Steve Andreas > Books Authored > Heart of the Mind > Chapter 1

Other Ways to Have Stage Fright

Few people will create their stage fright in exactly the same way Joan did, but they will do something internally that results in their discomfort Some people will imagine not being able to speak at all; others may worry that the entire group will soon begin to snicker and get up to leave. Still others will remember a time in their past when they were humiliated by being ill-prepared for a presentation.

As soon as you understand how this person creates his problem, his response always makes perfect sense. Our responses aren�t random; they are simply the consequences of how our minds work. It doesn�t really matter exactly what each of us does to create a problem. As soon as you know what you do, you can begin to experiment with changing ft to something more useful.

In the case of Joan, we directly changed elements of her internal experience. You can accomplish the same outcome by noticing what a person presupposes, and use purely verbal interventions to change how that person thinks, as in the following example.