ABSTRACT
Chapter 12 highlights anxiety in the workplace focusing on presentations, meetings and conferences. It documents the story of Craig, a confident individual in many areas of life but recently lacking confidence and self-belief in the workplace particularly when having to give presentations. The onset of this was after an important presentation with a critical audience where he lost his train of thought and panic set in; he feared a recurrence of this. His narrative indicated that his anxiety is domain-specific, experienced in situations which are highly important to him. The main focus of therapy was to change the subjective negative perceptions he holds of the single traumatic experience in this specific environment. Initially EMDR was applied to desensitise negative perceptions, allowing him to reassess the initial feared situation. Hypnosis was used in the following session as an adjunct to EMDR to reinforce and intensify cognitive restructuring. Craig reported that on the morning of the presentation he had a little anxiety but was fine on walking into the room, felt good about himself and gave a confident presentation. His assessment of therapy was that the joint treatments that he had received had been very effective for him.
