publicspeaking

7 Key Signs You Might Have Glossophobia (Fear of Public Speaking)

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 17:36:07 GMT

Recognizing Public Speaking Fear and Anxiety

Glossophobia, or the fear of public speaking, is more common than most people think. While some nerves before a presentation are normal, for those with glossophobia, the anxiety can be intense and debilitating. It can affect personal confidence and kill a career.

If you suspect you may have glossophobia, here are seven key signs and symptoms to look out for:

1. Avoidance – You go out of your way to skip events that involve speaking in front of others.

2. Build-up of anxiety before speaking – You feel dread or panic for hours or even days before speaking in public.

3. Severe physical symptoms – You come close to panic: rapid heartbeat, over-breathing, shaking, sweating, or feeling faint.

4. Freezing or blanking – Your mind goes blank or you lose your train of thought while speaking. You can’t make sense of something that beforehand made perfect sense.

5. Managing or manipulating situations – You try to control who’s in the room, when you speak, or what topics are discussed in an effort to reduce your anxiety when speaking.

6. Irrational negative thoughts – You fear being judged, humiliated, or making mistakes, even without any real threat.

7. Obsessive rumination afterward – After speaking, you replay what happened and criticize yourself excessively.

If these signs are familiar to you and they are significantly impacting your life and career, then you may have a diagnosable case of glossophobia.

Recognizing these symptoms is the first step toward addressing them. Whether you're experiencing mild nerves or extreme public speaking anxiety, know that help is available and effective treatment is closer than you think .

With our powerful and effective Public Speaking Program you can break free from stage fright, overcome public speaking anxiety, and regain confidence in every speaking situation.

Top 7 Tips To Overcome Public Speaking Anxiety

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 17:42:02 GMT

(and why they don't help much)

Public speaking anxiety advice often feels recycled: breathe, prepare, practice, know your audience, know your subject, focus on the message, project your voice. But when you are dealing with the white-knuckle fear of public speaking, these tips aren’t nearly as effective as they sound. Let’s break them down.

1. Breathe

Yes, it's good to breathe. Don't stop. But if you get to the point to where you have to try and manage your breathing, then it's probably already too late. The anxiety has already started to kick in. And if you try and focus on your breathing, you will lose focus on what you are talking about. And that's when the anxiety can spiral into full-blown panic.

2. Prepare

Prepare. Not a great insight. You need to prepare. Most people don’t fail because they didn’t prepare — they fail because they over-prepare , spending huge amounts of time and energy on a speech or presentation trying to control every detail to avoid the inevitable anxiety when actually speaking in public. Their speech then comes out unnatural and robotic , if it comes out at all.

3. Practice

Again, not a great insight. Of course you should practice. But practice is often presented as a cure-all. It isn’t. Practicing too much in private can backfire. Because you’re training yourself in a safe environment, you can feel ambushed when the real stressors — the audience, the stage, the eyes — appear.

4. Know Your Audience

This one sounds profound but often isn’t. You know who you’re talking to . If you’re giving a workplace presentation, you know it’s your colleagues. If you’re at a conference, you know it’s your industry peers. Being told to “know your audience” doesn’t actually lessen anxiety — it just reminds you that your audience exists and will be watching you. In fact, the more you think about who’s in the room, the more intimidating it can become.

5. Know Your Subject

This tip is equally redundant. If you’ve been asked to speak in public, it’s because you (hopefully) know your subject. Knowledge doesn’t automatically translate into calm delivery . Experts still choke, not because they don’t know their material, but because fear of judgment and performance pressure hijack their ability to express it smoothly. Anxiety isn’t about knowledge gaps; it’s about perceived social risk.

6. Focus on the Message, Not Yourself

This is good advice in theory — if only anxiety worked that way. Because anxiety hijacks focus . When public speaking anxiety kicks in, people focus inwards on what’s happening to them - the pounding heart, the sweating, their shaky voice and hands - rather than on what they are trying to talk about. So in that moment it’s almost impossible to force yourself to focus outwards on the message.

7. Project Your Voice

What does this even mean in practice? For many anxious speakers, “projecting” is impossible — the effort to force volume just highlights how shaky they already sound. Instead of “public speaking,” it turns into “public squeaking.” The advice assumes you can override fear with technique, when often the fear can make it difficult to talk at all, let alone “project”.

The Reality Behind These Tips

All of these strategies have some value, but they don’t touch the root of public speaking anxiety. They don’t help people overcome the hardcore dread and fear that accompany public speaking. The problem isn’t a lack of knowledge, preparation, or technical skill — it’s the way anxiety rewires your body and mind under pressure. Until that deeper issue is addressed - through specialist therapy - these surface-level tips can feel hollow and may even be counterproductive.

That's why at the Mindspa Phobia Clinic we don't bother with tips and tricks to overcome public speaking anxiety. We deal with the fear.

With our powerful and effective Public Speaking Program you can break free from stage fright, overcome public speaking anxiety, and regain confidence in every speaking situation.

5 Signs You Need Help with Glossophobia

Sat, 04 Oct 2025 18:01:21 GMT

If you suspect your public speaking anxiety might actually be glossophobia (a more extreme or limiting fear) here are 5 key signs that you may need help:

For many people, speaking in front of others sparks more than just nerves—it triggers glossophobia, the intense fear of public speaking. It doesn’t only appear on big stages; it can strike in meetings, interviews, classrooms or even casual group settings. What begins as a pounding heart and sweaty palms can quickly escalate into overwhelming dread, panic and avoidance.

Recognizing the signs of glossophobia – and identifying them early - is the first step toward overcoming it. Below are the most common indicators that your fear of public speaking has gone beyond natural anxiety and is interfering with your personal or professional growth.

1 Intense Panic

When faced with speaking in public (or even just thinking about it), you experience intense physical and psychological symptoms:

Rapid heart rate, sweating, trembling, dry mouth
Nausea, dizziness, muscle tension
Intense fear, dread, self-criticism, or even nightmares about speaking
“Freezing,” blanking, or cognitive overload during presentations

2 Avoidance of Speaking Opportunities

You go out of your way to skip presentations, meetings, or any event where you might have to talk in front of others—even when you’d otherwise want to participate. Sometimes you try to micromanage and manipulate people and situations to make the speaking event more comfortable. While avoidance brings temporary relief, it strengthens glossophobia over time.

3 Emotional Toll

You start feeling dread or panic hours or even days before you’re due to speak. The build-up alone can cause stress, insomnia, or a constant mental loop of “What if I mess up?”. This anticipatory anxiety drains mental energy and focus, leaving you too exhausted to enjoy or concentrate on other areas of life.

4 Self-Help Isn’t Working

Common strategies—over-preparing, hours of practice, deep breathing, positive affirmations, self-medicating with alcohol or drinking gallons of Rescue Remedy are just not helping. While these techniques may help mild nerves, they often fall short when trying to overcome the hardcore fear that glossophobia generates. If you’ve tried YouTube tutorials, books on public speaking, repeated exposure or even public speaking courses without much progress, it’s a sign your anxiety runs deeper than ordinary nervousness. When public speaking anxiety turns into white-knuckle fear then you need specialist therapy to truly break the cycle.

5 Life Is Impacted

Glossophobia is causing you to avoid situations where speaking is required. You might decline promotions, skip presentations, or hold back in meetings and classes. Over time, avoidance blocks career growth, reduces educational opportunities, and strains social connections. This ripple effect goes beyond public speaking anxiety—it can erode self-confidence, limit opportunities and even affect relationships.

If you notice most of these signs—especially if they’re recurring and interfering with daily life or career—it’s a strong indicator that professional intervention will help. With our powerful and effective Public Speaking Program you can break free from stage fright, overcome public speaking anxiety, and regain confidence in every speaking situation.

Overcoming Glossophobia: The Fast Phobia Cure v Exposure Therapy

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 18:43:13 GMT

How Traditional CBT Exposure Therapy Falls Short and why The NLP Fast Phobia Cure Provides a Breakthrough

Glossophobia , more commonly known as the fear of public speaking, is one of the most widespread phobias in the world. Millions of people experience overwhelming public speaking anxiety and stage fright that can limit their personal growth and hold them back in their careers. While Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and its well-known technique of exposure therapy have long been the standard approach, these methods have important limitations. This is why many people are turning toward innovative approaches such as Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and, in particular, the NLP Fast Phobia Cure , to find lasting relief from public speaking fear.

The Limitations of CBT and Traditional Exposure Therapy

CBT relies heavily on conscious reasoning and works by identifying distorted thoughts (“If I speak, everyone will laugh at me”) and gradually testing them through behavioural experiments in what is called exposure therapy. But because phobias are driven by the irrational unconscious mind, this approach is fundamentally limited because the sufferer already knows that their responses don’t make sense – that giving a presentation, for example, is not dangerous – so that’s not a great insight.

