Your heart is racing. Your palms are clammy. Your stomach is starting to send distress signals to your brain. You’re flushed, and you’re feeling hot under your business attire. Your mind is rehearsing disaster scenarios.

You’re just about to give a speech. It’s not a good feeling, for approximately 95 percent of the population that has to occasionally stand up and deliver. Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been on a lifetime quest to find ways to handle stage fright in order to help get over those first few minutes of anxiety.

Of course, for some, it’s more than a few minutes. It begins long before the speech and – perhaps worse – it doesn’t end until – the statute of limitations on shame has expired. That is, never.

Recently, I ran across a study that may help relieve the temporary symptoms – the Advil of Speech Anxiety. I don’t know that these ideas will help with the longer terms issues some speakers face, but we do what we can.

Here’s the trick. When anxiety strikes, look at a picture of people being loved and cared for. Now, the study used random participants and random pictures of loving and caring relationships. So my guess is that if you put a picture of you and your favorite person hugging, the effect would be even stronger.

The study found that if you look at a picture of nurturing, your anxiety levels were reduced.

I love this study because it fits the modern speaking world and our peripatetic lifestyle. It provides instant relief. All you have to do is load a few pictures onto your smart phone or iPad, and have them at the ready for when anxiety strikes. Presto, you feel better.

The study appeared in the journal Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, and it demonstrates that very brief reminders of being loved and cared for reduce the amygdala’s threat response. I don’t think this trick will completely eliminate stage fright, especially if you don’t get to the pictures until the anxiety is really rocking and rolling, but it seems like it should help.

I’d love to hear from speakers who give this idea a try – does it help? How much does it reduce anxiety in the moment? And what about the Internet’s ubiquitous puppies and kittens – do they work as well?

Give it a try and let me know. In the meantime, here’s a quick recap of some of the earlier remedies for speech anxiety that I’ve recommended in previous posts.

1. Redefine the anxiety. A recent study found that if you tell yourself to get excited when about to do something stressful, like give a speech, you do better than when you try to calm yourself down.

2.Get Fit. Especially if you’re on the high end of the anxiety scale, getting some exercise beforehand is a great way to slough off some of the extra jitters.

3. Meditate. Some form of meditation which involves sitting and paying attention to your breathing, or repeating a mantra over and over, or just quietly watching your thoughts, can be very helpful.

4. Tense and release. A simple technique you can use without much preparation is to stand somewhere quietly and tense and release your muscle groups in some order you establish.

5 Breathing. Take air in by expanding your belly like an eye dropper. Don’t lift your shoulders. Then push the air out gently using your abdominals.

6 Get your thoughts under control. Start a positive set of thoughts going, and answer the negative ones every time they come up. “This speech is going to be a success because I’ve done my homework, I know the audience, and I’ve prepared….”