| Tell your doctor about it and ask for a beta blocker like propranolol. They are seriously performance enhancing drugs and used by many performers, surgeons, etc... I was originally prescribed propranolol for my fear of flying. You can Google for the biological mechanism, but it essentially removes the physical symptoms from anxiety (racing heart beat, adrenaline rush, etc...). I had a more pills than flights, so I started using them whenever I had to teach courses in industry as a consultant as well as I also suffered from stage fright (as does everyone, really, it is extremely normal). It is absolutely incredible how much our anxiety and fear is actually anticipation of the onset of physical symptoms. On the beta blocker, if I made a mistake speaking I literally wouldn't skip a beat - my heart rate would stay the exact same, and I would be able to cooly correctly myself and move on. The best part? I'm no longer afraid of flying or public speaking and don't even need to take the drug anymore to do either. Exposure to both of these things with the help of the beta blocker helped me overcome my fears almost completely and these days I can fly or speak publicly with no issues! edit: An additional tip... While preparing, record yourself giving your presentation. Watching your recording will be very illuminating, I promise. You will cringe a lot at first, and then later want to re-watch sections because of how articulate you were. This is one of the absolute best practices one of my professors in engineer school taught us (he would record us presenting to him and our classmates, then ask us to watch and critique our own talks) and this practice has served me very well my entire career. |