Finding My Voice: How Hypnotherapy Gave Me the Confidence to Speak in Public with Ease

Picture the scene: Paris during a heatwave. A crowd of people is standing, wine glasses in hand, getting a little restless. A lectern is set up on a small, makeshift stage. One by one, participants from different writing workshops are called up to read a piece they’ve written.

As I hear my name, my heart races, my breath becomes shallow, and panic sets in.

It’s not complicated, I tell myself. You are reading just one page. You read, they applaud, it’s over. It’s not an exam. It’s no big deal. You can do this! Easy!

But as I start to read, I am unable to breathe. I can barely bring my voice above a whisper. The room goes quiet. I look at the faces around me—strangers. Some show clear empathy. Some look mortified. Others show a flash of disdain, or so it feels. It is just as uncomfortable for my audience as it is for me. In fact, it's plain awful. By the time I reach the last paragraph, I am hyperventilating. You’re pathetic, I tell myself, slipping away as quickly as possible. I feel embarrassed, ashamed, small, and worthless.

This was long before I knew anything about hypnosis or hypnotherapy. I was in Paris to write a novel! But I still call up that memory whenever a client comes to see me with confidence issues. It reminds me of how cruel, destructive, and belittling those self-critical inner voices can be.

In the years that followed, I relied on avoidance. I skillfully dodged any situation where I might have to speak aloud in front of others. Are you someone who has developed phenomenal avoidance skills to mask a lack of confidence or cope with a phobia? I certainly was.

But life has a way of catching up with you.

Speaking in front of an audience can be terrifying.

Fast forward a few years. I still hadn't discovered hypnotherapy, and I found myself in Washington, D.C. I had been asked to give a speech in a room so crowded they were live-streaming it into a second reception room. I tried to wriggle out of it to no avail. Speak I must. And this time, the subject wasn't a fictional novel—it was international relations, delivered to an audience who lived and breathed it. To say I was nervous is an understatement.

Thankfully, I liked the format. Four of us were sitting behind a table, miked up. A friend was sitting in the audience, three rows back, directly in my line of sight. I knew my text by heart, and I was proud of what I had written. It reflected something I cared about passionately.

When I was introduced, my palms began to sweat and my heart raced. I stared down at my friend in the audience, blocked out everyone else, and imagined he was the only person in the room.

Again, my labored breathing reduced my voice to little more than a whisper, but the microphone caught it. I put my heart into it and pushed through. It was only five minutes long, but it felt like fifty! Just as I felt myself completely running out of air, the room broke into applause. I breathed a massive sigh of relief.

That experience taught me another valuable lesson that I share with clients today: people will push through the terror, feel physically nauseous, and muster every ounce of energy they have just to survive their fear—never realizing that this is a problem that can actually be resolved. You do NOT have to just live with this. You can overcome the fear of public speaking, or any other phobia. Please know this, because back then, I didn't. I only stumbled upon the solution by accident.

When I decided to train as a regression therapist, I had to first qualify as a hypnosis practitioner. I had become so good at avoiding public speaking that I was caught completely off guard on the first day of the course. Suddenly, I found myself gasping for breath just trying to read a hypnosis induction out loud to a group of five people. I literally could not utter phrases as simple as: "Just allow your body to relax."

Luckily for me, our trainer grabbed this opportunity immediately. She used me as a live demonstration to show the class how hypnosis could remove the fear of public speaking.

She asked me to lie down and close my eyes. As I lay there, I felt like a child being told a bedtime story. My analytical mind was entirely underwhelmed. You’re not being hypnotized, it told me. Clearly, this isn’t working. You’ve got to be kidding! This can’t possibly work.

But despite the internal interference, I noticed my limbs becoming very heavy. My breathing slowed and steadied, and a profound sense of calm washed over me. In my mind's eye, I saw myself on stage in front of a massive audience, speaking with absolute confidence. It felt easy, effortless, and entirely natural. It was just me, talking clearly, sharing ideas with people who were genuinely enjoying what I had to say. It felt incredibly vivid—the way a book feels when you completely immerse yourself in the story as a child. And it felt amazing.

Afterward, I thought it was a pleasant experience, but I remained highly skeptical that it would actually change anything.

Spoiler alert: it did!

Since that day, I can stand up and speak in front of crowds while feeling absolutely fine. In fact, I had entirely forgotten that I once couldn't even read a paragraph in front of my peers until I witnessed someone else going through a similar struggle recently. Now that I've made hypnotherapy my vocation, I have helped countless others find their voice, too.

It normally takes a few sessions to get these results—three is the average. It worked faster for me because we underwent so many hypnosis sessions during our training program. That immersive experience allowed me to rebuild my core confidence from the ground up. Public speaking was just one facet of what I needed to work on to fully find my voice, take up space, and claim my place in the world.

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Ready to find your voice?

You don’t have to let fear dictate how you show up in the world, and you certainly don't have to just "put up" with it. Whether it’s a fear of public speaking, a phobia, or a quiet lack of confidence holding you back, hypnotherapy can help you rewrite that script.

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