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

Betty's Stage Fright

Betty also wanted to get over her stage fright. �I want to be comfortable in giving a seminar or presentation,� she requested.

�So what has stopped you from just automatically being comfortable when you do a presentation?� I asked. �Well, they know more than I do.�

�They know more than you do?� I repeated. �How do you know so much that you know this?� I asked with a smile. Here I attempted to use Betty�s own way of thinking to get her to recognize that her complaint actually results from her, own knowledge, not the knowledge of others. But Betty�s experience did not change. �I don�t,� she responded.

�So you imagine that they know more than you do,� I said. Now Betty was faced with an interesting dilemma. Either she can accept that she knew enough to know what others were thinking, or she can admit that she didn�t know that much about the other�s knowledge. In either case, her assumption that others know more than she does is likely to become a bit less real.

�Right. And everything has been said before, and presented before.� Betty added.

�Oh. So are you one of these people that if you were an author, you wouldn�t write a book because all the words in our language have already been used?� This metaphoric question takes her statement to an extreme in a context in which it is clearly absurd.

�Yes.� Betty responded with a smile, amused, and not taking it quite so seriously.

�Is that a fact. Well, what makes you even want to make a presentation, if everything has been said before and everybody knows more than you? Why would you even want to bother?� Here I�m exploring the apparent contradiction between her motivation to present, and her assumption that �it�s all been done before,� so there�s no point in presenting.

�That�s a good question,� said Betty, thoughtfully. �Well, I�m finding out now that I can say something in my way, and that other people can learn a different perspective even though it has been said before.�

�So you have already come to the realization that sometimes seeing something in a different way gets a useful response from the listener. So you know that. Is there anything else that makes you want to do a presentation?�

�If I develop a passion for the material, then it shouldn�t matter at all, because when I have that passion and that conviction inside��

�Then what shouldn�t matter at all?�

�That they know more and that everything has been said before. Because then I would have fun doing it, and I would feel comfortable.�

Betty now had a conscious idea of what it could be like when she didn�t have stage fright, but she clearly was not actually experiencing it yet. She was telling me how things would be, not how they are, so I knew I needed to go further.

�That sounds good to me. Now when you think about any audience in particular, what do they know less about than you?� Betty usually only thought about what others knew that she didn�t. This asks Betty to think of when the opposite is true�when she knows more than the audience�to loosen up her thinking.

Betty thought for a few moments. �They know everything more,� she laughed, clearly not completely believing what she was saying.

�EVERYTHING?� I teased her. �Look, if you are so good at imagining that others know so much, you ought to be just as good at imagining ways in which you know more than they do.�

�Right, OK.� Betty got serious. �I will come up with an answer. ... What I have found is that a lot of people know less about their existence in terms of their worthwhileness and their self-esteem and self-concept� Betty�s voice sounded hesitant, not completely convinced.

�So that is an area that you know more about than a lot of other people do. I noticed a little bit of hesitation as you said that. ... I don�t know if you already realize that for each person there are always areas in which you know more than they do, as well as areas in which they know more than you do...

I was making slow progress in loosening her all-or-none thinking, so I decided to try a different approach. �Now let me ask you something different. Do you think that the people who come to your group would be so stupid as to pick? a presentation where they didn�t think that they would learn something?� Rather than continuing to try to change Betty�s belief that others know so much, now I was utilizing this belief to counter her stage fright.

Betty laughed, and I saw a strong physiological response. Color came into her face, and her muscles became a bit more smooth and supple�calm, yet livelier. This kind of physical shift is usually good evidence that a deep change in attitude has occurred�in contrast to an intellectual understanding. �Good point! Thank you. Thanks. That just pulls everything together,� Betty stated with confidence and satisfaction. �I think I�ll keep that one.�

This brief interaction with Betty, which took about ten minutes, gave her a new way to think about giving presentations. It�s important to recognize that this interaction was not a matter of my convincing or advising her that she was wrong and should think about things differently. I was able to enter Betty�s own world and point out a way in which her own logic and beliefs provided her with a solution.

Betty�s firm belief that �others are so smart� offered me a basis for changing her thinking about presenting. Since others were so smart, they must have the ability to decide whether they could learn something from Betty, and she could feel more comfortable about presenting. The only alternative is for Betty to change her mind about others being so smart, which would also lead to her feeling more comfortable about doing presentations!

This provides an example of one way to take an alternative point of view, so that someone has the opportunity to think about her own life in a way that makes her automatically feel good and resourceful. After this brief work with Betty, she felt very differently about giving a presentation�eager and self-assured, rather than uncomfortable and ambivalent. Her positive feelings were not a matter of effort�they were just there for her�as automatic as her previous response of discomfort had been.

I also want to point out that the new perspective I offered Betty was not �false confidence� that would blind her to her inadequacies. If I had gotten Betty to feel confident no matter who was in her group, she might have learned to just ignore the background and responses of the audience.

Instead, the perspective I offered her is one that I have when I teach. I assume that everyone in the room knows more than I do about something. Some people, some of the time, are even going to know more about what I am teaching than I do. That�s inevitable, and it�s also an opportunity for me to learn from them, which will benefit others the next time I teach. However, I also trust people�s intelligence enough to select whether they want to be learning from me or not. I can have confidence in the judgement of the people who have decided they want to learn something from/with me and come to seminars.

One of the surprises for us as we have steeped ourselves in learning, using, and further developing NLP, is that the personal changes we make are usually fairly quick, as with Betty. This doesn�t mean we can all completely transform ourselves in ten minutes. Sometimes it takes us much longer just to gather the information to find out what to do. Although for Betty only one change made the difference, sometimes a person needs two changes in belief or perspective, or five, or twenty, to get the desired overall change.

The field of NLP offers many ways to find out how our thinking creates limitations, and many ways to move toward solutions. If the first attempted solution doesn�t work, we notice and move on to another possible solution.

Words don�t have any energy unless they spark or trigger an image. The word in and of itself has nothing, nothing. One of the things I keep in touch with is, �What are the words that trigger images for people?� Then people follow the feeling of the image.

�Virginia Satir