It's really great that Dr. Habib is talking about this publicly and I think his word "solidarity" is very helpful. If you've ever experienced what he's describing it is baffling and excruciating and the very nature of it is you feel that everyone else is on the other side (not against you, necessarily, but out there watching).
I've experienced this more than once -- the first time when I was in my 20's and on live TV being interviewed about a local community group I was part of. The lights and live camera inexplicably turned my brain to complete mush, despite the fact that the interview was a completely friendly one. I've also had it happen in front of live audiences -- both as a speaker and as a musician.
But here's the interesting thing. I also love being up in front of an audience. I've performed as a professional musician (and dancer) and also given numerous talks. And, speaking of music, there are artists of the highest caliber who've struggled with debilitating performance anxiety.
And it's relevant here on HN. I was in a Founders Institute demo day a few years ago when one of my classmates had exactly this kind of meltdown.
But there really is a lot you can do to get a handle on performance anxiety. It starts with having plenty of practice in pressure situations. And with not being too hard on yourself if you do screw up.
As my public speaking coach once said: Squeeze your butt.
It provides a release for the adrenaline so you're not fidgety. It is completely invisible to the audience. It gives you better posture, making you look more confident.
Try it next time you're anxious. Squeeze your butt.
edit: also one thing to practice in general. Next time you're waiting in line at a coffee shop or whatever, put the phone away, take your hands out of your pockets, and don't touch anything on your body or your surroundings. Stand up straight, hands loose by your side. Gently place thumb of each hand on its corresponding index finger. It's good practice for presenting a composed and calm body language. And you'll be surprised to realize that nobody else in the entire coffee shop cares or even notices.
I'm doing the same, naturally. Squeezing, in general. And it indeed helps me at least over the first 5 minutes - which is my biggest hurdle.
A longer time ago I had a 40min presence on TV, and I'm giving talks in front of 5 to 100 people.
I've performed solo as an amateur musician exactly once (to an audience of about 100), and spoken publicly exactly once (to an audience of similar size). Admittedly a decade separates these two events, but when I performed as a musician (violist, playing a piece I had very thoroughly memorized and mastered when I played by myself or with my instructor) I did absolutely terribly, the anxiety ruined my performance.
In my mind, I performed like someone who had just picked up the instrument when in fact I had been playing for 10 years. The reality is of course a bit different, but that's the perception of the performance I remember, and I definitely did not perform the piece anywhere near as well as I had when practicing.
The public speaking twelve years later, which I had never done before (short of a couple of roles in school theatre), went great. I had minimal anxiety and I honestly thoroughly enjoyed the experience. This happened at General Assembly, back when they had both a for-profit educational system and a coworking space in NYC (and the company I work for was working out of there). One of their employees asked me to give a presentation of our product as the final presentation of a demo day they were having for one of their immersive web development classes.
I guess I just had impostor syndrome as a violist performing solo (had no problems in the orchestra, though obviously violists don't get much exposure in most orchestral works - not all though!), and didn't as a professional web developer with ~8 years of experience following presentations of people who literally had 10 or so weeks of experience, even though I'd never really spoken publicly before and my presentation was _entirely_ ad libbed; they literally asked me to present about an hour before the demo day presentations started.
I'm very curious if I'd be able to handle the public speaking as well as I did if I had to follow people who I perceived to be my peers and betters, but I've not yet had an opportunity to test the hypothesis; when I performed on the viola, the people who went before me I viewed as better musicians than myself, and I have no way of knowing if that was what set my performance anxiety off until I put myself in a situation where I feel like I'm not as good as the people who are performing with me.
I'm the opposite, I went through a period of about 15 years performing as DJ [1], I've performed in front of anything from 100 to several thousand people and not had a problem, but public speaking overwhelms me with anxiety - sometimes with as little as 4 or 5 people (if I see them as 'better' than me - I work in healthcare software, so deal with clinicians a lot).
