Public Speaking Anxiety
You're not broken - your system is under threat
Public speaking anxiety is common. Even people who look confident can feel their body flip into panic: dry mouth, shaky voice, racing thoughts, blank mind, heart pounding.
This isn’t a character flaw. It’s a threat response. Your nervous system treats being watched, judged, or evaluated as danger.
This page is a supporting page. The wider approach sits on my Therapy page.
Sessions: online worldwide and in person in London (Barbican & Bounds Green).
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What it can look like
- Blank mind, losing your words
- Voice shaking or tightening
- Blushing, sweating, breath going weird
- Over-preparing then panicking anyway
- Avoiding: presentations, meetings, networking, interviews, even phone calls
It often gets labelled “confidence”, but it’s usually a pattern: threat → body response → self-criticism → more threat.
How I work with this
I not focused on hyping you up or “fake it till you make it”. We work with the pattern underneath the panic.
In simple terms:
- Calm the system (so you’re not trying to perform from threat).
- Map the loop (sensations, images, thoughts, inner critic, avoidance).
- Update the response using subconscious work (hypnosis) and rehearsal, so it holds in real life.
Sometimes we also use breath-led regulation if it fits. No pushing. No drama. If you want more details, they are on the Therapy page.
What the research says (without the hype)
Clinical hypnosis has evidence for reducing anxiety and stress symptoms, especially when it’s used as part of a wider therapeutic approach rather than as a one-off technique.
For performance problems like public speaking, the practical value is often in:
- Expectation + attentional control (less self-monitoring and catastrophe forecasting)
- Imagery + rehearsal (training the nervous system to expect the room without melting)
- Reducing anticipatory threat (so you’re not burning through adrenaline for days beforehand)
I’ll be upfront: results depend on the pattern, your context, and how much real-life practice is possible. But if your body is doing the panic thing on autopilot, hypnosis can be a useful way in.
Next step
If you’ve got a presentation, interview, pitch, panel, wedding speech — whatever it is — we can work with the response underneath it.
This can be especially relevant if you’re trying to manage symptoms without certain medications, for example during pregnancy or when you’re TTC, where your GP or midwife may advise changes. We focus on nervous-system regulation and subconscious patterns, so you’ve got something practical to lean on.