Breaking the Barrier: How to Overcome Fear of Talking on the Phone

Fear of Talking on the Phone

 


Fear of Talking on the phone

For many people, the simple act of answering or making a phone call can be a daunting task. The fear of talking on the phone, also known as telephobia, can be a significant barrier in both personal and professional settings. However, with the right strategies and a little practice, it is possible to overcome this fear and gain confidence in telephone conversations.

Identify the Root Cause: Understanding the underlying reasons for your fear of talking on the phone can be a crucial step in overcoming it. Reflect on past experiences or specific triggers that might have contributed to your fear of talking on the phone. By pinpointing the source, you can begin to address and challenge those negative associations.

Gradual Exposure: Start by taking small steps to expose yourself to phone conversations. Begin with low-pressure situations, such as calling a close friend or family member. Gradually increase the difficulty level by making business-related calls or contacting acquaintances. Each successful experience will build your confidence and diminish your fear.

Prepare and Practice: Before making or answering a call, prepare yourself by writing down key points or questions you want to address. Having a script or outline can provide a sense of control and confidence. Additionally, practice speaking on the phone by role-playing with a friend or recording yourself. Familiarity and practice will help alleviate anxiety.

Positive Visualization and Affirmations: Visualize successful phone conversations in your mind. Imagine yourself speaking confidently, handling any challenges that may arise, and ending the call with a positive outcome. Repeat positive affirmations to yourself, such as “I am capable of having successful phone conversations” or “I am confident in my communication skills.” This mental preparation can help reframe your mindset and reduce anxiety.

Overcome Fear of the Phone on an Instinctive Level 
Use the power of your subconscious to calm your anxieties and talk freely.

Deep Breathing and Relaxation Techniques: When anxiety starts to surface during a phone call, practice deep breathing exercises. Take slow, deep breaths, inhaling through your nose and exhaling through your mouth. Combine this with progressive muscle relaxation or other relaxation techniques to help calm your body and mind.

Seek Support: Don’t hesitate to reach out for support from friends, family, or a therapist. They can provide encouragement, guidance, and practical advice tailored to your specific situation. Joining support groups or engaging in online communities can also connect you with others who have faced or are facing similar fears.

Celebrate Small Victories: Acknowledge and celebrate your progress, no matter how small. Overcoming a fear takes time and effort, so be kind to yourself throughout the process. Recognize each successful phone conversation as a step forward, and give yourself credit for challenging your fears.

Remember, breaking the barrier of fear surrounding phone conversations is a journey unique to each individual. Be patient and persistent, and don’t be discouraged by setbacks. With time and practice, you can build your confidence, overcome your fear, and embrace the ease of talking on the phone.

Do you feel a sense of panic when your phone rings?

Do you spend hours feeling stressed when you know you have to make a call?

It’s common to experience anxiety about phone calls.

You might feel the bottom of your stomach drop out or your pulse quicken. You may feel dizzy or tense.

You might feel like you’re under so much pressure to say the right thing that you just freeze up or get nauseous.

It’s understandable. When you talk on the phone, communication is harder. You can’t see facial expressions or body language. You don’t get to choose the right words. And callers often want answers immediately.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Through hypnosis, talking on the phone can start to feel easy and natural.

Read more

Public Speaking: From Petrified to Powerful in 10 Steady Steps

Follow Mark Tyrrell’s journey from a presentation panic attack to confidently speaking to an audience of 500

As part of our ‘New Year Kickstart’ offer, 10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking Hypnosis Course is discounted until January 31st 2019

Mark Tyrrell, co-founder of Hypnosis Downloads and formerly panicking presenter.

I had been worried about the upcoming presentation, but nothing had prepared me for this. Suddenly my audience was a wall of critical silence, intent on exposing me. Logically I knew that was nonsense but my emotional mind had stopped listening.
My name is Mark Tyrrell, I’m the co-founder of Hypnosis Downloads and this public speaking nightmare I’m about to reveal is a true story about one of our very first hypnosis workshops.

