enjoyment of social situations and public speaking
Self consciousness is an essential part of being human, but
it can make social situations really tricky sometimes.
Here's what you can do about it if it happens to you.
First, let's look at what mean by self consciousness. Here's
an example...
Self consciousness in action
You're standing with a group of friends, happily
chatting away, the conversation going along nicely. Then
someone says to
you, "John, you're good at that, why don't you tell us
how you do it?"
And Bang!, the way you feel changes completely. It's as
if a spotlight has been turned on you and the rest of the
room lights dimmed.
All of a sudden, your cheerful, easygoing nature of 10
seconds ago is nowhere to be found! What happened?
Well basically, your focus of attention has shifted to
yourself, otherwise known as self consciousness.
You may also have received a shot of adrenaline as a stress
response.
Now we have 2 potential problems:
If your adrenaline levels go too high, your brain will cease
functioning in a way that allows you to think clearly, and
you will feel like running away. This is obviously not
optimal for a social situation!
If your focus of attention gets 'stuck' on yourself, i.e. in
self consciousness mode, you won't be able to discuss the
topic you've been asked to talk about. High adrenaline
levels will make it more difficult for you to shift your
focus away again.
So what can you do about self consciousness?
OK. Well let's deal with the adrenaline first. If you're
getting this sort of stress response then it would be wise
to learn some relaxation techniques.
Used correctly, relaxation will 'decondition' your anxiety
response. To explain - if you are reacting with anxiety very
quickly in this sort of situation, it may be because you
have had similar experiences in the past, and your body has
'learnt' to respond this way, faster than you can think.
There are 2 main things to do:
1) Rehearse the situation imaginatively whilst deeply
relaxed, so that your brain learns a new response.
2) Create a 'trigger' to allow you to 'fire off' your
relaxation response when you need it most.
You can do this best by learning how to relax very deeply.
If you do meditation, or yoga, you probably already know
how.
This will bring 2 main benefits:
a) Once you know how to relax quickly in the situation
itself, your anxiety response will soon stop occurring at
all.
b) You will gain the reassurance of knowing you can calm
yourself whenever you need to, further increasing your self
confidence.
Now let's look at your focus of attention.
As we discussed above, self consciousness is the state of
mind that occurs when you focus on yourself. But to talk
smoothly about a subject, your focus needs to be on the
subject! The more deeply focused on the subject you are,
the more eloquent and flowing you will be.
So, self consciousness gets in the way of socialising
because it stops you focusing on what you need to focus on:
the topic of conversation.
So what can you do to change your focus of attention?
A few things...
The first thing to understand is that adrenaline and anxiety
'lock' your attention, making it more difficult to switch
what you're focusing on. Why? Because if it was a truly
dangerous situation, which is what this response evolved
for, it would be no good if you just drifted off and
started thinking about what was for dinner!
So, becoming calmer will make it much easier to change your
focus when you need to. (See '1' above.)
You can...
1) Learn a discipline such as self hypnosis, tai chi,
autogenics, or meditation. These techniques all train you to
take deliberate control of your focus of attention, and
teach you to do so while remaining calm.
2) Practise switching your focus of attention on a day to
day basis. You can do this whilst walking, sitting at work,
anywhere really. Simply focus in on one thing as tightly as
you can, then switch to something else. They could be
objects in your environment, or ideas or thoughts.
It's particularly good if you do this whilst a little
emotionally stimulated, such as watching an exciting TV
program, or a film at the cinema. At the most tense
moments, deliberately switch your attention away, and don't
allow yourself to switch back until you have focused fully
on the new object or thought.
These tips will make it much easier to control self
consciousness and make socialising or public speaking a much
more enjoyable experience!
Good luck!
Roger Elliott
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About the author
Roger Elliott is a trainer and therapist and author of the
free 6-part self confidence course, which has helped tens
of thousands of people and can be found at
http://www.self-confidence.co.uk