The people in the workshop around her seemed to change as she relaxed and read the room differently. They suddenly seemed less threatening and more friendly. She’d gone from one part of her autonomic nervous system (ANS, your brain’s basic survival system) to the other. She’d switched systems – from foe to friend. (These are my names for the two systems.)

It’s important to say that the foe system can be a good thing – it mobilises you for action. But it’s my experience with clients that public speaking, that well- known trigger for fear in humans, takes so many people into the foe zone.

Nora Ephron’s famous line, ‘Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim’ is worth remembering when it comes to speaking to an audience. I notice with so many nervous speakers that they feel like a victim who is at the mercy of their audience and the situation. But waiting for you is a parallel speaking universe where you are in control of your system and you are the hero not the victim because you can make any moment in the spotlight be one of calm, centred control and where you feel safe and connected.

It comes when you learn to steward your system from panic to calm. Friend or foe? It’s the age- old question asked at every gate house for thousands of years. Foes trigger mobilisation in your nervous system – fight or flight; friends allow the system to ramp down so it can rest or digest. In our lives the system is working in a homeostatic way, balancing itself moment by moment according to the information it receives. And of course we all need adrenalin in our lives: a little arousal is a good thing.

But what we don’t want is to be in full fight- or- flight mode when we speak. It’s exhausting for you and stressful for your audience. If you want to speak with calm, centred confidence then you’ll benefit from seeing your audience as old friends rather than foes. Stewardship of your system starts with awareness. First you need to be able to notice which part of your ANS is in charge.) Then you need to know, calmly and without drama, how to switch systems. You already know the difference between these two systems, foe and friend, even if you haven’t consciously thought about it.

Think about those wrong-side-of-the-bed days. Those are foe days where your nervous system is concerned. You might have had an argument or a stressful text message or email. Open- plan offices with lots of eyes watching you, noisy cities with rude drivers, hard city streets that jar our bodies when we walk on them, a stressful commute, rushing to meet others – these can all stress us out under our conscious radar and send us into hypervigilant defence mode.

When your fight- or- flight filter is switched on you feel stressed and jumpy and primed to pick up information about threat. Faces that could be neutral on a good day, look angry to you. You react defensively where normally you might glide through life. You might be aware that your throat tightens up, your voice gets tense, flat, stuck in your throat. Your body pumps adrenalin round the system so you can run away. As a result your limbs might feel shaky, and so does your voice. Fortunately, you also know there’s a you who cruises through life, who can chat easily with friends, moves with ease in the world. Those right-side-of-the-bed days. These are friend days.

Below are the two branches of the nervous system so you are able to recognise them in yourself 👇

FRIEND

Trigger: Your system perceives safety, friends and connection.

Your brain chemistry: Acetylcholine

Heart rate: Calm, steady heart rate.

FOE

Trigger: your system perceives a threat – real or imagined. Your system focuses.

Your Brain chemistry: Cortisol Adrenalin

Heart rate: speeds up, pumping blood to your limbs.

Does this sound familiar? Can you relate?