My public speaking panic attack

So now it was time to start my speech. But the level of panic I was feeling made speaking impossible, the only option I felt was open to me was running away. I was experiencing an ’emotional hijacking’, which as someone experienced in psychology I knew fine well, but that made not a jot of difference.
So my urge to leave was on the same level as awaking to find your bed on fire, but there were thirty people waiting for me to educate and entertain them. For two whole days! What was I going to do?
I’d done some public speaking before, given a few small workshops, so why now was I swamped with out-of-the-blue, gut-wrenching fear? If I was honest with myself I’d never been entirely comfortable standing up and speaking to more than, well, one person, but sheer panic was new to me.
I have never felt so much like fleeing from anywhere. It took all my willpower to stay in the room, and steadily, bit by bit, my anxiety levels lessened to the point where I became a thinking, communicating human again. But what had happened? And even more worryingly, what if it happened again?

How I made sure I never again got presentation panic

I knew that if I was to carve out a career as a trainer, I had to change myself. So I set out to master both public speaking fear and presentation technique. I didn’t just want to be confident, I wanted to be inspiring. I studied presentation expertise by watching the best over and over until the patterns of their success sank deep into my mind.
I used every technique in the book to detraumatize the experience of panicking in front of an audience, and to create a new roadmap for being relaxed, spontaneous and humorous when presenting. I rehearsed presentations hypnotically, ensuring I both knew my material inside out, and prepared myself emotionally.
And although before the next workshop I presented, I couldn’t be sure I wouldn’t panic again, I felt that something had changed. And indeed, when I stood up on that first day I had the mild performance-enhancing nerves that even seasoned presenters can feel. (Without those I can come across a bit bored 😉
Since that horrendous day I’ve given presentations to tens of thousands, at hundreds of events; once to 500 people for 8 hours straight. And enjoyed it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that these days I get the biggest buzz possible from public speaking – I love it. There have been times when I’ve forgotten my notes, when the powerpoint presentation didn’t work, when unsolvable technical hitches occurred and I still presented confidently. Heck I’ve even temporarily forgotten what I was going to say and still relaxed and given an overall great speech.

How a glass of water showed me how calm I’d become

I remember once when I invited audience questions a man put up his hand and asked: “Tell me, because I’m amazed, how can you lift a glass of water to your mouth in front of 400 people without your hand shaking?” That wasn’t really the sort of question I had in mind but it did make me realize just how far I’d come.
Now admitting in public that I, as a hypnotherapist, had a panic attack while presenting is not my idea of making myself look good, but I’m telling you this because it’s important you know you can overcome your fear of public speaking, no matter how severe it is.
The blueprint of how I achieved this is written into the pages of this 10-step course. Everything I learned during that process, and a lot I’ve learned since during thousands of hours of presentations, are included. The hypnotic experiences I used for myself are contained within the course’s hypnosis downloads.
I want you to believe that we can all learn to master fears and present more creatively to amuse, inspire, even captivate any audience. At one time I couldn’t even imagine presenting with confidence; now I can’t imagine presenting without feeling supremely self assured.
You can too.

What does the ten step course consist of?

1. Gentle and nurturing audio downloads to help you change
The 10 audio downloads for each step in the 10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking course have been carefully selected to help you master the art of giving inspirational, memorable presentations in front of large audiences, without the fear and anxiety that make you want to run and hide.
2. The ’10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking’ ebook
When you purchase the course, you will get instant access to the supporting 151-page workbook. It talks through every step and includes Progress Checkers that let you assess how far you’ve come on that step.
This is important for your self confidence, and for an effective learning experience. And as you gain more experience presenting, you may find that repeating the course offers another layer of insight and learning, pushing your skills further and higher.

What are the 10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking?

Step 1 - Public Speaking Confidence

1) Public Speaking Confidence

Respond to presentations with confidence, energy and enthusiasm instead of anxiety and nerves.
Step 2 - Long Term Presentation Anxiety

2) Long Term Presentation Anxiety

Reduce anxiety about presenting or speaking in public way before the event is due.
Step 3 - Overcome Self Consciousness

3) Overcome Self Consciousness

Train your brain to keep your focus off yourself in social situations so you can relax and enjoy it.
Step 4 - 7-11 Breathing Exercise

4) 7-11 Breathing Exercise

Learn a simple yet powerful breathing technique you can use anywhere, to quickly bring down anxiety levels.
Step 5 - Control Your Emotions

5) Control Your Emotions

Learn to distinguish between real and perceived threats and calm your ‘primitive’ emotional brain.
Step 6 - Be Funny

6) Be Funny

Relax deeply and let your inner comedian loose.
Step 7 - Speak Clearly

7) Speak Clearly

Learn to take full control of your powers of verbal communication.
Step 8 - Public Speaking - the Question from Hell

8) Public Speaking – the Question from Hell

Hypnotically rehearse skillfully dealing with difficult questions.
Step 9 - Speak Without Notes

9) Speak Without Notes

Master the art of remembering what you want to say to your audience.
Step 10 - Powerful Public Speaking

10) Powerful Public Speaking

Prime your brain to get into presentation ‘flow’ quickly, so that each presentation is an improvement on its predecessor.