Exposure therapy involves gradually confronting the feared situation—such as speaking in front of an audience—until the anxiety decreases through repeated practice. Typically this will involve speaking to smaller groups and then to bigger gatherings. This approach can be effective for certain phobias, but its application in glossophobia often comes with challenges.

1. Slow and Time-Intensive Process

Progress with exposure therapy can take weeks or even months. Many people struggling with public speaking anxiety want faster results, especially when a presentation or speech is looming.

2. Not Practical

Most people don’t have too much choice when and where they can speak, particularly in a work setting. So progressing up a “ladder of fear” (the CBT term for the step-by-step hierarchy of feared situations) from smaller to larger groups, for example, is practically impossible to arrange. And the risk of panicking again in a real-world situation - in a meeting or delivering a wedding speech - can feel too risky to even try.

3. Reinforcing the Fear

Exposure therapy requires clients to consistently face situations that trigger intense fear. But because CBT does little to change the underlying fear response before people are asked to put themselves in the feared situation, they just feel frightened again. This can exacerbate the anxiety and reinforce their fear responses.

4. High Dropout Rates

For people with severe public speaking anxiety, the exposure process can feel overwhelming, leading many to abandon treatment before seeing results.

5. Limited Emotional Rewiring

Exposure therapy can desensitize a person to fear triggers, but it doesn’t always address the deeper emotional patterns that fuel glossophobia. This means that even after practice, feelings of dread or panic can resurface under stress.

The Fast Phobia Cure: A Different Approach

The Fast Phobia Cure (sometimes referred to as the Rewind Technique) is probably the most reliable and effective tool in psychotherapy today. It has been called shockingly effective by some therapists.

Unlike traditional CBT methods, the Fast Phobia Cure doesn’t require the client to rationalise their fear but instead targets the way fear is coded in the brain. It works on reprogramming how the mind processes past traumatic or anxiety-inducing memories related to public speaking. By changing the way these memories are stored and recalled, the technique can quickly eliminate the emotional intensity that triggers the dread and fear.

1. Rapid Results

Clients report dramatic reductions in public speaking anxiety after just one or two sessions. This makes it ideal for people who need urgent help for upcoming presentations or social speeches.

2. Non-Traumatic Process

Unlike exposure therapy, clients do not need to repeatedly face their fear head-on. Instead, the process involves guided visualization techniques that are comfortable and safe.

3. Deep Emotional Reset

The NLP Fast Phobia Cure doesn’t just manage symptoms; it restructures the way fear is encoded in the brain, removing the negative emotional charge that creates and maintains glossophobia.

4. Improved Confidence and Freedom

Once the emotional link between speaking in public and fear is dissolved, individuals often experience not only relief from stage fright – allowing them to move forward in their careers and socially - but also newfound confidence in other areas of life.

Choosing the Right Path to Overcome Glossophobia

For those suffering from severe public speaking anxiety, traditional exposure therapy can feel like an uphill battle. While it may help some people gradually become more comfortable, its limitations often prevent lasting or rapid change. In contrast, the Fast Phobia Cure offers a powerful alternative that goes beyond coping strategies and provides a deeper emotional transformation.

If public speaking anxiety has been holding you back, exploring modern techniques like NLP is the key to breaking free from glossophobia and stepping confidently into the spotlight.

At the Mindspa Phobia Clinic we use a unique and powerful adaptation of the Fast Phobia Cure to help people overcome their fear of public speaking .

Frequently Asked Questions About Glossophobia and the Fast Phobia Cure

The Spotlight Effect and Glossophobia

Thu, 04 Sep 2025 13:26:49 GMT

Shedding Light on Our Self-Consciousness

Imagine walking into a room wearing a Barry Manilow t-shirt. You immediately feel like everyone is staring, judging, and silently mocking your choice. In reality, hardly anyone notices. Those who do might not care—or might even like it.

This exaggerated sense of being observed is called the Spotlight Effect. It’s the belief that others are paying far more attention to us than they actually are. The Spotlight Effect is one of the key drivers of glossophobia (the fear of public speaking) and plays a major role in social anxiety.

What Is the Spotlight Effect?

The Spotlight Effect is a cognitive bias where people overestimate how much others notice and judge their appearance, behaviour, or mistakes. It creates the feeling that a spotlight is shining on us, making us seem more visible and vulnerable than we really are.

In reality, most people are far too preoccupied with their own thoughts to closely scrutinize others. Yet for someone with public speaking anxiety or social phobia, the Spotlight Effect can feel overwhelming—making everyday interactions stressful and amplifying the fear of being judged.

Everyday Examples of the Spotlight Effect

The Spotlight Effect can appear in many situations, such as:

Public speaking : When giving a presentation or talking in a meeting, people imagine that everyone must be paying great attention to them and noticing any signs of their anxiety and discomfort, such as shaking, sweating or changes in their breathing or voice.

Sports performance : Overestimating how much teammates notice or care about mistakes.

Clothing choices : Feeling like everyone is judging a new outfit, when most people hardly notice.

Social events : Imagining you are the centre of attention at a party, with others scrutinising every move.

Embarrassing moments : Believing that tripping, spilling a drink, or mispronouncing a word is unforgettable for everyone around, when in fact most people quickly forget.

Research Behind the Spotlight Effect

There’s been a lot of research into the Spotlight Effect, but the most well-known study was by psychologists Thomas Gilovich and Kenneth Savitsky at Cornell University. They asked participants to don a highly embarrassing T-shirt (featuring Barry Manilow) and then estimate the percentage of people who would notice and remember what they were wearing. The participants overestimated this percentage, illustrating how we tend to exaggerate the extent to which others are scrutinizing our actions and appearance.

What Causes the Spotlight Effect?

Several psychological factors contribute to the Spotlight Effect:

Egocentric bias – We naturally see ourselves as the centre of events, assuming others do too. This can lead to misunderstandings, poor communication, and difficulties in interpersonal relationships or group decision-making situations.

The Illusion of Transparency - This is a cognitive bias where people overestimate the degree to which their personal thoughts, feelings, and mental states are apparent and visible to others. So people believe their internal experiences and motivations are far more transparent and observable to other people than is actually the case.

Social approval - As social animals, we are naturally driven by a strong desire to belong and be accepted within our social circles. This makes us hypersensitive to potential judgment and can amplify our sensitivity to potential criticism and even the slightest signs of disapproval from others.

Familiarity – We are so in tune with our own thoughts, feelings, and actions that when something deviates from our usual routine, such as making a mistake or experiencing a bad hair day, we are more likely to notice it. It not only feels painfully obvious to us, but we also tend to exaggerate it and assume that others will notice it just as clearly.

The Spotlight Effect and Glossophobia

For many, the Spotlight Effect intensifies glossophobia (the fear of public speaking) by exaggerating the perceived level of scrutiny and judgement. It feeds the fear and anxiety by making speakers overestimate how attentive their audience really is. This can trigger physical symptoms (sweaty palms, shaking, dry mouth, racing heart) and cognitive ones (blanking out, negative self-talk).

With all this going on, it’s difficult for us to understand that others are preoccupied with themselves in the same way, so even if they notice things you don’t want them to, they just don’t care. They are the centre of their own worlds (as you are of yours) so they just haven’t got time for your stuff as well as their own. And it’s astonishing what people don’t notice anyway, even when it’s right in front of their eyes.

Interestingly, anxiety often decreases once the focus shifts—such as during group discussions - when attention spreads across multiple speakers, the "spotlight" starts moving around, the attention is diluted and people quickly feel much calmer.

While the Spotlight Effect can fuel public speaking fear, it isn’t all bad. It can also encourage preparation, self-awareness, and pro-social behaviour—helping speakers present themselves well and connect with their audience.

Overcoming the Spotlight Effect in Public Speaking

Breaking free from the Spotlight Effect is essential for reducing public speaking anxiety and building confidence. Here are proven strategies:

1. Cognitive Reappraisal

Recognizing that people are often less focused on us than we think can provide a liberating perspective. Remind yourself that most people are wrapped up in their own thoughts and concerns (just as you are) and that the only person in the room who really cares about you is you.

2. Create Self-Distance

Creating self-distance can shift focus away from the feeling of being constantly observed. Look at yourself from a perspective other than your own. Imagine watching the scene (the meeting, presentation or party) from the other side of the room. Or taking a helicopter view from above. Or look at the bigger picture and take a "bird’s eye view" of your life, recognizing that the moment you're worried about is just one small part of a much larger picture.

3. Focus Outwards

Focusing outwards can anchor you in reality and detach you from your egocentric thoughts. Ground yourself in a meeting or at a social event by really paying attention to other people and what they are doing and saying, how they are looking and talking. Or by noticing and noting things or objects around you and naming them to yourself.

