I hope you got to listen to the recent podcast episode I did with Mazi Robinson on the ways to combat and overcome feelings of workplace anxiety and overwhelm. I truly value Mazi’s knowledge and expertise and we had a great conversation about the paralyzing effects many of us have felt when we are left to “ruminate in our rooms,” as Mazi and I joked.  All kidding aside, Mazi and I identified the effects of isolation and the tricks we can play on our own minds when we are out of community with others, and we feel overwhelmed by the negative news of the world. I’ve said it before, in absence of communication, people will always assume the worst.  After two plus years working from our home offices, this is the place many of us have found ourselves and the idea of fully engaging in the crowds and break-neck pace of the pre-pandemic has us paralyzed.

For me, personally, this has been a struggle. If you heard the show, you heard me share a little about feelings of anxiety I was dealing with as I found myself more and more often in front of “live audiences.” Like many of you, I had gotten used to the adaptation of my work going virtual in 2020 and 2021. All the classrooms, conferences and coaching I was doing had gone completely on-line. While it had taken a while to adjust, I’d done it and had gotten comfortable with it. Then, at the first of 2022, my clients began requesting face to face interactions. Their people were growing weary and wary of the on-screen learning, and they craved real-time, live communications. At first, I was thrilled. This was what I had been waiting for. “Yes!” I thought, “We’re back!”

But then, a strange thing happened. I showed up to one of these in-person sessions and as I stood before the group, I found I couldn’t speak. My throat closed up; I felt anxious; I was breathless. If you’ve seen my Ted Talk, you know I am not unfamiliar with public speaking challenges having grown up with a stutter.  That said, I had never felt something so closely related to panic attack before.  Luckily, I was able to excuse myself from stage, take a drink of water, count to ten and restart. I got through it, but I never truly felt like I settled in. This started happening to me more frequently (and even in a few cases when I was doing virtual presentations).  After one particularly rattling event, I drove home wondering what this meant for me and my future as a speaker.

And then the stakes went up.  I received an email from one of my clients informing me that the major conference that I had been booked for in 2020 (that like everything else that year had been canceled) was now rescheduled for this summer (2022). I was slated to be there.  On top of that, I was going to be delivering four keynotes with average attendance of 1,000+ attendees per keynote.

How am I going to do this, I wondered? Honestly, I really didn’t want to deal with these strange panic attacks. I hoped the feelings would go away.  I recognized avoidance was not the answer.  Luckily, I knew I needed help, and I reached out to a mentor of mine, who, just as Mazi suggested, encouraged me to get objectively curious about my anxiety.  It was tremendously helpful to reset my perspective and remind myself that these attendees wanted to hear me speak (the attendees that signed up for my sessions selected me over other speakers during the same time slot).  In addition, my mentor reminded me that I had tools and insights that I was going to share that would benefit those in the audience.  I could be of help to them when they needed it most.

So yeah, even those of us who do this sort of thing for a living have a tendency to make matters worse in our heads.  We get anxiety and panic attacks.  And while I didn’t write my anxiety down, just verbalizing it was so incredibly helpful (In case you need some scientific evidence behind the power of writing about anxiety, check out this article).

Then, I realized I had to actually do the thing that was causing me the most fear: I needed more speaking. I needed more practice, and I needed good practice.  Over several months prior to the big event, I had the opportunity to speak a half dozen times.  And in each case, surprisingly, I didn’t die.  A few weeks before my event, I had my friend, Cameron Richardson as a podcast guest and he offered the genius technique of visualizing positive outcomes to challenging scenarios as his workplace lifehack. So, I added that to my repertoire and each time I was slated to speak, I spent time prior thinking about the event and imagining myself confident and in control, the audience engaged and engrossed. After a few times of doing this, I wasn’t feeling so nervous when I got out in front of folks. But I still had The Conference ahead of me. Four sessions, 2 days and 1,000+ expected participants in each session. 4,000+ people. I could do this, right?

The good news is that I could, and I did. Arriving the day before the kick-off, I made sure to visit each room I was slated to speak in, introduced myself to the tech crews, and admitted I was a tad nervous. They assured me they would help me along in all the ways possible and I got a good night’s sleep. The butterflies were still there the morning of the kick-off. But gratefully, I was able to trust in my training, know that I had prepared as best I could to exercise the agency required to get my confidence back.

I hope if you’ve been struggling with anxious feelings at home or work, you’ll take the steps you need to face your fears. If you’ve been doing it, I’d love to hear challenges you’re facing and what’s helped you most. Please share! And keep doing good work.