How the program works:

I’ve poured everything I know from my business experience and my years as a therapist into this multimedia course.
10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking contains a 151-page downloadable Course Manual with a Progress Checker and 10 carefully crafted hypnosis downloads, one for each step of the course. After reading the first chapter, your mind is optimized to benefit from the specially tailored hypnosis session that follows.
You listen to this session once a day for a week (or whatever feels right to you), and when you’re done you assess yourself using the Progress Checker.
Feel free to go faster or slower through certain steps. This is your program, and your road to confident public speaking.

How to use the program:

The workbook takes you through every step, discussing the emotional barriers that get in the way of our natural ability to communicate, and providing tips, case studies, and exercises to stimulate your thinking and help you become a confident public speaker. Even after you’ve read the very first chapter, your attitude towards public speaking will start to feel very different indeed.
Motivation is built-in
Fill in the Progress Checker when you start each step and see how you’re doing. The Progress Checker makes a number of statements on the topic covered in that step, and asks you to indicate how true these statements are when applied to you, giving you a clear and simple way to monitor your progress. Keeping tabs on yourself like this makes you more aware of small improvements and helps you to stay committed.

10 hypnosis sessions make your learning last

Each step in the program is supported by a specific audio download to provide a deeper, unconscious level of change and create new, more helpful patterns of behavior.
Each deeply relaxing audio tackles a different element of public speaking fear, to ensure you develop a well-rounded, sustainable confidence about speaking in front of large audiences. All you have to do is tap play on your audio player, lay back, absorb and let your unconscious do the hard work.

Both head and heart are taken care of

The workbook gives you the ‘head’ knowledge and the audios give you the ‘heart’ knowledge, helping you make emotional updates that change how you feel. To bring the head and heart together, we’ve included tried-and-tested exercises to tackle different aspects of public speaking fear in detail. These exercises will help you break through to the next step on your journey. You can move onto the next step whenever you’re ready.

Did you know most people who read this page will not necessarily buy 10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking?

It’s not because they are afraid, it’s not because they are lazy, it’s because they decide they are too busy right now to take out their credit card and make the purchase.
But let’s look at the cost of what might happen if you do that.
You might forget about this product because you’ve got a busy life … and for the rest of your life you might be struggling with your fear of public speaking, dreading any time you have to get up in front of a big audience and feeling anxious for weeks beforehand.
But if you take this course, and kick presentation fear out of your life once and for all, you will enjoy the following benefits:
  • You can relax quickly and deeply at will
  • The fear of having to present no longer holds you back
  • You feel comfortable and confident in front of an audience
  • An upcoming presentation no longer takes over your whole emotional life
  • You enjoy sharing your ideas with the world
  • You speak clearly and coherently, confidently and comfortably
  • You experience just the right amount of adrenaline to optimize your performance
  • You no longer feel pressure to be perfect
  • You no longer feel so self conscious
  • You can creatively interpret events and make witty jokes more often
  • You rely on your notes less and less
  • Your presentations become more lively, engaging, and memorable
  • You begin to build a good reputation
  • Others respond more positively when you speak to them
  • More opportunities present themselves
When you purchase this course, you will get instant access to the workbook and the 10 hypnosis audio downloads, so you can begin immediately.

You can take 10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking on your computer, tablet or phone and listen to your downloads wherever you are.