4. Embrace Authenticity

Being true to oneself, regardless of external judgment, can be a powerful antidote to the Spotlight Effect. Focusing on expressing our genuine thoughts, feelings and actions can liberate us from the burden of excessive self-consciousness. If you can allow yourself to be yourself when speaking in public, it’s so much easier (because you’re not pretending to be someone you're not) and you’ll come across as more likeable, credible and authentic. And that’s what people really respond to and appreciate.

5. Seek Feedback

Trusted feedback—or watching a recording of your own talk—often reveals that what felt painfully obvious wasn’t noticeable at all.

6. Recognize the Universality of Imperfection

Realizing that everyone makes mistakes and experiences moments of awkwardness or imperfection can help reduce the intensity of the Spotlight Effect. When you understand that it's normal and human for people to slip up or feel self-conscious, you begin to recognize that people aren't judging you as harshly as you might imagine. Or probably not judging you at all. If anyone is judging you in these situations, and probably quite unkindly, it’s you.

Conclusion

The Spotlight Effect magnifies self-consciousness and fuels glossophobia and public speaking anxiety. And it serves as a reminder of the intricate dance between our social nature and self-consciousness. By understanding its mechanisms and effects, we can begin to challenge its grip on our thoughts and behaviours. By embracing authenticity, empathy, and a healthy dose of perspective, we can step out of the spotlight and into a more liberated and fulfilling social experience.

And as Olin Miller once said:

“You probably wouldn’t worry about what people think of you if you could know how seldom they do.”

Or as I say:

“Don’t flatter yourself. It’s not all about you.”

If you struggle with glossophobia or the Spotlight Effect, support is available.

Every day at the Mindspa Phobia Clinic we help people around the world quickly overcome their fear of public speaking with The Public Speaking Phobia Cure

Sources

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th Edition)

Mindspa Phobia Clinic: Public Speaking Phobia

NIMH: Social Anxiety Disorder

ADAA: Social Anxiety Disorder

Psycom: Glossophobia

The harsh reality of life with an unusual phobia

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 14:22:01 GMT

Guy Baglow, clinical lead at the Mindspa Phobia Clinic, was interviewed in an article about the treatment of unusual phobias

Article by Emine Saner of The Guardian newspaper

21 November 2024

‘I can cope with someone eating one, although I might try to get as far away from them as possible.’

The news that a Swedish politician has rooms swept for the fruit prompted online mockery last week. But for those who face bizarre and irrational fears – from buttons to crumpets – the everyday struggle is far from amusing.

As ever when it comes to bananas, Sarah has been on high alert this week, after the revelation that a Swedish government minister, Paulina Brandberg, has a banana phobia severe enough that aides must ensure there are “no traces” of the fruit anywhere in her vicinity. “We will secure the conference so that there are no bananas,” promised the organisers of one event, in emails leaked to a Swedish newspaper.

While most of the coverage has been mocking, for Sarah, it is entirely understandable – she also has a banana phobia. She is so attuned to the threat that she can sniff out a banana, or a recently consumed one, in a room. “Then, I often have a strong disgust response,” she says. This usually involves feeling sick. “There’s also a hypervigilance, so I’ll be acutely aware of where they are and feel them drawing my attention.”

It wasn’t always the case. Like most babies and toddlers, Sarah loved bananas. Then, when she was about four, she went off them, seemingly overnight. Sarah, a neuroscientist, says she doesn’t remember any “adverse incident”, but adds: “Based on the theory of phobias, one would hypothesise that something had happened, that I’d interacted with one negatively, given it came on so fast.”

Banana-phobe Swedish minister’s staff insisted on ‘no traces in the room’

For those of us who have never interacted with a banana negatively, it can be hard to understand, which Sarah accepts. As a teenager, it was embarrassing, “because it’s a bit more of a comedy fruit”. At university, her housemates would prank her: “They’d hide them in my bed and leave little notes.” She laughs – she is able to see the funny side, even while barely disguising her disgust. “They were my friends; it’s gentle teasing.” At least the bananas were not unpeeled. If it had been a naked banana? “Oh my God,” she says, voice rising. “I can’t even imagine. I’d make them change the sheets.”

These days, Sarah largely has it under control. She can go to the supermarket and steer clear of the bananas, comforted by the fact the store is large and airy. It’s worse in a meeting room with a fruit bowl on the table, a banana squatting menacingly. “I’ll just sit far away from it. I can cope with someone eating one, although I might try to get as far away from them as possible. But when someone surprises me or I can’t escape, I might get more panicky.”

Once, she was on a flight and woke to discover everyone around her had been delivered their morning snack – a banana. Recently, she was on a bus and had to move away from a discarded peel. “Most of the time, you can avoid them. I’ve learned to find tactful ways of removing myself without making it obvious,” she says.

Sarah has published research on ways to treat other phobias, although she has no intention of trying to cure herself. “Even though it’s not necessarily practical to have a banana phobia, the thought of having to go through exposure therapy feels so horrific that I prefer to keep the phobia.” She has a scientist’s interest, though, and has tracked down stories about others with rare phobias. “There seem to be things that you would think are really unusual that come up a bit more prominently than chance – bananas seems to be one of them,” she says. “Buttons is another. It doesn’t seem to be completely random.”

The rational side of our brain tells us we’re being irrational, but we still can’t stop feeling that way

Fear of spiders or snakes is understandable from an evolutionary perspective, she says. With bananas, “I’ve speculated that they have quite a distinctive smell and texture, which seems to be entwined with a disgust response”. Perhaps our survival instinct, she suggests, is to avoid foods that are “mushy”, which might indicate they are rotten.

Sarah knows her banana phobia is odd, although its comic nature brings its own problems (nobody, surely, would put a spider in the bed of an arachnophobe). She doesn’t tend to tell people, even though it affects her. In her professional life, she worries that “it might make me seem ridiculous and less credible” (neuroscience, like politics, is still dominated by men).

“The rational side of our brain tells us we’re being irrational, but we still can’t stop feeling that way,” says Dave Smithson, a spokesperson for Anxiety UK. Phobias tend to be learned – my arachnophobia probably comes from my mother, who probably got it from her mother, and so on. But they can also develop, at any age, due to trauma.

Smithson says Anxiety UK has a long list of reported phobias: “Things you just never would have imagined – shadows, animal skin, railways, fear of gravity. What would cause that? But it can happen. People have fears about all sorts of things.” What makes it harder for those with more unusual phobias is the fear of being ridiculed. “They don’t talk about it, they don’t seek help. People will organise their lives around not facing that fear.”

Because many people keep their phobias to themselves and few seek treatment, phobias are not a well-researched area of anxiety and their prevalence is tricky to ascertain. The most recent Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey for England, which is 10 years old, found that 2.4% of people had a phobia. In the US, an estimated 12.5% of adults experience a phobia at some point, according to the National Institute of Mental Health.

The “medicalisation” of a phobia is a relatively recent concept, says Joanna Bourke, a historian and the author of Fear: A Cultural History. “People have been frightened of things for ever, but ‘phobias’ is a late 18th-century concept,” she says. “Even such a thing as agoraphobia, which is the most researched of all the phobias – the fear of open spaces – is a late-19th-century invention. To some extent, they are culturally constructed. What we are afraid of reflects new technologies, new things in our environment.” Our ancestors may well have been afraid of spiders or heights, but they won’t have had a phobia about air travel.

Kate Summerscale details unusual phobias in The Book of Phobias and Manias. Although clowns have been disturbing for centuries, a phobia of clowns (coulrophobia) is a late-20th-century idea. Summerscale traces it to the conviction in 1980 of an Illinois

serial killer and children’s entertainer, then the popularity of Stephen King’s horror novel It.

Summerscale traces trypophobia – a fear of a cluster of small holes – to an image that spread around the internet in 2003, supposedly showing a maggot-infested breast. It was fake, but plenty of people have expressed their horror of clustered holes in everything from crumpets to, in 2019, the grouped camera lenses on the back of the iPhone 11 Pro. (Evolutionary psychologists have theorised that being averse to clustered holes or bumps could be our warning system against infectious disease.)

People can develop exaggerated fears of things that most of us are frightened of – death, illness – but one theory for specific, unusual fears is that it involves “some kind of displacement from something that’s unconsciously frightening”, says Bourke. An object such as a banana or a ball of cotton wool becomes a stand-in for the underlying fear.

Cognitive behavioural therapy, which can include gradual exposure to the fear, is widely used to treat phobias. Virtual reality has been introduced, too; one study found that “very brief exposure” therapy – so quick that the person isn’t even aware they have seen an image – may work.

Guy Baglow, the clinical lead at the Mindspa Phobia Clinic in London’s Harley Street , uses neurolinguistic programming (NLP) – a way of changing thinking patterns – to disrupt the association between an object and fear. Although NLP, which has been around since the 1970s, has its detractors – who say there has not been enough rigorous evidence for it – Baglow insists it can work quickly for phobias.

