Fear of Shared Reality and How to Handle it

Recently a visitor to my site asked me the following question.

Thank you for reply ,
"I am a 33 year old female physician, and I am very good, qualified, active and cheerful person. I teach students and residents very well and lead good lectures, too.

However, when somebody who taught me at the university is present, I cannot speak and feel very uncomfortable with awful sense of inferiority in comparison to him and I lose my confidence totally! This annoys me a lot, how can I get rid of this social inconvenience?"
Dr. R.K (Name withheld on request)

What is the Fear of Shared Reality?

For sheer entertainment value, let us call it the Fear of Shared Reality. I call it the Fear of Shared Reality simply because this person, like many others, is afraid of shared knowledge / Reality. This fear is most commonly experienced by people sharing information with their peers.

Technicians, Doctors and even Teachers, who have taught hundreds of students, become tongue tied when facing their subordinates and superiors. Although these people Teach/Lecture on a regular basis, they find themselves cornered into a foxhole while presenting information to their peers. They experience the Fear of Shared Reality because their peers had experience in the same field.

Both you and your peers have shared the same reality and you are afraid of that reality. This is not necessarily because you are any less knowledgeable or because you commit too many mistakes. It is just a human tendency to be worried to perform the best in front of their peers. Understandable.

What are the results of this fear?

You will always be watching out what you say, you’ll become extra cautious about your facts and super conservative about your conclusions lest you be challenged by someone who may know better. Your attention is diverted from presenting good information to being seen as a reputed authority in that field

It is a valid fear and we all have to acknowledge that. I had this fear and even now at some presentations, I still get them. Fear of Shared Reality is one of those fears that you learn to live with and overcome when it springs out. I am sure even the most popular trainers in the world will have this fear of shared reality. They may have tamed this fear, but it existed at some point of time for sure.

How do we overcome this fear?

The below techniques have worked wonders for my clients. As with any technique, not everything will work for everyone, so try it all and adopt the one that best helps you. As always, use caution and commonsense while trying them.

There is no systematic procedure that you have to master to get rid of this fear. Just few simple principle and the viola lets see how you can adopt the, to match your own individual styles and needs Coming back to the question I got, My response was,

"A few years ago I had a similar problem. Although I gave presentations with ease, when I had my Trainer in the room, I would get nervous.

I call this problem Fear of Shared Reality. We feel that the other person knows what we know and thus we are constantly trying to avoid making a mistake. This is quite common in situations where you are presenting technical information to a group of peers who are from the same field. It is the fear of this shared knowledge, which is making you nervous.

I used a very simple method to overcome that fear. Instead of making it just a lecture on one technical topic, I started putting a bit of my personality into the talk. I made the people look at the issue from my perspective.

I would give them instances, examples or situations that I had gone through and help them understand my perspective on the issue. I customized the presentations to fit my personality. If you are like me, you may want to add in a bit of humor to bring life to the place. I also made sure that I elicit responses from the audience whenever possible.

I don’t do just to check if they are sleeping or not. But more importantly to see how well the material is being received. When you personalize your presentation to be more than just a set of facts, it will be out of the bounds of shared reality.

When you customize your presentation to be out of shared reality no matter how qualified the other person is, he did not have the same experiences as you did, so he cannot contradict you authoritatively. Meaning you will be an expert in what you are talking about…

If all this sounds confusing, let me give you a simpler explanation.
When you are presenting some information, as an expert, and you happen to have another expert in the audience,

1. You experience the fear of shared reality - because both of you know about the subject.
2. All through the presentation, you will be too conscious to avoid making any errors due to fear of being pointed out by the other person.
3. Your attention is directed towards avoiding mistakes rather than, sharing good information.

To overcome this fear this is what you can do
1. Add more of your personality to the presentation.
2. Include examples from your own life to make it more lively and real life oriented.
3. Teach the audience to look at your perspective and help them differentiate between facts and opinions.

People can challenge you on facts, but all of us have a right to form our own opinions.
Using these small things, you can definitely overcome your fear of shared reality. In addition, listen to the Build confidence mp3 by subscribing to my skill builder program, which is free for all.”

If you have this problem at anytime, please try this and let me know what happens. What happened with that physician’s problem?
I thought you will never ask. Here is her response.

Dear Sir ,

I worked with your advice and I did the following steps :

1-I tried to guide a Seminar out of my specialty depending only on what I remembered at University! The seminar was presented by residents and attended by specialists and I managed to guide the discussion in the form of "learning from them " and "sharing information or updating my information" . And ... it WORKED ! I was the centre of the discussion!!

2-I attended a meeting with our boss at work where all of the specialists were there , and I had a good share in discussing suggestions and presenting what I did ! So I shared in subjects out of scientific arguments

3-I had the courage to go for a psychologist and ask for counseling sessions and a course of communication skills . Surprisingly , once I felt someone is there to help me immediately at any time I wish , I felt better and more confident! And , guess what ???
I called my counselor to delete my counseling sessions before attending any! I only want the course of communication skills !I am confident !

Thank you sooooooo much Sir ! Dr. R.K

We all work to gain money, fame and power. But the feeling of satisfaction and the joy of helping someone else is way beyond all other materialistic gains.

When you know that you have made a difference in other life for good, you know you have grown up as a person. I am so glad that I could help this person and I really hope that I can help many more in the near future.

I wrote this page not to boast about anew new technique. There is nothing new about this technique. There is a bigger message. Stop looking for new technique an become creative. See things differently and your results will also be different. Fear of Shared Reality need not be a reality for life, it can be handled and even tamed.

What to do next?

If you have something Interesting to share do it here. If your comment is valuable and insightful< I will send you the Confidence Mp3 ($29 worth) free..