“I KNOW MY STUFF BUT WHEN I HAVE TO SAY IT MY MIND GOES BLANK !”
~ Let Hypnotherapy give you the confidence to speak your mind!! ~

Authored by Amreeta Aujayeb/Chapman

Every one of us has the initial stage-fright, the flutters and heightened heartbeats: some of us interpret them as the extra adrenaline push they need for their best performance; others panic and focus on the sensations of heartbeats, sweating, blushing and trembling in their knees so much that their mind goes blank and the only message screaming in their head is “I want to get out of here” “If I speak now I am definitely going to make a fool of myself” “Relax, relax ….. Oh please God make this panic stop.”

In my two years of practising Hypnotherapy with people working at the executive levels (managers, sales representatives/coordinators, lawyers, directors and business-owners) it has always been and still is a pleasure to witness the talents/skills of a speaker emerge and grow in my clients above the fears of presentations or speaking in meetings. It all happens within three to four sessions.

The facts are simple: you know you are good at the work you do; you have the intellectual and personal skills to prove yourself to your manager/director or even the group of twenty-thirty people staring at you but it is at that crucial stage when you have to convince them that you panic! WHY??

Many reasons for that: past conditioning, learning as children from models who were insecure or anxious, experience of failures which have created a mindset within you that you are going to keep failing, the inability to cope with pressure of being stared at and sometimes it is as simple as being so self-conscious of having everybody give you attention and what about the complete silence around you when you stand up? You can almost hear your own breathing and heartbeats and it feels as if they can all hear it out there.

My clients come from two levels of interest: some of them wish to know the origin of the fears/panics and then work with it and others tell me to help them grow above it and take control of it without necessarily wishing to find the origins. Hypnotherapy can satisfy both requirements because there are several techniques to retrain and reprogram the mind to change the way it has of perceiving and reacting to events.

How does it all work? You are a driver aren’t you? Now go back to your first few months of learning how to drive and you will realise that there came a phase in the learning curve when your knowledge slips into your subconscious mind and you were driving spontaneously and without consciously having to remind yourself of the gears or mirrors. That is when you became very relaxed and at ease with driving don’t you? The triggers have settled into your subconscious mind and make you react automatically once you are behind the wheel.

In a very similar way, the fears and panics in our current lives developed almost without our conscious knowledge and sunk into our subconscious mind and then they control us from there. That explains why even if you consciously and studiously repeat to yourself to relax and it is going to be ok, when the moment comes your body and mind seems to have a will of their own and you helplessly feel the panic grow. You still manage to give the presentation maybe but come out of the whole experience feeling very dissatisfied and convinced that everyone knew you were panicking and you start anticipating the next one with accumulated tension.

Hypnotherapy helps to access the subconscious mind and changes the triggers that prompt us to start panicking at the sight of people staring at us or fear of starting the presentation. It also sets new triggers in our subconscious mind, constructive ones so that your mind starts reacting to the same situation with calmness and relaxation both in your body and mind.

Let me give you an example: You used to sit in a meeting dreading the moment when you will be asked to speak; you mind started spinning the images of you stammering, sweating, going blank in your mind and trembling in your body. With Hypnotherapy training you sit in the same meeting after a month and even if you force your body to start trembling it doesn’t! Because your mind is controlled by the subconscious and if the latter is already programmed to react with utter calmness and relaxation focusing on your material rather than the people staring at you what do you expect?

"After a good promotion at work, I was under a lot of pressure to present and negotiate with some strong characters. This was very difficult as I lacked the confidence to perform. I called Amreeta to talk about hypnotherapy and decided to give it a go. In the few sessions that I had, Amreeta taught me relaxation techniques and self-hypnosis and within in a short period of time I was gaining the confidence to control and negotiate properly in my meetings. This has made a significant difference to my performance at work and I am continuing to develop my new skills. This has been a very positive experience and I would recommend anyone to contact Amreeta to try hypnotherapy." (Client from Wokingham)

Have you ever wondered how some people manage to enjoy and flow in their presentations so easily? There is only one major difference between that confident state and your fearful one: this person has got only constructive triggers in his subconscious mind that says “This is wonderful; at last I have an opportunity to prove myself.”

“ "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts"(William Shakespeare)