In 20 years, he has come across banana phobia only twice, he says. In one case, a woman had, as a child, accidentally electrocuted herself at the same time her eyes fixed on a bowl of bananas. “The bananas got associated with the shock,” he says. “The mind creates patterns so it can avoid things in future that might be dangerous or threatening.”

Baglow says one man had a tomato phobia associated with cruelty he experienced in childhood. “You can have a phobia of anything, because trauma can attach to pretty much any object or situation,” he says. “It’s the survival response gone slightly awry.” Phobias can have a significant impact, no matter how ridiculous they may seem to others. “Avoidance, which is one of the key definers of phobia, can lead to all kinds of behaviours and can really restrict people’s lives.”

Avoidance is Keir Gale’s main strategy, although it’s hard – he has a phobia of buttons, which is common enough to have been given a name: koumpounophobia. Buttons, once you start to notice them, are everywhere. “I have to avert my eyes if they’re obvious on

somebody’s clothing,” says Gale. He has had to explain to people why he can’t look at them. What happens when he encounters a button? “I feel nauseous. If I touch one, which you have to do from time to time, I have to wipe my fingers afterwards, because I feel like they’re dirty and greasy and generally unpleasant.” He experiences “a kind of crawling sensation in the skin”. Just the sound of buttons from a shirt or jacket sleeve clattering on a table makes him squirm. “Almost every sensory input is affected.”

He has had what he describes as a revulsion, rather than a fear, for as long as he can remember – his mother would have to remove buttons from his clothing. Gale, who is retired, sometimes had to wear formal clothing for work, which was difficult. These days, he can wear trousers with a button fastening as long as it can be covered by a belt. “Duvet covers have always been a problem and I’ve tried to find ones with poppers. If I think my feet might touch them while I’m in bed, I get very anxious.” Buttons on upholstery are horrifying.

I fit it into my day – I anticipate the amount of extra time it’s going to take me so I don’t have to walk across grass

He is a little embarrassed about it, he says, adding that those who do know “don’t really have any idea how deep the impact is, so they don’t necessarily take precautions”. They don’t ridicule him, but there is certainly bewilderment. “Which is fair enough – I’m bewildered. For them, it’s nothing, but to me it’s very real. My mind won’t let me believe that other people aren’t bothered by them.” He suspects he is neurodiverse and that his phobia is related. I realise that, throughout our phone call, he hasn’t once uttered the word “button”. “I hate it. I don’t like having to say the word.”

Bettina Hunt, an author of romcom novels, has a phobia of grass. “I just don’t like what might be underneath it, like the mud and things coming out of it.” It’s hard to explain, she says – irrationality being central to many phobias – but it’s not merely a fear of dirt or grime. She can tolerate a lush green lawn, perhaps at a stately home, “but I wouldn’t want to walk on it”. The idea of sitting on grass is impossible. “Picnics? Absolute nightmare. I’ll do anything to avoid them. If I absolutely have to, then I will stand up.” She has never walked barefoot on a lawn. She has hated grass for as long as she can remember. She never wanted to go to the park, like other children, and avoided PE at school. Being made to do a wheelbarrow race, on her hands, her face close to the strands, as another child held her feet, remains a visceral and revolting memory. She has a patio, but has never been to the shed at the bottom of the garden, because it involves crossing grass. Hunt lives by a green, which the rest of her family cut across; she takes the long way round. “I fit it into my day – I anticipate the amount of extra time it’s going to take me so I don’t have to walk across grass.”

Polly Barrett has a balloon phobia, which has meant literally running away from the things. “When I see a balloon, I usually start to get really hot and sweaty. My breathing gets quite shallow and fast and I have the feeling of fight or flight,” she says. “Then comes extreme embarrassment, because it’s ridiculous.” Once, she was in a restaurant when someone sat at the next table with a toddler who had a balloon. The more Barrett tried to suppress her rising discomfort, the worse it got: “I ended up bursting into tears and running out.”

Her fear comes from the balloon’s potential to pop – she can’t handle the sight of a balloon waving around, or two balloons rubbing together – and is linked to her other phobia: sudden loud noises. She has experienced this for as long as she can remember. As a child, a noisy boom or loud music could make her burst into tears; even now, a surprising bang, like a car tyre blowing out, can provoke the same reaction.

Intriguingly, Barrett is a musician – her sensitivity to sound is obviously a benefit in making music, even if it comes with the potential for shock. When she works with sound engineers, she tells them she can’t handle the popping or squeaking that comes from tweaking equipment. Friends ensure no balloons are present at the parties to which she takes her children. These days, she is more open about it and people are understanding. “It’s only in the last couple of years that I’ve properly acknowledged and owned it, because for ages I was so embarrassed.” She thinks she should probably do something about it, “because I don’t know what it’s linked to in the rest of my psyche. If I got over this fear, maybe it would give me this whole new lease of life.”

A cause for celebration, perhaps – at which she may tolerate balloons and the popping of champagne corks.

A glossary of Glossophobia and the Fear of Public Speaking

Sat, 18 Jan 2025 18:15:37 GMT

Understand key terms related to Glossophobia and therapeutic approaches to overcome it

Anxiety

An emotional and physical response characterized by worry, tension, and nervousness. In relation to glossophobia, it often manifests as fear of public speaking or anticipation of negative judgment. Emotional symptoms include confusion, dread, fear, self-doubt, shame, negative self-talk and loss of self-esteem. Physical symptoms result from the fight-or-flight response (the basic survival response) and include a rush of adrenalin, rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking, dry mouth, changes in voice, facial freezing, difficulty concentrating and, at its worst, a panic attack.

Sources:

Mindspa Phobia Clinic: Is Glossophobia a Social Anxiety Disorder? Glossophobia.co.uk

Medical News Today: Glossophobia: An Overview. Medical News Today

NSAC: Public Speaking Anxiety

Avoidance

Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, is often perpetuated by avoidance behaviours. People may completely avoid public speaking situations, manipulate them to minimize their role, or escape them altogether. This reinforces the fear by associating public speaking with negative outcomes. While temporarily relieving anxiety, avoidance hinders career growth and limits personal development.

These behaviours can persist for years, so glossophobia can impact many areas of life. However, when unavoidable situations arise (like wedding speeches, eulogies or professional presentations), most people seek professional help to overcome their public speaking fear and improve their quality of life.

Sources:

Mindspa Phobia Clinic: Glossophobia and Avoidance

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

A structured psychotherapy method aimed at changing unhelpful thought patterns and behaviours. The cognitive aspect targets thoughts, beliefs, and assumptions. The behavioural aspect focuses on how thoughts influence actions.

While CBT can be helpful for some, individuals with glossophobia (the fear of public speaking) often find it of limited help. This is because intellectually (cognitively) they understand public speaking situations are safe, so the cognitive aspect of CBT - trying to correct their thinking and show them that their responses don’t make sense - doesn’t offer a great insight. Moreover, the high anxiety levels associated with glossophobia can make gradual exposure therapy, a core component of CBT, feel overwhelming and potentially exacerbate the fear, hindering progress in overcoming this anxiety disorder.

Cognitive Restructuring

A CBT technique that identifies and replaces irrational or negative beliefs with positive, realistic thoughts. For public speaking, it can help individuals reframe fears about failure or judgment. This may reduce anxiety and build confidence in speaking situations.

Exposure Therapy

A gradual approach to reducing anxiety by repeatedly facing fear-inducing situations. In glossophobia treatment, it involves practicing public speaking in controlled, increasingly challenging scenarios. The aim is to desensitize the individual to the fear trigger.

Fear Response

The body’s automatic reaction to perceived threats, such as public speaking, involving physical and emotional changes. Symptoms may include sweating, trembling, and rapid breathing. This response can interfere with performance as individuals start to focus on what’s happening to them rather than what they are talking about.

Fight or Flight Response

A physiological reaction to stress or danger, preparing the body to confront or escape a threat. In glossophobia, this response is triggered by the prospect of public speaking. It includes symptoms like increased heart rate, adrenaline release, and muscle tension.

Fast Phobia Cure

A neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) technique, sometimes called The Rewind Technique, designed to quickly diminish intense fears, phobias and trauma. It works by reprogramming the brain’s associations with fearful situations, such as public speaking. The method produces reliable, rapid and lasting results.

Flooding

Flooding is an intense form of exposure therapy involving prolonged and intense exposure to the feared situation or trigger. With glossophobia, individuals are immediately exposed to their most feared public speaking scenario. This intense exposure aims to evoke the fear response fully and repeatedly until it diminishes and extinguishes over time. In the treatment of glossophobia and the fear of public speaking, flooding is less common than gradual exposure, but neither is particularly recommended or helpful.

Glossophobia

Glossophobia, also known as speech anxiety, is the intense fear of public speaking. It's a type of social anxiety disorder that can cause significant distress and interfere with careers and daily life.

Causes of glossophobia :

The exact causes of glossophobia are not fully understood, but several factors may contribute:

• Genetics: A predisposition to anxiety may be inherited.

