Do you suffer from presentation anxiety—and its worst outcome, an overwhelming need to escape? Here's how to recognize and head off a public speaking panic attack! 

If you were given a 45-minute warning before a panic attack, would you find that information useful?

And if you knew about two specific actions you can take to prevent or lessen the symptoms, wouldn't you want to give them a try?

Ready to beat your speaking fear? Then it's time to take action! Get a signed copy of my book, Fearless Speaking, named "One Of The 100 Best Confidence Books Of All Time." 

In my speech coaching practice at The Genard Method, I work with people to help overcome their fear of public speaking. Lots of professionals suffer speech jitters. If that's you, here's a 5-minute exercise to help calm your nerves before speaking. Much worse is an actual panic attack. Even overall anxiety isn't as bad. It's one thing to be anxious during a presentation—but it's another to feel that you need to escape the situation at all costs.  

Add to that the realization that you may suffer consequences where your job and career are concerned, and it's easy to understand how miserable stage fright can make you. 

Are pre-speech jitters (or worse) a problem for you? Learn to love public speaking instead! Get my free cheat sheet, "10 Fast and Effective Ways to Overcome Stage Fright."   

Panic Attacks May Give Themselves Away

Panic attacks can seem to come out of the blue. One moment, you're practicing the best focusing techniques for public speaking. And the next, you're in the grip of what feels like a life-and-death situation. But research has shown panic doesn't actually hit that quickly. In fact, these attacks can advertise themselves up to an hour before they hit! So if you can pay attention to the signs, you can anticipate the moment of crisis and prepare yourself in time.

A study in Biological Psychiatry began with this widely accepted hypothesis of spontaneous and unobservable onset. That is, that there are no discernible "cues or triggers" for panic attacks, and "physiological arousal or instability should [only] occur at the onset of, or during, the attack." Through the use of 24-hour monitoring of panic disorder patients, however, the research team discovered that there are, in fact, measurable changes occurring in respiration, heart rate, and levels of skin conductance "as early as 47 minutes before panic onset."¹

How to Monitor and Control Your 'Panic Indicators'

The fact that physiological changes linked with a panic attack could be measured beforehand was, apparently, the critical finding in this study. Yet physical changes like this shouldn't be a surprise for trained speech coaches helping people overcome speech anxiety. They know all about increased heart rate and rapid shallow breathing. In fact, these are two areas I focus on to help clients recognize the physical symptoms of stage fright, and to calm themselves. 

Want a quick way to overcome in-the-moment stage fright in meetings and presentations? Get my Free resource, "How Breathing Can Help Control Your Fear of Public Speaking."

But what about heading off a panic attack before it can force you from the stage? Given the study above that says you may get nearly an hour's warning concerning what's coming, it makes sense to develop greater awareness of your breathing and heart rate. 

Here's how. To begin, measure your normal respiration rate. That's the number of times you complete the cycle of inhalation + exhalation in one minute. Whatever your number is, treat that as your baseline. That gives you the information you need to pay attention if you're starting to breathe more rapidly (and probably, more shallowly). Similarly, your resting pulse rate giving way to a galloping rate is another indication that you're over-activated and stressed.

That's when you can begin any of the techniques I mention above, or (even better), that you'll find in my book, Fearless Speaking. The research is showing that you can use self-monitoring to put yourself in a stronger position to manage an oncoming panic attack. Use it! 

¹ A.E. Meuret, D. Rosenfield, F.H. Wilhelm, E. Zhou, A. Conrad, T. Ritz, W.T. Roth, “Do Unexpected Panic Attacks Occur Spontaneously?” Biological Psychiatry, 2011 Nov 15;70(10):985-91. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2011.05.027. Epub 2011 Jul 23.

You should follow me on Twitter here.

Gary Genard is an actor, author, and expert in public speaking and overcoming speaking fear. His company, The Genard Method offers live 1:1 Zoom executive coaching  and corporate group training worldwide. He was named for nine consecutive years as One of the World’s Top 30 Communication Professionals, and also named as One of America's Top 5 Speech Coaches. He is the author of the Amazon Best-Sellers How to Give a Speech and Speak for Leadership: An Executive Speech Coach's Secrets for Developing Leadership Presence. His book, Fearless Speaking, was named in 2019 as "One of the 100 Best Confidence Books of All Time." " He is also the author of the Dr. William Scarlet Mysteries. Contact Gary here.

Photo credit: Alexander Krivitskiy on pexels.com