Mantras for Regular Exercises
Such exercises for relieving excitement differ from ordinary ones in that they do not just relax the body, but instill confidence in a person, stimulate them to move and take on new heights. Most likely, getting the full feeling of a correctly performed exercise will not work right away, but with a daily allocation of just ten minutes to the process, the result will not be long in coming.
Sitting in a chair and relaxing, you should slowly start counting to ten in this way: one-and-two-and ..., breathing in at odd numbers and exhaling at even ones. The even numbers should last a little longer, as the exhalation must be made complete. During exhalation, it is necessary to draw a vivid picture in the mind, like all fears, all anxieties, phobias, are washed out of the body, seep right through the pores of the skin and flow to the floor.
The next exercise does not need to be considered, and inhale and exhale as long as possible.During inhalation, the consciousness releases all images, is released, and when you exhale, you need to clearly imagine how the released air gathers in the fluffy multi-colored clouds that surround the chair, touching the arms, legs, face. It is necessary to allow pleasant sensations to fill oneself, to feel this extravaganza of tactile delight, to rejoice at it.
Exercises should be performed as much time as you wish, but always every day, and then acute stressful situations will simply have nothing to be based on - consciousness will no longer accept them.