Published on 12, July, 2020
Does anyone else gets thrown by questions?
Examples for me are, having to come up with something on a course, especially that thing they do sometimes where everyone has to introduce themselves.
Interviews are difficult because I can never think of examples on the spot.
I even was thrown recently when asked in a situation when asked what my favourite song was.
These kind of things make me panic that I have to think of something quickly.
Yes.
I spend so much time preparing myself for social interactions even though I know I'm unlikely to be asked anything.
But I panic so I try to prepare myself. Almost like I'm preparing for a quiz night.
Weird thing is though, I still don't know what to answer when I do talk and get asked things. Everyone I prepared for vanishes and I'm left just staring as my mind goes blank.
This is often a confidence related issue where the anxiety / shock of the situation leads your brains to tell the body to start producing adrenalin which tends to inhibit the higher mental functions in favour of instinct (kicking in the fight-or-flight response), and this mangifies the memory recallection function.
Developing ways to lower your stress level is the key to this - not a fast process and one that takes lots of preparation. Lower stress = less adrenaline and hence less shutdown of the higher brain functions.
You could try techniques like thinking of your interviewers naked and wearing silly hats to lower the intimidation they present to you, but this made me giggle so I stopped doing it.
Practice will help desensitise you to the threat too - maybe find someone to role play the interviews with you and get them to raise the challenge level to help you find ways to deal with it.