I am a stage fright freak!

Have you ever had to give a speech? Do you remember that feeling? A knot in the stomach, sweaty palms and a panic attack! I do and it happens very often somehow. I am never a front person. I dislike talking in front of too many people. I have had a few bad experiences when presenting in front a large crowd of people. These unpleasant experiences haunt me still. Even until now I still couldn’t able to erase them off my memory storage. By the way, I have good long term memory storage. I could remember everything that happens arouns me even the incidents have occurred ages ago. But strangely enough, I hardly can remember anything when comes to lectures I have learnt in classes. I still wonder why.

Like I said earlier, I am not comfortable having to stand forward to present while everyone is looking at me. I tend to be extremely nervous, tense and panicky. I would start getting anxious and under stress a few days before the day of presentation itself. I am actually going through what is known as situational anxiety which is one of the obstacles to Communication. Situational anxiety is defined by factors that exist during a specific speaking situation. For example, the crowd is the factor that causes me to feel scared.

Let me just share with you the two bad experiences I went through in my previous presentations. The first one happened when I was in Standard Three. I was asked by my teacher to participate in a story telling competition. At that time, I didn’t know that I actually very scared to present until I was on the stage. I remembered I could memorize the whole speech perfectly but when I was up there presenting, I forgot everything. I couldn’t even greet the audiences. I managed to utter a few words and sentences and the rest I got stuck with ‘em’, ‘aaa’, ‘er’. The worst thing was I stood on the stage for 10 minutes! All the audiences were laughing their heads off. I then quickly ended the speech with ‘terima kasih’. I felt so embarrassing but I did not cry, probably I was too young too feel that emotional.

However, I cried for the next experience though which happened to me in Form Two. This incident that took place in church where I supposed to lead in the singing session for my youth group but unfortunately the musicians who supposed to assist me couldn’t make it. Then I asked helped from another youth but to my surprised he replied, ‘You play the music yourself lar’. I said to myself, ‘Hello? I can’t play the piano that’s why I need your help!’ Anyway, I somehow managed to get someone else to play the guitar instead. After that, I started to lead the group to sing. Half way through, the same fellow who rejected helping me, started laughing at me with his gang. I was so hurt and disappointed. The incident had affected me badly since. I was so upset that I stopped attending youth fellowship completely.

Some people may think it’s a small matter but to me it wasn’t. The feeling of hurt and disappointment was hard to forget. It literally diminished my confidence. After what happened, I would avoid any chances to go out to speak. I told myself not to present anymore if possible but things are different at college. We have dozens of presentations to do as they are graded. Now I have got used to the idea of presenting and through the many practices, I have better confidence than before. Nevertheless, I’m still working on to manage my anxieties.