Great question! As a speaking coach myself for decades now, what I have witnessed more often than anything ~ within myself and others ~ is the terrifying feeling that past moments where a person felt traumatised in not feeling seen or heard while speaking will repeat again.
Until those past moments are replayed, or at least re-visited and then given a “happy ending” that is anchored into the muscle memory through multi-sensory encoding of a renewing default program and self-talk that is more compelling than the old litany, the fear of the past moment(s) stored trauma’s repeating comes up over and over and over again.
Step 1: What I find most effective is to have the person experiencing the fear to ‘take a stand‘ to the old moment(s) that has continued to haunt them for years, and in revisiting the most traumatic elements of that moment, to reframe the self-talk that has been underlying the repeating fear. Often, shouting the following statement while energetically throwing the old fear away is extremely effective: “I send this program, pattern and pain back to the source – back to where it came!”
Step 2: After revisiting the remembered moments when a person recalls shutting down and never opening up again and taking a fresh stand as I’ve described above, the next step in this process is as follows: Through speaking, whispering, shouting, singing, writing down, speaking into a mirror and saying the renewing self-talk in gibberish, in mime – in 1st person (I) , 2nd person (You), 3rd person (He or She), 4th person (They) – in other words, in as many multi-sensory ways as possible, the new stand of command has more force and energy than the old repetitive inner dialogue that has kept the old pattern, programs and pain stored in the muscle memory, up to now.
Step 3: Practicing the new self talk, with matching gestures and voice tones – integrating the 3V’s of communication that are the Verbal, Visual & Vocal components – especially just before going on stage and speaking in front of others. This assists in further embodying a renewed confidence that soon becomes the default program that a person returns to, over and over again, since it is more pleasant, uplifting and easier to recall than the monotonous echoing of the old memory.