• Past experiences: Negative experiences with public speaking, such as being teased or ridiculed, can contribute to the development of glossophobia.

• Social learning: Observing others who are fearful of public speaking can lead to learned anxiety.

• Perfectionism: High expectations of oneself and a fear of failure can exacerbate glossophobia.

• Negative thinking: Catastrophic thinking and negative self-talk can fuel anxiety and fear.

Physical symptoms of glossophobia:

• Rapid heartbeat

• Sweating

• Trembling

• Shortness of breath

• Nausea

• Dizziness

Psychological symptoms of glossophobia:

• Racing thoughts

• Loss of focus

• Negative self-talk

• Fear of judgment

• Fear of looking stupid

• Fear of making mistakes

• Feeling overwhelmed or out of control

Sources:

Mindspa Phobia Clinic: Public Speaking Phobia

Healthline: Glossophobia: What It Is and How to Treat It

National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH): https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/social-anxiety-disorder

Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA): https://adaa.org/

Osmosis: Glossophobia: What Is It, Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment, and More

Guided Imagery

A relaxation technique that uses visualization to imagine calm, successful public speaking experiences. This mental rehearsal helps reduce anxiety and build confidence. Guided imagery combines imagination with relaxation practices to create a positive mindset.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is psychotherapy using hypnosis as the main tool to access the subconscious mind and address fears. For glossophobia, hypnotherapy aims to reduce fear triggers and build confidence in speaking situations. Hypnotherapy can complement other anxiety treatments.

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

A psychological approach that examines the connection between thoughts, language, and behaviors. NLP helps individuals decondition fear patterns and responses and develop calm responses when speaking in public. Techniques focus on changing mental associations and enhancing self-belief.

Panic

A sudden and overwhelming surge of fear or anxiety, often marked by physical symptoms like rapid breathing and dizziness. In glossophobia, panic may occur before or during public speaking. Effective treatments can prevent or manage panic episodes.

Performance Anxiety

Fear or nervousness about performing in front of an audience, often linked to self-doubt or fear of judgment. In public speaking, this can hinder communication and confidence.

Public Speaking

The act of delivering a speech or presentation to an audience, often a source of anxiety for those with glossophobia. The terms can refer to less formal situations like speaking in meetings and on calls. It requires clear communication and confidence, which can be improved with practice and training. Overcoming public speaking fear opens personal and professional opportunities.

Public Speaking Course

A program designed to teach skills and strategies for effective public speaking. These courses typically include practice presentations, feedback, and anxiety management techniques. They often don’t address the fear and anxiety around public speaking and so may be of limited benefit to people who suffer from glossophobia and want to overcome it.

Psychotherapy

A therapeutic approach that explores and addresses emotional and psychological challenges. For glossophobia, psychotherapy helps uncover the root causes of fear and develop coping mechanisms. It can involve CBT, exposure therapy, or other techniques.

Self-Esteem

A person’s sense of self-worth and confidence in their abilities. Low self-esteem can intensify glossophobia and hinder public speaking performance. Boosting self-esteem is often a key part of overcoming public speaking fears.

Self-Medication

The use of substances like alcohol or drugs to manage public speaking anxiety. While it may provide temporary relief, self-medication often leads to dependency and worsens anxiety over time.

Social Anxiety

A fear of social interactions, including public speaking, driven by concerns about judgment or embarrassment. Social anxiety can significantly impact personal and professional life.

Stage Fright

Stage fright and glossophobia are often used interchangeably to describe the excessive and irrational fear of public speaking or performing in front of others. While "stage fright" is a more common and informal term, often associated with performers like actors, singers, and musicians, glossophobia is the clinically recognized term for this anxiety disorder. Glossophobia encompasses a range of symptoms, including fear, anxiety, and even panic attacks, experienced during public speaking situations.

The Spotlight Effect

The Spotlight Effect is a cognitive bias where individuals overestimate how much others notice and judge their appearance, behavior, or perceived flaws. This can significantly exacerbate glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, as individuals fear intense scrutiny and judgment from the audience. They may believe that minor mistakes or perceived inadequacies are glaringly obvious to everyone present, leading to increased anxiety and a heightened fear of negative evaluation. Recognizing and challenging this bias is crucial for individuals with glossophobia to manage their anxiety and improve their public speaking confidence.

You can read more about the Spotlight Effect and its impact on public speaking anxiety here: The Spotlight Effect and Glossophobia

Unconscious Mind

The part of the mind that influences thoughts, feelings, and behaviors outside conscious awareness. Fears like glossophobia often stem from unconscious beliefs or past experiences. Therapies like hypnotherapy and NLP target the unconscious mind to reframe fears.

How do people with glossophobia limit their fear and anxiety around speaking in public?

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 14:55:08 GMT

Avoidance is a key ingredient in any phobia. It’s a behaviour pattern where people keep away from situations that trigger their anxiety and fear in order to escape the panic and terror that will result. It’s a very simple and effective survival response.

How Avoidance Reinforces Glossophobia and Limits Career Growth

With glossophobia , or the fear of public speaking, avoiding speeches, presentations or meetings may temporarily relieve anxiety but it reinforces the fear over time because whenever the situation is avoided, the sense of relief strengthens the idea that public speaking is terrifying and something they shouldn’t be doing. This feeling of relief is the brain releasing dopamine – the “feel good” neurotransmitter – to reward the “survival” of the imagined threat and reinforce the “good” avoidant behaviour.

In the workplace, avoidance can be career-limiting as sufferers avoid opportunities to advance into roles that require more public speaking.

Glossophobia: 3 Types of Avoidance Behaviours and How They Manifest

Glossophobia elicits three types of avoidance behaviour:

Complete Avoidance: Just not being there to do the speech, deliver the presentation, talk in a meeting or perform on the stage. This may involve feigning illness, booking strategic holidays or inventing some crisis that requires them to be elsewhere. Some people choose a career path that just doesn’t involve speaking in public. The latter option is becoming harder as most jobs now involve some element of speaking in public.

Partial Avoidance : Manipulating people or managing the speaking situation to reduce their fear and anxiety to make it more bearable. This may include delivering a very short speech, sitting rather than standing, getting others to speak alongside them, limiting the number of people or turning their camera off in an online meeting so others cannot see their discomfort.

Escape : Leaving the meeting, conference or event early on some invented pretext like having to take an important call or attend to a family emergency. In online meetings rising panic may prompt some people to cut the call and pretend they have a bad connection.

Many people with glossophobia will use these avoidance and safety behaviours for years, putting huge amounts of energy and effort into not speaking in public. But often they come up against something they just can’t avoid - like a wedding speech, a eulogy or accepting an award – and reach out and get professional help.

Sources:

Healthline: Glossophobia: What It Is and How to Treat It

Bodie: Defining, explaining, and treating public speaking anxiety, Communication Education, 59(1), 70-105

Osmosis: Glossophobia: What Is It, Causes, Diagnosis, Treatment and More

British Psychological Society : Facing the Fear of Public Speaking

Is Glossophobia a Social Anxiety Disorder?

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 16:15:42 GMT

Glossophobia, also known as speech anxiety or public speaking phobia, is a common fear that affects millions of people worldwide. The term originates from the Greek words 'glossa,' meaning tongue, and 'phobos,' meaning fear or dread. And many people ask if glossophobia is a form of social anxiety. To answer this question we need to look at the nature of glossophobia.

Understanding Glossophobia

Glossophobia refers to an intense fear or anxiety associated with speaking in public to any group of people. It's not just about feeling nervous before giving a presentation, talking in a meeting or speaking at a social event: it's an extreme form of fear that can cause physical symptoms which include a build-up of dread and fear before speaking and then rapid heartbeat, sweating, trembling, dry mouth and even panic attacks when actually speaking.

Many people don’t like speaking in public but they can do it. On a scale of 0-10 (where 0 is completely comfortable and 10 is having a panic attack) they are probably operating at a 3 or 4. So some anxiety around speaking. But someone with glossophobia will be high on the scale for hours or even days beforehand and then reach 9 or 10 when actually speaking.

People with glossophobia often go to great lengths to avoid situations where they might have to speak in public. This could include declining invitations to events where they might be asked to speak or avoiding jobs that require public speaking.

Social Anxiety and Social Phobia

Social anxiety, commonly referred to as Social Anxiety Disorder (or SAD), is an umbrella term for an intense fear of social situations and more generally refers to anxiety experienced when directly interacting socially with others in a broad range of social encounters such as when meeting new people, starting conversations and speaking on the phone.

In their giant Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, The American Psychiatric Association’s definition of SAD now includes social phobia which is more specifically associated with performance (like eating in company, using public transport or singing in a choir) where people feel they may be watched, scrutinized and judged by others while in the spotlight (the so-called Spotlight Effect). This obviously includes speaking in public which is why glossophobia is often considered a form of social anxiety.