Begin your journey to powerful presentations today – you can be a charismatic, memorable, confident presenter sooner than you think. Good luck!
Mark
—————
Mark Tyrrell
Co-founder
Hypnosis Downloads
10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking Hypnosis Course has been purchased by 433 customers.
Why you can relax about buying from Hypnosis Downloads…
Guarantee
Please put your mind at rest – every hypnosis download is crafted by our team of 4 experienced hypnotherapists, so you are getting the very best self hypnosis available. With over 24,000 people trained and more than 600,000 mp3 audios purchased, we are the world’s largest hypnosis provider. However, we realize that not all downloads work equally well for everybody, so if you find this doesn’t do what you wanted, simply let us know within 90 days and we will refund you in full, no questions asked (One order per customer).
10 Steps to Powerful Public Speaking Hypnosis Course
$99.00

Why we’re different to other self hypnosis programs:

Our therapist team

Our four professional hypnotherapistswork on every download.

We’re experienced and dedicated therapist trainers

Uncommon Knowledge was formed in 1995, and since then we’ve trained over 24,000 people at face-to-face events. We’ve served over 600,000 hypnosis downloads and treated more than 5,000 patients in 1:1 therapy.

We have a vibrant and friendly global community

With more than 300,000 customers and 30,000 fans of our Facebook page, we are proud to serve people from countries as far afield as New Zealand, India, South Africa, as well as Europe, the US and Canada. (And our shipping is free worldwide, did you know?)

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Customer Reviews
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7 Public Speaking Survival Tips
I used to be terrified of public speaking – now it’s natural and fun.
Dry mouth, fast heart, sweaty palms, blank mind – yeah I’ve been there! It’s easy to fear public speaking. But I was never just content with overcoming fear. I wanted to be a great speaker. What I needed was a way of calming down and applying simple techniques and strategies to talk like a pro.
When I’d learned to relax (more of that later) I learned and applied the following four steps.

  1. Reassure your audience – they need to know you know your stuff and you are human!
  2. Hook them by being interesting and relevant. Tell them why what you are saying is relevant to them.
  3. Inspire them by giving them information and ways of seeing that are new and applicable.
  4. Leave them on a high by telling a story them encapsulates your central message.

How do you become confident enough to apply the four steps?
Here’s some tips some of which are practical some of which are to do with the way you think about your public presentations and also how you can start to change the way you feel about them.
Tip One
Breath your way to calm. When you breath out you relax that’s why people sigh when they’re stressed.
Breathing in without breathing out causes hyperventilation and worsens anxiety. Just before your speech take five minutes breathing in to the count of seven and out to the count of eleven (quick count-not seconds!). On the out breath hold it a second before breathing in again. This will produce quick and lasting calm. Remember extending the out breath calms you down.
Tip Two
You have a responsibility as the presenter but relax you don’t carry all the responsibility. Presenting is a team effort. Audiences are responsible for politeness, extending their attention and attempting to learn. It’s not all you-it’s a meeting of two halves. Never mind how they judge you. How do you judge them?
Tip Three
Use metaphor and stories. We all experience life metaphorically. The most technical logical person spends at least two hours a night dreaming! Talk detail if necessary but present patterns with metaphors. Folk from 4 to 104 love stories. Use em.
Tip four
Captivate attention by using words that evoke all the senses. Describe how things look, sound, feel, smell and taste. Paint pictures and sensations in their minds with your words.
Tip Five
Vary your voice tonality and speed of delivery. Keep them alert and engaged. Convey energy when need be and slow down when you need to ‘draw them in close.’ You are the conductor to their orchestra. And pepper your talk with humour. Your willingness to be funny shows personal confidence and confidence is contagious.
Tip Six
Tell them what they are going to get. What they are currently getting and then what they have got from you. Sell your sizzle!
Tip Seven
Watch and learn from other great speakers until compelling, relaxed speaking is a part of you.
Rehearse positively. You need to rehearse how your going to feel as well as what you are going to present. Don’t think about your forthcoming presentation whilst feeling nervous as this creates an instinctive association between fear and presenting. This natural negative self-hypnosis is very common with nervous speakers.
Hypnotically rehearse your speech whilst feeling relaxed. This produces the right ‘blueprint’ in your mind. In fact when you do this enough times it actually becomes hard to be nervous!
All great speakers know how to use great self-hypnotic rehearsal. Hypnosis changes attitudes and can bring emotion under control. I used hypnosis, to change my instincts around public speaking. Now I just can’t get nervous whether it’s 50 or 500 people. The world needs great communicators. Go for it!
Cure your fear of public speaking at HypnosisDownloads.com
Article by Mark Tyrrell of Hypnosis Downloads.com.

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