Live-stream segment where TJ Walker reads a viewer critique (from 'Josh') defending the use of beta blockers for severe public speaking anxiety, and responds at length. Josh argues beta blockers reduce physiological symptoms that rehearsal alone may not fix; TJ stresses intensive video practice (iterative takes, e.g., 107 practices), audience-focused measuring of success (did audience remember messages), and cautions that beta blockers may produce flat delivery and don't ensure effective communication.
Chapters
And now it's time for viewer and listener mail. As always, any questions you have about public speaking media training, I answer them right here. And this is also the place to criticize me. Give dissenting views. We encourage that. There's very little, I won't say no censorship, but there's very little censorship here. Certainly you're not censored just because you don't agree with me. I do want to share with you a rather lengthy yet substantive and thoughtful critique sent in by a viewer on YouTube. Josh writes in this is in response to my video really telling people they should not use beta Blockers for fear of public speaking to help them with their fear of public speaking, here's what Josh writes. What about the people who are perfectly prepared to give a presentation over any given topic, but still get so nervous that it hinders their ability to actually present their information effectively? What if their nervousness isn't rooted in lack of preparation, but a much more deeper and complex issue resonating within the person? What if you've recorded yourself and are completely satisfied with the results and believe that if you presented the way you did in the video to your actual audience, you'd receive a gold medal, which is what I advocate. But when you actually speak in front of the audience, you are nervous. Serious people don't take beta blockers to make their presentation better. They do it because no matter how many presentations they give, no matter how many times they give an excellent presentation, no matter how many times they've recorded themselves, they still get nervous. They get nervous about being nervous. Real fear of public speaking isn't cured by repetition self analysis. It is either embraced and endured or it is alleviated in some fashion. Beta blockers alleviate the nervousness. Beta blockers allow me to not worry so much about my physical symptoms of being nervous because they limit them. It just sounds like you are ignorant of the psychological complexity that is nervousness. No, there is not a direct causation between beta blockers and a good presentation. However, if someone is inevitably going to get nervous to speak, and has prepared immensely to present, and has recorded themselves to the furthest extent and has been inhibited by their fear of public speaking in the past, then beta blockers are the best answer. You're so confident in your claim that people shouldn't use beta blockers, but most psychiatrists and people who use them dismiss your argument. More often than not, you lack perspective on the people to whom you're referring, which makes your argument against beta blockers very weak. An 18 year old that can't stand when people, especially an adult like yourself, dismiss the complexity of the brain. If I placed you in an Ocean with 20 great white sharks within 75 meters of your body, would you remain calm and unaffected? No, I wouldn't. Do you know that's what it feels like for some people to feel or to speak in front of others, and you're telling them to just prepare, to just record. I'm happy that you can give great presentations. It is a beautiful gift. But please spare your ignorance on beta blockers and why people should use them. Thank you. So, Josh, I do appreciate your perspective, and while you were critical of me, I don't think you said anything that was below the belt or inflammatory. And that's why I wanted to give it the full airing you deserve. So let me state right off the bat, you're absolutely right that I'm not intimately aware of every single person who has a wide range of issues and psychological issues and issues that psychiatrists deal with. You're absolutely right about that. Here's where I take issue with a couple of things. You're saying is I do live in a We're all shaped by our perspectives. You have a perspective as an 18 year old. I have a perspective having trained more than 10,000 people for 32 years and I've just never seen someone who claims to have a fear of speaking do the one thing I ask them to do, which is practice on video, look at it and figure out one thing at a time that they like, redo it and keep doing it, even if it takes 80 takes and to get to the point where they love that video. I haven't seen people do that. I've worked with people who claim to be really, really nervous and what happened is they tried two or three times and they just gave up. Eh, I'm not a good speaker. They took a beta blocker and they were awful. So let's keep in mind we're working from perhaps two different assumptions. My assumption is that if you're going to speak, your goal should actually be to speak in a way that's effective for your audience. You told me embedded in the letter is you realize it might not make the presentation any better. Well, if it's not making the presentation any