Glossophobia and Social Anxiety

So while it’s true to say that glossophobia as a form of social phobia falls within the much wider category of social anxiety, it's essential to note that not everyone with glossophobia suffers from social anxiety. Some people may only experience intense fear when asked to speak in public but feel perfectly comfortable and confident in other social situations.

On the other hand, those with social anxiety disorder typically experience fear in a wide range of social situations – not just when asked to speak publicly. Therefore, while there can be an overlap between glossophobia and SAD – and although both can produce the same types of physical, behavioral, and emotional symptoms - they are not synonymous.

So it’s more accurate to say that glossophobia is a well-defined and narrow subset of social anxiety. In fact, most people who get help with public speaking phobia are otherwise confident at work and socially. But when it comes to having to speak in front of a group of people, the same thing doesn’t apply and their phobia kicks in and they feel anxious and frightened. Sometimes the fear may spill over a little into social situations when they feel they are in the spotlight (like suddenly being asked to tell a story to everyone at a dinner party) but they are otherwise fine in social interactions.

Conclusion

So, yes, technically, glossophobia can be considered a type of social anxiety. But this label may be unhelpful. Because most people with a fear of public speaking have simply picked up very specific anxiety responses to usually very specific speaking situations. For them to think they have some form of social anxiety may incorrectly label them with social anxiety and lead them to seek treatment and therapy not specifically directed or relevant to their singular anxiety about speaking in public. Instead, it can be more useful to think of those with social anxiety and glossophobia as falling within these groups:

So if you have a phobia of public speaking, you probably don’t need to worry that, according to a hefty psychiatric manual, you have a big mental health condition called Social Anxiety Disorder. You most likely have a very specific fear of public speaking that can be cured with direct specialist help.

If you are seeking treatment for glossophobia, start here.

Sources

American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. (5th Edition). Washington, DC.

http://dsm.psychiatryonline.org

Social Phobia Subtypes in the National Comorbidity Survey

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/full/10.1176/ajp.155.5.613

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/social-anxiety-disorder

https://adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/social-anxiety-disorder

https://www.psycom.net/glossophobia-fear-of-public-speaking

Lucy Atkins tries a quick cure for glossophobia

Tue, 01 Jan 2019 00:00:00 GMT

Lucy Atkins writing in The Telegraph, Saturday 1 November 2008

“I could probably cure just about any phobia in five minutes” says Guy Baglow, psychologist and founder of the Phobia Clinic. As I lie back in his comfy Harley Street offices, it would be an understatement to say that I feel cynical. Still, my glossophobia — fear of public speaking — is the most common problem Baglow treats. It’s estimated that as many as 75 per cent of us suffer from it, hence the old joke that the average person at a funeral would rather be in the casket than doing the eulogy.

Currently, Baglow’s schedule is packed with nervy City bankers riding out the credit crunch. “They’re terrified that if they can’t present themselves brilliantly they’ll be out,” he says.

A phobia can develop over several years or strike suddenly. “It can happen to anyone,” says Baglow. His clients tend to be high-octane career people, hobbled by their fear of public speaking. One was a police chief, who, although confident when dealing with terrorists, had a paralysing dread of making a presentation.

Then there was the top Texan salesman who was used to presenting material to hundreds but who froze on day one of a new job in front of only 20 people. His confidence plummeted and, like me, he ended up on Baglow’s couch.

My own presentational nadir came 18 months ago when, at short notice, I had to introduce a famous writer to 300 people at a literary festival. The sea of faces triggered a powerful physical reaction: my limbs shook, my mouth dried up and my mind went blank. I was just about able to speak, waveringly, but feared that I might collapse at any moment. I have since, through dread, turned down interesting speaking and interviewing opportunities. “People go to enormous efforts to avoid what scares them,” says Baglow. “This can seriously hamper careers.”

Sometimes the cause is deep-rooted. One City bigwig developed a sweaty back, neck and shoulders when giving speeches. During his treatment, it emerged that, in childhood, his father would stand over him threateningly as he recited his times tables.

Baglow’s technique, known as the “fast phobia cure”, breaks these negative psychological associations and replaces them with new, calm and positive ones.

I close my eyes, put on headphones and let Baglow’s hypnotic voice take me back to that awful literary event. I run through it in my head as if watching a black-and-white movie. We fast-forward my “movie”, then rewind it at high speed, several times. This “deconditioning” exercise removes negative emotions (there is no time to feel them), creating a sense of control. I then envisage a confident “future self’ before an admiring audience, and “fast-forward rewind” this scenario a few times. At the end of the two-hour session I feel weirdly confident: I could almost rush straight to Speakers’ Corner and let rip.

“No one needs to live with a phobia,” says Baglow. He claims to have cured many phobias — about anything from tomatoes to sharks and, memorably, male strippers — in a couple of sessions. There is no need for Freudian analysis, tears or tearing out of hair, he says.

Whether I am cured remains to be seen. But one client, a quaking banker with a public-speaking phobia, has just enrolled on a stand-up comedy course. There is hope for us all.

Crisps, keyboards, pens – how do you treat an unusual phobia?

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 15:35:15 GMT

When you are plagued by unusual fears, people’s reactions can be the hardest thing to bear. One writer with a phobia of jewellery explores what can be done

Chris Evans, The Guardian, 12 June 2017

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jun/12/how-do-you-treat-an-unusual-phobia ?

If a friend confided in you they had a fear of door handles or toenail clippings, would you laugh or sympathise? The instinctive reaction might be the former, but we can all get phobias of absolutely anything, and some can be debilitating. I have lived with my own fear of jewellery for as long as I can remember. If you were to place a metallic necklace or earring into my hands, it would send a shiver through my body, I’d feel instantly sick, have to throw the object away and wash my hands. The response from family, friends and colleagues has only ever been amusement or bemusement. I can live a normal life, despite consternation from some for not wearing a wedding ring, and have never got to the root cause.

Phobias are described as an overwhelming and debilitating fear of something. They are more pronounced than just fears alone. A dislike of rats, for example, is pretty common. But if it extends to musophobia (a fear of mice or rats), then it can be life-changing. “One person called our helpline who was so scared of rats they couldn’t even say the word ‘rat’ itself,” explains Trilby Breckman, a development manager at the charity organisation Triumph Over Phobia (TOP UK) . “It was stopping her going out for fear of seeing one.”

Breckman cites similar stories, including a teenager with a phobia of crisps who struggled at social occasions. Another woman had a phobia of bananas, which caused problems at work and meant she couldn’t go to the supermarket without panicking. But it was other people’s reactions that caused the most discomfort. Breckman says that when a close relative found out, “she posted a photo on Instagram of herself with a banana milkshake captioned: ‘Look what I’m having!’ Ahead of a family holiday, she sent another saying: ‘I’ve already bought my bikini,’ and it had bananas on it.” Unfortunately, these kinds of responses, particularly on social media, can be quite common. The internet can be a useful tool, such as with phobia forums where phobics can share their stories and experiences – but, equally, it opens up a world of unhelpful reactions.

The problem with phobias is that they often don’t make sense. Outsiders question why the sufferer is afraid of birdseed, camels, red paint or jewellery. I’ve been asked so many times: “How can you be afraid of jewellery? Followed by, “It’s not going to hurt you.” But they don’t realise it’s a different part of the brain, the subconscious, where we have patterns and responses around spiders or whatever the phobia might be, which are triggered and make us feel uncomfortable.

Delving beneath the surface to reveal the deeper – and potentially darker – causes can be a disturbing but ultimately rewarding journey. The “ fast phobia cure ” is one common treatment method that targets the traumatic episode or experience that caused the phobia. It involves getting the phobic to reimagine the incident, but from a different perspective. “It’s like watching a film in the cinema, so they’re not inside the experience, but looking at it from a detached point of view,” explains Guy Baglow, the director of Mindspa Phobia Clinic . “The problem with phobias is that the person can keep replaying the scary memory in their mind, that is how it is sustained. By getting them to replay the memory in a disassociated way, the emotional response doesn’t trigger. You can then get them to replay the film again and change a few things. Rapidly it will then just become a normal memory reclassified as non-threatening.”

Baglow cites an interesting case of a woman who had a fear of spiders that stemmed from the second world war. “When she was a little girl, there was an air raid and she and her mum ran to the shelter in the garden. A loud bomb exploded nearby, she was absolutely terrified and screamed, and it was at that point that a spider dropped down in front of her face,” says Baglow. “Of course, the spider then became associated with that fear. So things that are in that emotional snapshot can also trigger the same response. It’s called pattern matching. We used fast phobia therapy to change how that memory was experienced and removed the phobic trigger.”

Another common treatment method is exposure therapy, part of the cognitive behavioural therapy approach. “We can recreate the panic sensation and symptoms people feel through exercises in the sessions, such as hyperventilation, which encourage them to breathe very quickly,” explains Linda Thorden, a cognitive behavioural therapist and clinical psychologist. “On some occasions, people with certain phobias, such as agoraphobia, think they are going to die when they have a panic attack. We try to demonstrate to them that they are not going to. We would then gradually encourage them to tackle the phobia itself through exposure and desensitisation.”

