Public Speaking - Trauma

Public speaking can be difficult, even if you take a speech class in high school. I no longer picture people in the audience in their underwear, or look at one person in the audience, or look over everyone's head, or look at the back of the room.

So what do I do? I am nervous for at least a day and the morning leading up to the time I have to speak, and I always tell myself that I never prepare enough. I was told to consider the nervousness as excitement, and depending on the talk, I can do that for a while. 

I do pray too, and remember to breathe when getting anxious about the event. It doesn't work for every talk.

A co-trainer and I were invited to do this talk. We turned it down when only one of us could do it. Then the ask came again as a favor to a Director of Human Services for some tribes. So here we are, and yesterday was the day. Sunday night, we reviewed our materials.

First, we made it clear what was wrong with the situation. We discussed all of that. Then we could get to what our mission is. Then we can work on reviewing the slides.

One of the problems with our speaking is that we are not keynote speakers; rather, we are trainers. We train on a curriculum. Probably the only keynoting we do well is when introducing the topic to be covered for at least a full day. 

We had too much to say about this topic, but then again, we always have too much to say.

The topic was trauma and working with specific populations of the elderly. Our population is Native American. To do the subject justice would take a semester easily, and that would be an overview. Our audience was people who work with the elderly.

So, we decided to do what the participants in our training like best. The personal stories. Talk briefly about the issue and give personal stories from the perspective of the different trainers. Two of us, in this case, will be there.

There is a panel at the end of the 4 keynotes. A Director who is a Trauma Therapist, a Somali woman therapist, a male, whose husband and he are owners of a few nursing homes, and two Native American women who are retired and working part-time. All of this in a 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. time slot. 

The problem is that this setup is not respectful to anyone presenting. Can anyone in the audience really get what they need to work with the elders in these populations?

No. But you could tell who the keynote speakers are. 5 or 6 slides for a 35-minute presentation with ten minutes for questions. Done. I wasn't the only one who was nervous. One speaker was visibly nervous. Another said up front she was nervous. So that actually helped me. 

I would say there were probably 150 people in the room. There were nursing home administrators, nurses, clergy, hospice workers, and domestic and sexual violence advocates who identified themselves when asking questions.

I mentioned I encourage tears and laughter, our first two medicines, for healing, and then let people know that I tell people that I can help them to stop crying if they need that too. So, guess what I was asked during question/answer time? 

Yes, it was, "Can you tell us how you help others to stop crying?" I gave them 4 things to try. Then we proceeded with another keynote.

The most baffling way they will remember me is a mystery to me, which was the difficulty I had with every microphone I used, and I used 4 of them. I have never had trouble with a microphone before. It became a joke almost right away.

We never got to our humor slides, so maybe that was what was to replace the humor and our resilience from our presentation. It was weird.

The final statement from the program facilitator was, "Let's give the presenters another hand. Thank you all for coming… Okay, Denise, you will be glad to know that you won't have to fight with any more microphones today!"