What is the most effective treatment for speech anxiety?
Speech anxiety and the fear of public speaking affects most people which is concerning because we know this negatively impacts mental health, physical health, academic attainment, and career progression. Fortunately, however, there is a treatment option that is not only well-known and well-understood, it is remarkably effective. It is the gold standard treatment option, and it outperforms medication. This treatment is known as exposure therapy.
What is exposure therapy?
Exposure therapy involves a patient voluntarily confronting their fear. To facilitate this process, the feared stimuli is broken down into incremental steps. For example, to overcome the fear of spiders, holding a tarantula on day one might be too much too soon, but holding a picture of a spider might be a winnable first step. Accordingly, it could be thought of as progressing through increasingly challenging levels in a video game.
On this journey, the patient builds positive momentum, and they become increasingly resilient, and they become increasingly confident in their ability to face and overcome challenging scenarios.
What is overexposure therapy?
In conventional exposure therapy for the fear of public speaking a patient might begin by presenting on their own to an ‘audience’ of 0. They then might present to an audience of 1, then 2, then 3, then 5, etc. Due to logistical challenges and resource constraints, the process often peaks at presenting to an audience of around 20 to 30.
By contrast, overexposure therapy involves training in highly extreme scenarios that one is unlikely to encounter in real life. For example, a patient may equally begin presenting to an ‘audience’ of 0, but they may eventually practice public speaking in a highly daunting and extreme scenario such as a stadium with 10,000 spectators, stadium lights, camera flashes, and distracting noises. To make it possible to repeatedly train in such scenarios, the treatment can be accessed via a virtual reality headset.
Overexposure therapy, developed by Dr Chris Macdonald, provides the psychological equivalent of running with weights or at high altitudes: it builds extra grit, adaptability, and resilience. As a result, real-life scenarios can feel like a step down rather than a step up from the training scenario.
As revealed in the academic journal, Frontiers, overexposure therapy can significantly increase confidence after a single 30-minute session.
To make the process even more effective, Dr Macdonald creates hybrid treatment plans that incorporate the latest neuroscience tools. And to make the process accessible, Dr Macdonald has built a virtual reality platform that is freely accessible, via both a conventional stand-alone VR headset as well as a smartphone placed inside of a device mount.
How can I access this treatment from home for free?
To see an example of a treatment plan with accompanying virtual reality training environments, click here.