Fixed Role Therapy

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Pages: 4

Every since I was little I have been shy. Instead of laughing things off like I do now, I would get super embarrassed with my whole face turning bright red like a tomato. While in some ways I grew out of being shy, I am still horrified to speak in front of an audience. I just started my communications class that requires me to make public speeches. I have not had much experience in this other than small classroom presentations. Even doing that was very nerve racking and full of sweaty palms and a shaking voice. I had difficulty sleeping the night before I was to suppose to give my presentation because of the anxiety I was feeling. I did not want to embarrass myself in front of the class. As I began the presentation, I could feel my face turning …show more content…
I found a psychology article that tested whether therapy could help with anxiety associated with public speaking. All the subjects included in the study had some degree of public speaking anxiety. The test split up two groups where one group received speech anxiety related therapy while the other did not receive therapy. In the group that did receive therapy, half of them received fixed-role therapy and the other half received rational-emotive therapy. Results show that fixed-role therapy was significantly better than no treatment. Fixed-role therapy is where a new character is developed from an outside perspective of the subject. The subject then acts as that person and can do so without fear of embarrassment. I think the rationale is that the person is just acting in a role as a new character and therefore they have nothing to fear since they are not really speaking as themselves but as a made up …show more content…
The person needs to confront their fears and realize there are other ways to deal with them. The real goal of rational-emotive therapy is to get the person to accept themselves for who they are and not to worry about what others think of you. This therapy seems to me like it would take a great deal of time to become effective. The results of the study showed that the fixed-role therapy verses rational-emotive therapy was considerably favorable towards fixed-role therapy. This makes sense to me in that it would be easier for a person to take on the role of another character than it would be to confront their fears of public speaking in a rational emotional way. It is not surprising to me that the study showed that the rational-emotive therapy compared to no therapy was showed no