Disembodied Speaking: How to align your thought process and rate of speech so you can access and articulate yourself when it matters most
Do you ever feel like you think faster than you speak or vice versa? Do you speak faster to keep up with your racing thoughts? Do you have trouble catching your breath or collecting your thoughts while speaking off the cuff?
Anticipatory anxiety makes us unable to focus on what we want to say. We know the spotlight is going to turn to us and when it does, we may not be able to access and articulate our thoughts with cohesion and clarity. If this has happened in the past, just the thought of it can cause you to feel out of control and to fear the possibility of Disembodied Speaking.
Many things can cause Disembodied Speaking. Here are just a few:
Physiological nerves make it impossible to hear your own perspective over heart palpitations, shakiness, or fight-or-flight sensations.
Searching for or seeking better words, ideas, or perspectives that will impress your audience.
Losing your train of thought or going blank can become a cyclical loop that spirals anxiety.
Overthinking or scripting makes it challenging to access your presence, as you try to recreate a past iteration that felt possibly perfect.
Comparing yourself to others in the space or even comparing yourself to past version of yourself can take you out of the present moment.
Feeling unsafe in professional environments where you do not feel able to be yourself or trust your innate tendencies.
Thinking and speaking at the same time, trying to think ahead or overly craft a comprehensive response.
Unconscious behaviors like fillers and fidgeting can cause real-time self-doubt and reinforce anxiety that is already prevalent.
Worrying about past feedback while communicating on your feet makes it difficult to listen to yourself and those around you ("They said I'm not concise, am I saying too much?")
Watching yourself from above and judging your speaking as it occurs leads to fumbling, backpedaling, or trailing off.
Secretly, silently and shamefully doubting the way you communicate leads to fear of rejection, judgment or criticism even before you finish a sentence.
Multitasking, Zoom fatigue, and technical difficulties in the virtual world leads to over-prioritization of analytical thinking and over-indexing facial expressions and reactions.
You are suffering from Disembodied Speaking. Below are some tips to help you synchronize your speaking.
Use Habits as Clues
Do you have unconscious behaviors like fillers, qualifiers, or apologies? Do you pace or fidget unconsciously and does this make you feel less in control? Instead of being hard on yourself when you observe these unconscious behaviors, use them as an opportunity for presence. If you can see the behaviors, you can change them. Moving these behaviors from unconscious to conscious is the first step in upping your awareness and increasing your ability to access hormonal confidence. Taking control back from the anxiety is key so that you do not feel powerless against it.
Get In Your Body
When you realize you are lost in thought or repetitive unconscious patterns, without judgment, bring your attention to the present moment. This can be anything that gets you out of your head and into your body. I like to lean back when standing or sitting and connect to the physical sensation of my back on the chair or my foot in my shoe. I will also use a prop like a pen or put my fingers together as a mudra to ground my attention in my body. This can counter my tendency to get lost in analytical thinking and help me return to the present moment each time I do. This is never about perfection and is rather a Northstar to return to when you inevitably realize you are back in habitual behavior.
Prioritize Your Comfort
Disembodied speaking is almost always caused by a splintering of attention. If part or most of your awareness is being taken up by over-indexing facial expressions, over-prioritizing how you are perceived by others or searching for that perfect right word, you will inevitably end up out of sync. Because you are more likely to over-prioritize others, it is important for you to reprioritize your focus on listening to yourself instead. How can you make yourself feel more physically at ease in this uncomfortable moment? Is there tension in your body or do you realize you are not breathing? Think of melting your physical energy into the chair instead of giving into unconscious fidgeting or pacing. Cultivate strength, stability, sturdiness, silence, and stillness, which will all be counterintuitive in the midst of anxiety but will serve to help you feel more in control.
Protect Your Presence
Most of us are taught that we should "read the room" and pivot accordingly based on our audiences' responses in real-time. This is good advice for people who do not pay attention to their audience but most of the people I support have the opposite problem. If you have a tendency to ingest people's reactions on video calls or in-person, it's important to remember that people's facial expressions very rarely accurately depict what they're thinking. Most people are lost in thought, distracted, or processing. Most people lack awareness of their own presence and reactions in real-time. When I am speaking in public, it is almost always the person with the most furrowed brow and the most annoyed look who is getting the most out of the presentation. If you have a tendency to be absorbed by your audience, it is essential to know where you end and where they begin. Think of this as an armor that serves to protect you from digesting your audience's reactions in real-time. When on video calls, you can even hide people who are distracting or intimidating you. Do whatever you need to do to prioritize your own confidence and stay the course in the moment.
Align Your Breathing
When our speaking is out of alignment, it is almost always a matter of breath (or not breathing enough). If you have a physiological response, it is very likely that you are only breathing at a shallow level. This can even flood the system with too much air, suffocating your ability to access your thoughts. Focusing on your breath can help you zoom out from the intensity of the moment and get back into your body. If you lose your train of thought or go blank it is almost always a matter of holding your breath or not breathing deeply enough that can jump-start this debilitating cycle. Instead of speaking quickly and getting air in when you can, give yourself permission to pause at the change of thought or even in the middle of a sentence. Is your belly moving when you are thinking? This will create speed bumps where you can move forward with more intention and consciousness. Strategic pausing also allows your audience to catch up to you and increases retention and comprehension significantly.
Slow Your Speech
We do not access a more measured pace of speaking by consciously slowing down. That becomes just another thing to think about, like other pieces of harmful or distracting feedback. Instead, it's necessary to integrate tangible, practical tools that help you think on your feet and also happen to slow you down in an organic way. I like to enunciate each sound as I'm speaking or think of speaking in full sentences. These are tricks that happen to slow me down but also give me permission to honor my own rhythm instead of the fast-paced environment that I may be stepping into.
Know What You Want to Say
Especially when you feel pressure or the stakes are high, it is really important to know what you want to say. I almost never recommend scripting or getting very granular or detailed in preparing for spontaneous speaking. Instead, focus on a high-level outline where you can collect your thoughts in a top-down manner. Know your Golden Nugget or big idea for big topics of discussion, without getting into the nitty-gritty. This will help you not only recall your ideas and perspective in the moment, but will keep your communication high-level and strategic. For most of us, when we feel pressure, we go into too much detail and give too much information. This is a way to counter that natural tendency so that we can communicate with more authority, clarity, and presence.