better, why do it? The goal of a speech is not for you, the speaker, to get through it without throwing up or breaking out with flopped sweat or shaking and collapsing. That's not the goal of the speech. The goal of a speech is to actually communicate ideas to your audience in a way that they can understand them and remember them. And what I've seen some of my own clients on beta blockers. They spoke in a calm way, but it was kind of flat and the same speed and they just seemed a little out of it. Guess what? It didn't work for their audience. Ultimately, I'll be honest with you. I care about your audience more than I do for you, the speaker. Now I'm being a little bit facetious there. I do care about you as a speaker, but I'm not really helping you unless I help you with your audience. A psychiatrist doesn't have to worry about your audience. I also do think, and many psychiatrists are excellent and do good work. I'm not anti psychiatry, but if you go to a psychiatrist and ask them for help with a fear of public speaking, they can't spend eight hours with you practicing on video. They can spend two minutes writing a prescription. That's their business model. It's not their business model to actually make you so good at speaking to the point where you don't have fear. It's certainly possible to rehearse again and again and again on video. Love it and still do bad. But I've never seen it. Now I have a self selected audience that comes to me. And I'm also a little suspicious that people are actually doing this because I can tell you, other than my own books, I don't see in the 10,000 public speaking books out there people actually giving this recommendation. Oh yeah, you'll see the recommendation, oh, practice on video, you'll feel comfortable. That's not my advice for getting over fear of public speaking. My advice is very, very specific. Practice your speech on video. Analyze everything you like, everything you don't like. Focus on just one thing you don't like and do the video again. Try to eliminate that one thing and keep doing. I don't care if it takes a hundred takes. I have clients who have fear of public speaking and guess What? They do 107 video practices with me or before they even show up with me. And at that point it's very, very difficult to be fearful of something that you've done 107 times if you've never done it. Yeah, it's fearful. If you did it once and you kind of halfway looked at it for two seconds and said, oh, I'm not good at this. Well, sure, it's easy to be nervous. You gave your example of the sharks, then I would be fearful of being out in the water surrounded by sharks because sharks can actually eat me and Kill me. Okay? And it's somehow logical for me. Watching me swim away from sharks isn't particularly relevant because any given day, those sharks can swim faster. Here's another example for you. If I come to you and say, oh, my gosh, I'm nervous. I am going to have a major fashion show in New York City. All the major fashion critics are going to be there. And you know what? I didn't really prepare anything, so I'm just going to put old bags and tape old bags to my body and walk down the Runway. And I'm nervous that they're going to say horrible things about me, give me bad reviews. I'm just curious as to your advice. Would you say, well, TJ take this beta blocker, and you won't feel nervous when you're walking down the Runway in your old bags? Or would you say, well, TJ before you have this fashion show, I. Why don't we actually create some fashions that we know people like? So if your demographic is, for example, young women, let's create a bunch of designs, test them on a bunch of young women, see which ones they like most. And that way, when we do the fashion show, you'll show stuff that you know has already been liked and viewed favorably by your target audience. That's all I'm suggesting you do with speaking as well. But you know what? One of my main themes with all of this is do what works. If you can give a great speech using a beta blocker, then do it. But my challenge to you is, remember, it's not about you. It's about your audience. Just because you didn't shake or your voice didn't crack, if the audience doesn't remember your messages, you have failed miserably. You have failed perhaps not in as memorable way as if you broke out in flopped sweat, shook, and ran out the door without saying anything that would be more memorable. But at some level, it's the same degree of failure. You communicated nothing. So a lot of my beef with the whole beta blocker issue is that I think people aren't actually focusing on the goal. Your goal is to communicate. Your goal is to get your audience to understand messages and remember them so they can take the actions you want. And if you're focused on a beta blocker and, okay, now I can go through this boring data dump of a speech and just get through it, and no one will say, I fell apart. To me, that's already the biggest failure you could be. So whether you use beta blockers, whether you do a shot of tequila. At some level, I don't care. As long as after your speech, you have evidence that your audience understood your messages and remembered them. Do that, and you can use any legal drug or substance you want. I'll still be happy. More important, I want your audience to be happy.
