Fear of talking to people: 4 techniques to overcome it

The fear of talking to people It is one of those problems based on anxiety that gives more problems to a large part of the population whose lifestyle requires frequent interaction with others.

This is a drawback that is reflected in the day to day, since almost any conversation with someone relatively little known, no matter how mundane, is prone to lead to nerve problems. However, recognizing the existence of a problem of these characteristics does not imply knowing how to solve it.

For this, there are no magic recipes that will make discomfort disappear overnight, but Yes, there are techniques that allow structuring a learning aimed at overcoming the fear of talking to the people. Next we will see what are the basic guidelines to follow, although no reading can match the result obtained by working with a professional psychologist on each case concrete.

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How to overcome the fear of talking to people?

To better understand the steps to follow when it comes to making the nerves at the time of talk with others stop tormenting us, we must first take into account that each dialogue It's unique.

What we want to change is the general pattern, which makes the fear of talking to others general; but we shouldn't aim to make it impossible feeling fearful or insecure when in the presence of someone. This idea, which seems so basic, is fundamental, and for this reason it is necessary that throughout the entire process we have it presents the re-analyze everything that is happening to us, so as not to get frustrated and surrender.

With this in mind, let's see what are the guidelines that shape these tips to stop being afraid to talk to people. To notice the results, apply them in your day to day, and do not expect significant results from the first hours; It usually takes several days to notice the benefits.

1. Work on your self-concept

One of the components that come into play in this class of anxiety problems is the self-esteem. Specifically, self-esteem issues. However, this does not have to mean that someone who feels insecure in a dialogue with someone believes that they are worth less than the other, or that they are less skilled in general.

The belief is that you have less conversational value; that one's own words do not flow the same, nor is the content of what is said as interesting as in the case of the interlocutor. This idea becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, since the insecurity it generates causes attention to be divided between what is done and said and the fear of what is done and said. The result leads to poor or disorganized speech.

Therefore, it is important to focus on the strengths that you have when facing a daily conversation. To do this, you do not have to focus on experience or the ability to speak fluently with strangers, since it is obvious that at the moment you do not have that quality; but we can look at what makes us capable of bring interesting content to a conversation.

For example, if you have university studies or have extensive experience in a field of knowledge that you think may be interesting, remembering this and associating it with your identity will help you feel that you are going to relate to people with better equipment. The same can be said if, because of your age, you have a lot of experience about life, or if you are a very curious person and you have already asked yourself many questions that others have not even thought of.

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2. Look at the conversational floor

The vast majority of conversations don't have much substance. Learn to stop for a moment and analyze the literal content of what happens in normal dialogue and current that has nothing to do, for example, with the work context: fillers occupy a large part of the dialogue, phrases aimed at showing respect and concern for the other they do no more than express kindness, and in general they do not display a great general culture or a prodigious intelligence.

This type of minimum level of demand that occurs in conversations, what we could call “conversational floor”. Being above this is practically like rehearsing for a bigger challenge that never comes, a kind of simple tutorial on how to interact with others through words. In general, no one wants to put themselves into every dialogue throughout the day, so neither should you.

However, if despite being aware of this you notice that you are stuck or blocked, this you should not think that your mental abilities are negligible. This is simply a sign that where at first there seemed to be a sea of ​​differences between you and others, there is only one very fragile barrier: anxiety. When it disappears, everything will be much more fluid.

3. Don't memorize phrases, question

Memorizing phrases to use in conversation is a trap that you often fall into a lot to try to make the fear of talking to people disappear.

It does not work precisely because it adds cognitively more demanding tasks than what would happen if they were not taken into account: the simple fact of think about when it is more appropriate to use one of these lines of dialogue it's already very distracting. It can be useful if you already have a certain fluency in the conversations, but not at the beginning.

Instead of using this resource, choose to focus on listening to what the other person is saying and build your participation in the dialogue by reacting to what you find interesting. In this way you get a more natural participation from the beginning, just as it would happen in a dialogue in which you had no worries, and you would have a way to face the conversation being clear that you do not have to be the most talkative part, in exchange for making your interventions are significant.

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4. Learn to distance yourself

As we have seen, all the conversations they have a strongly conventional and predictable side. On many occasions, what someone says in 5 or 6 interventions can already be predicted from her first intervention, and all that comes afterwards are qualifications. In the same way, there are also phrases that serve to imply that one listens, that one agrees, etc. A real dialogue is very different from what would happen in most novels, or in movies like Tarantino's.

Being clear about this, and observing it, allows us to be above these types of interactions, and see them as if they were almost a theatrical performance in which there is little content, and widely spread through the phrases. This will help make some of the tension go away. In the same way that you understand why each person uses these components apparently irrelevant despite contributing little, you will also do it without complexes as fear Go away.