TOP UK holds weekly self-help groups, often run by former phobics. “There’s no secret tablet,” says Breckman. “People have to work at it. We had one guy who came to us for six weeks and never said a word. He just sat there. Then eventually he managed to say: ‘I’ve got a social phobia,’ and ran out of the room. But he came back the following week and within a year he was running the group himself.”

Some phobias can even be life-threatening – such as a fear of needles. “This can be a real problem if someone has cancer or high blood pressure and needs injections,” says Nicky Lidbetter, chief executive of Anxiety UK . “Over the years, hundreds of people have contacted us with very serious conditions, but not been able to access treatment because of their anxiety. They can’t cope with hospitals or medical procedures. So, actually, their phobia becomes bigger than the cancer, diabetes or high blood pressure that needs treating.”

Similarly, emetophobia – a fear of being sick – can negatively affect people’s lives. One phobic (who wishes not to be named) says: “I couldn’t have children because I was terrified I might get morning sickness during the pregnancy.” Lidbetter mentions others who heavily restrict their diets or retreat from society altogether when there is a sickness bug around.

“Emetophobia can be very disabling. It often develops into obsessive compulsive-type symptoms as well, in terms of cleaning and checking, and trying to avoid any risk of contamination,” says David Veale, a consultant psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS trust and a specialist in emetophobia. As for the cause of the condition, Lidbetter and Veale explain it could be from a bad experience of being sick as a child or seeing a parent being violently sick.

Other treatment methods include hypnotherapy, mindfulness and flooding: a full-immersion behavioural therapy in which the patient has to endure the phobic object for a prolonged period (eg a room full of spiders) until they eventually calm down. There have also been new developments in virtual-reality therapy. “We are testing VR for emetophobia,” explains Veale. “It’s essentially putting the goggles on and seeing yourself vomit. It sounds nasty, but it’s about experiencing the triggers – the smells, sounds and sights.” However, some remain sceptical. “It’s a nice idea, but I think they’re getting too excited by their own technology,” argues Baglow. “We don’t need virtual reality because the brain is the best virtual-reality generator we have. Indeed, that is why we can get so frightened because our minds can create all sorts of disaster movies and ‘what if’ scenarios.”

Overall, the more that can be done to raise awareness, the better. “We need to get to a stage where everyone can openly talk about their phobia problems without being ridiculed or judged,” says Lidbetter. As for me, I’ve been convinced to try therapy, but am still deciding which path to take.

The Fast Phobia Cure *

Thu, 02 Nov 2017 00:00:00 GMT

The Fast Phobia Cure (also known as the Rewind Technique or, in Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP), as “The Visual-Kinaesthetic Dissociation Technique”) is an advanced tool to decondition phobias and trauma (such as PTSD). Its efficacy has been assessed in many academic papers such as the work by Gray & Liotta. It’s safe, gentle and without the drugs, scare tactics, psychological archaeology and exposure used by the older and less effective phobia treatments.

The Fast Phobia Cure* is now widely accepted as the most reliable and effective treatment for all kinds of phobias, even long-standing and severe ones. It’s probably the single most reliable and effective tool in psychotherapy today and is being used more and more as a front-line treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder including trauma caused by accidents, assaults, war and witnessing critical incidents.

If you have ever seen someone being almost instantly released from their phobia on TV and thought “Wow, how did they do that?” you can bet the therapist used The Fast Phobia Cure.

So how does it work?

A phobia is driven by a pattern-matching process whereby the unconscious mind creates “fear templates” around “dangerous” things or situations to try and keep you safe from the imagined threat in future. It then broadly matches these patterns to more and more situations as a phobia develops.

What Fast Phobia Cure does, in a very creative way, is interfere with those patterns – it subtly changes the templates by changing the way we experience the memories – so when the unconscious mind tries to match the patterns, they don’t match anymore and the anxiety is no longer triggered. The templates (memories) will still be there, they will just feel different. The emotional tag will be gone. The phobia just won’t work anymore.

This can all be done very quickly because the brain learns very fast. It learned to be phobic very fast. Teaching it how not to be phobic can be, and is necessarily, equally fast. It does not take long-term treatment. The mind can then start to generalise outwards, but this time in a very positive way, as it begins to associate more and more situations with feelings of calm and control.

One of the great things about The Fast Phobia Cure is that it is non-intrusive: the therapist doesn’t need to know the precise details of the traumatic memories or phobic encounters because the sufferer brings their content (their experiences) to the process.

The methodology of the Fast Phobia Cure was first developed by Richard Bandler, one of the founders of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) – the new science of excellence and personal change. It is so effective at detraumatising memories that it is being used more and more as a front-line treatment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder including trauma caused by accidents, assaults, war and witnessing critical incidents.

Fear or Phobia?

Fri, 27 Oct 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Phobias are not the same as normal fear responses.

It is normal, for example, to experience some fear when on a precipice or in the presence of a snake. But not to be terrified at the thought of a high place or snake. It is the overwhelming terror that distinguishes a phobia.

If you have a phobia you will be able to induce some of the common fear responses – shortness of breath, sweating, dizziness, nausea, increased heart-rate, flushing, shaking – just by thinking about the trigger.

You are likely to have only one phobia. You may have other fears, but probably only one phobia. People generally seem to have the capacity for one proper phobia.

Types of Phobia

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 17:32:17 GMT

Our clients bring with them some very interesting examples of phobias. These phobias fall into two types:

Specific or Simple phobias

These are phobias linked to a specific object or situation. Examples are spiders, snakes, bees, worms, frogs, birds, dogs, cats, hedgehogs, goldfish, sharks, vomiting, driving , flying clowns, balloons, thunder, needles, blood, dentists, beards, buttons, velvet, feathers, lifts and marbles.

Specific phobias can also be generalised – for example to all slimy green reptiles rather than just frogs. This seems to happen when the original traumatic event can’t be recalled.

Non-specific phobias

These phobias produce a more general anxiety or terror linked to social or performance situations and are often accompanied by panic attacks.

Agoraphobia (open spaces), claustrophobia (confined spaces) and social phobia (public speaking, being the centre of attention) are non-specific phobias.

Phobia Names

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 17:26:17 GMT

Most people know the technical, scientific name for their phobia. This may give them some comfort: it has a name so they know they are not the first person in the world to have the phobia. But whatever the phobia, someone else has it whether or not it has been given a Greek/Latin name.

And knowing its name probably hasn’t helped them deal with it. In fact, just the opposite: we know that some phobics experience anxiety at the mention of the scientific name. A person with a phobia of long words won’t be helped by knowing they have hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia.

So we rarely use these names in our clinics and we haven’t listed them here.

The Science of Phobias

Thu, 19 Oct 2017 10:36:49 GMT

There are two parts to your mind – one that thinks, and one that feels. The thinking part is the conscious, rational mind that you are using now as you read this.

The feeling part is the unconscious, emotional mind. It takes care of automatic tasks like regulating the heart, controlling pain and managing our instincts.

It’s the unconscious mind that is programmed to act instinctively in times of danger. It reacts very fast – making you run or fight – rather than allowing your thinking mind to philosophise while you are attacked by a tiger. This has great survival value.

The unconscious mind is also a very fast learner. The same emergency route that can bypass the rational mind in times of danger can also stamp strong emotional experiences (traumatic ones) in the unconscious mind. This makes evolutionary sense – it ensures that we have vivid imprints of the things that threaten us.

And just like we have two minds, so we have two memory systems: one for the facts and one for the emotions that may or may not go with those facts.

Sometimes, when a person experiences a very traumatic event, the highly emotional memory of the event becomes trapped – locked in the emotional brain. In an area called the amygdala – the emotional storehouse. There is no chance for the rational mind to process it and save it as an ordinary, non-threatening memory in factual storage (in the hippocampus). Like the memory of what you did last Sunday.

Instead, the emotional brain holds onto this unprocessed reaction pattern because it thinks it needs it for survival. And it will trigger it whenever you encounter a situation or object that is anything like the original trauma. It doesn’t have to be a precise match.

This is pure survival again. You only need to see part of a tiger through the bushes for the fear reaction to kick in again – for the “fight or flight” response to trigger – you don’t have to wait until you see the whole tiger or identify it exactly as the tiger that attacked you before. In fact, it probably only has to be something orange and black moving through the bushes. This is why the pattern matching process is necessarily approximate, or sloppy. You err on the side of safety. You don’t have to have all the details to know if something is dangerous.

This is the basis of a phobia: a fear response attached to something that was present in the original trauma. The response is terror, shaking, sweating, heart pounding etc. And because of the sloppy pattern-matching it can be stuck to literally anything – animal, mineral or vegetable. It may not even be glued to the thing that caused the trauma. So, a child attacked in a pram by a dog may develop a phobia of prams rather than of dogs.