It's totally frustrating because in every other aspect of my life I'm a very confident and positive, don't suffer from any anxieties, and am very much in control. I have little tolerance of can't, that is, I usually don't let fear of trying or other's lack of ambition stifle me. So to have something totally irrational take control over me, like it does, is bizarre.
I'd genuinely love to fix it at some point, but I'm in those situations infrequently, so I'm not convinced I'd be able to really nail it.
I couldn't imagine speaking in front of a bunch of American doctors. I'm stereotyping, but as a group they have huge egos, and are trained to be critical. This has just been my experience.
In reality, they are very well trained mechanics. That last sentance is curtesy of Dr. Dean Edell. I miss that guy.
We put doctors on pedestals in the states. I have found very few deserve this special treatment.
I'll get beat up over this post. I don't care. To the person I'm writing to, I had a horrid fear of public speaking. I actually got through college with only one public speaking engagement. It was a sweaty train wreck.
As I've aged, public speaking got to the point where my pulse doesn't even flinch.
Indeed. It's totally irrational, most of the doctors I know aren't that smart. Yes, they're very good in the area of their specialism, but more often than not they let their extreme expertise in one area cloud their judgements/abilities in other areas. I've had clinicians telling me how long they think it should take to develop a feature in our app for example. Even if they were an expert in software development (which none are) then it's still very arrogant to assume knowledge of our system and how we developed it.
Obviously this is a blanket statement, I'm sure this doesn't characterise every clinician. But I have seen this a lot.
I should add, it's not real magic. I do LARP as a hobby, and my character is a ritualist. This means I, and a bunch of other people, put on little performances in a ritual circle to perform various magical effects in the game. (The way it works is that the referees score us on how good they thought the ritual was, and then tell us what happened.) A ritual is typically 10-15 minutes with about five people and, depending on what you're doing, can vary between completely scripted to totally improvised.
Pressure-wise, it's interesting. In the game, rituals are important and expensive. They matter, a lot. A screwed up ritual will backfire, including and up to getting you (or someone else) killed. At the very least a badly performed ritual won't work, but will still use up a lot of in-game money. Get it wrong, and there will be consequences.
Also, rituals don't always go according to plan. Summoning the spirit of someone from the dead? You let the referees know ahead of time and they'll make sure that the appropriate player is available to play the spirit. Once they go on stage, you need to improvise, and they might be rather angry at being summoned. So you never really know what's going to happen, and once you and your team get some practice, you get good at covering and supporting each other --- I once completely blanked on my lines and it was covered so smoothly that I don't think anyone noticed.
But at the same time, it's all completely pretend. It's not actually you in the ritual circle, it's your character. If things go completely pear shaped and you all get thunderbolted to death, you know you'll be drinking beer with the people involved later and the story of 'How I said the wrong thing and got fifteen people massacred' will have gone into legend.
So, at least for me, it provides an oddly safe environment to practice high-pressure performance and speaking. I know that in the couple of years since I've started doing this I've gotten way, way better and standing up in front of staring faces and doing my thing, and that skill does translate into real life.
Although I suspect that in real life there's less chance of demons suddenly materializing in the middle of the auditorium and trying to kill everyone (although I've been to meetings where that could have been a mercy).
I've experienced this more than once -- the first time when I was in my 20's and on live TV being interviewed about a local community group I was part of. The lights and live camera inexplicably turned my brain to complete mush, despite the fact that the interview was a completely friendly one. I've also had it happen in front of live audiences -- both as a speaker and as a musician.
But here's the interesting thing. I also love being up in front of an audience. I've performed as a professional musician (and dancer) and also given numerous talks. And, speaking of music, there are artists of the highest caliber who've struggled with debilitating performance anxiety.
And it's relevant here on HN. I was in a Founders Institute demo day a few years ago when one of my classmates had exactly this kind of meltdown.
But there really is a lot you can do to get a handle on performance anxiety. It starts with having plenty of practice in pressure situations. And with not being too hard on yourself if you do screw up.