It is because phobias are created in this way, by our natural psycho-neurology, that they are so common. It’s the way we are wired. Approximately 10% of people have a phobia. And it’s precisely because they are created by the unconscious mind that they seem so irrational. Of course they are – the rational thinking brain hasn’t had a chance to go to work on them.

Many traditional phobia treatments, including drugs, attempt to deal with the phobia by calming things down after this response pattern has triggered. They treat the symptoms, not the cause.

To treat the cause, this trapped traumatic memory has to be turned into, and saved as, an ordinary unemotional memory of a past event. The emotional tag, the terror response, needs to be unstuck from that object or situation.

This is exactly what the Fast Phobia Cure* does. It allows you to review the traumatic event or memory from a calm and dissociated, or disconnected, state. Your rational mind can then do its work in turning the memory into an ordinary, neutral, non-threatening one. And store it in factual memory where it should have been to start with. This happens very quickly. The mind learns fast. It learned the fear response quickly and it learns the neutral response just as quickly. And when that happens your phobia is gone. You are free.

The misery of weird phobias

Wed, 01 Mar 2017 00:00:00 GMT

Having a fear of buttons may sound hilarious, but in reality it can be debilitating. Patients need to be taken more seriously, by both the media and doctors, say experts

Serena Bergman in The Guardian, 5 December 2016

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/dec/05/the-misery-of-weird-phobias-in-the-office-there...

Andy, a 32-year-old IT consultant, is used to people laughing at him when he tries to explain his crippling fear of buttons, specifically those on shirts and jackets.

“I’ve worked in corporate environments, full of people in suits, and there are buttons everywhere you look. This situation is to me what other people may feel being locked in a burning building, or drowning and not be able to swim to the surface,” he says, his voice audibly shaking at the mere thought of rooms full of shirt buttons.

Andy’s condition is called koumpounophobia. It is not as common as some phobias – but still affects around one in every 75,000 people. Sufferers report losing contact with family and friends because they are unable to attend weddings and funerals, or abandoning their careers and doing jobs that allow for remote working or casual clothing.

Phobias are irrational fears which are classified as either simple – of a particular object, such as in Andy’s case – or complex, when they pertain to a circumstance or situation. Because of the ridicule sufferers are often met with, people tend to suffer in silence and phobias go untreated. “I thought I’d be laughed out of a GP’s office,” says Andy. “I knew this was a real thing, but didn’t know how to explain it without feeling like an idiot.”

Another reason many people don’t seek help is because of what the treatment entails. The NHS offers cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to people with phobias, which includes “exposure” to the object of the fear. A person develops a phobia when their brain has learned to respond to certain non-dangerous situations (such as seeing a small spider) with a “fight-or-flight” response, which causes symptoms that include panic attacks, palpitations, hysterical crying, and the urge to run. Exposure can work because if patients slowly learn to respond to seeing, say, a spider in a calm way – eventually even holding one in their hands – they can essentially “rewire” their brains. But the thought of facing a phobia in such a way can, understandably, be terrifying.

Around 10 million people in the UK suffer from phobias, yet research into causes and treatments is incredibly limited compared with other mental health conditions. Nicky Lidbetter, chief executive of Anxiety UK, has herself suffered from phobias and is a keen supporter of CBT treatment, but argues it needs to be improved and that further research is crucial.

“I remember when anxiety used to be bundled in with depression, despite being a very different condition. We worked hard to raise the profile of anxiety as a separate disorder that could be just as crippling. This is what we need to do with phobias,” she says. “Because they often seem comical and irrational, the media doesn’t take them seriously and I think this mentality has seeped into the medical world, which is why there’s so little funding and research.”

Amy is a 25-year-old marketing manager based in Leeds. She says: “I knew that if I told a doctor I was scared of heights they’d make me go on a rollercoaster or something. Just seeing a long flight of stairs was making my heart race. I’d start to shake, and couldn’t stop myself from running away.” Amy eventually sought help when she and her boyfriend were looking to move in together and it became too limiting to find a ground-floor or basement flat.

Her treatment involved various exercises, such going up in a lift every day and getting off one floor higher each week. She is now able to manage her phobia, although it hasn’t disappeared.

CBT and exposure therapy has been proven effective in a lot of cases, but some experts disagree with the way it is applied across-the-board to all patients. Guy Baglow is the director of Mindspa Phobia Clinic in Harley Street, London . “CBT is about correcting thinking patterns, and it works really well for a lot of conditions, but I don’t think it’s effective in treating phobias,” he says. “We deal with a lot of clients who have had exposure therapy, and it has actually reinforced the patterns we want to break. CBT tackles the conscious mind, trying to teach us to reason against our phobias, but most people know their phobias are irrational to begin with, so this doesn’t feel helpful.”

Despite being overwhelmed at the prospect of exposure, Andy did eventually see his GP, who referred him to a counsellor. “She was really friendly but I had to wait a month for a half-hour phone consultation, and then all I was going to have was one 45-minute session every two weeks. By this point I was too terrified to leave the house.”

Even at home, Andy was in a constant state of alert. TV and movies were impossible, in case a close-up of a button appeared onscreen. He needed urgent help. “I moved back in with my parents and spent hundreds of pounds on intensive private therapy, but after a couple of sessions they tried to make me look at some pictures of shirts, and I started panicking. I couldn’t get the image out of my head for weeks and it made me constantly terrified. I couldn’t go back.”

More recently, though, life has become a little easier, and he recently bought his first ever pair of button-fly jeans. “I’m so lucky to have had the support system I do, because without my family I really think I might have considered taking my own life,” he says. “Looking back, it’s so tragic to realise that while my friends were joking about my weird little quirk and playing pranks on me, on the inside I was battling my own brain every minute of every day. It was so exhausting and stressful, I can’t imagine anyone would find it funny if they knew what it was really like.”

Names have been changed.

publicspeaking

7 Key Signs You Might Have Glossophobia (Fear of Public Speaking)

Recognizing Public Speaking Fear and Anxiety

﻿

Top 7 Tips To Overcome Public Speaking Anxiety

(and why they don't help much)

1. Breathe

2. Prepare

3. Practice

4. Know Your Audience

5. Know Your Subject

6. Focus on the Message, Not Yourself

7. Project Your Voice

The Reality Behind These Tips

5 Signs You Need Help with Glossophobia

If you suspect your public speaking anxiety might actually be glossophobia (a more extreme or limiting fear) here are 5 key signs that you may need help:

1 Intense Panic

2 Avoidance of Speaking Opportunities

3 Emotional Toll

4 Self-Help Isn’t Working

5 Life Is Impacted

Overcoming Glossophobia: The Fast Phobia Cure v Exposure Therapy

How Traditional CBT Exposure Therapy Falls Short and why The NLP Fast Phobia Cure Provides a Breakthrough

The Limitations of CBT and Traditional Exposure Therapy

1. Slow and Time-Intensive Process

The Fast Phobia Cure: A Different Approach

Choosing the Right Path to Overcome Glossophobia

Frequently Asked Questions About Glossophobia and the Fast Phobia Cure

The Spotlight Effect and Glossophobia

Shedding Light on Our Self-Consciousness

What Is the Spotlight Effect?

Everyday Examples of the Spotlight Effect

Research Behind the Spotlight Effect

What Causes the Spotlight Effect?

The Spotlight Effect and Glossophobia

Overcoming the Spotlight Effect in Public Speaking

Conclusion

The harsh reality of life with an unusual phobia

Guy Baglow, clinical lead at the Mindspa Phobia Clinic, was interviewed in an article about the treatment of unusual phobias

﻿

A glossary of Glossophobia and the Fear of Public Speaking

Understand key terms related to Glossophobia and therapeutic approaches to overcome it

Anxiety

Avoidance

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT)

Cognitive Restructuring

Exposure Therapy

Fear Response

Fight or Flight Response

Fast Phobia Cure

Flooding

Glossophobia

Causes of glossophobia :

Physical symptoms of glossophobia:

Psychological symptoms of glossophobia:

Guided Imagery

Hypnotherapy

NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)

Panic

Performance Anxiety

Public Speaking

Public Speaking Course

Psychotherapy

Self-Esteem

Self-Medication

Social Anxiety

Stage Fright

The Spotlight Effect

Unconscious Mind

How do people with glossophobia limit their fear and anxiety around speaking in public?

How Avoidance Reinforces Glossophobia and Limits Career Growth

Glossophobia: 3 Types of Avoidance Behaviours and How They Manifest

Is Glossophobia a Social Anxiety Disorder?

Understanding Glossophobia

Social Anxiety and Social Phobia

Glossophobia and Social Anxiety

Conclusion

﻿

Sources

Lucy Atkins tries a quick cure for glossophobia

Crisps, keyboards, pens – how do you treat an unusual phobia?