As Jerry Seinfeld once joked, most people would rather be in the coffin than deliver the eulogy at a funeral. Fear of public speaking is so prevalent that entire studies concern themselves with researching intervention methods. I cover fear of public speaking in more detail in my upcoming book, but I have put the broad strokes below as food for thought to anyone looking to overcome their fear of public speaking. There are countless articles, studies, videos, and guides to overcoming fear of public speaking, some quite useful, some less so, and some giving downright dangerous advice.
While I cannot promise that the below observations will address your specific circumstances, they should provide some insight to the majority of readers as to why you fear public speaking and what you can do about it. This is gained from training and coaching hundreds of other speakers, many of whom started out so nervous they vomited or passed out before their first public speaking event. If the below advice worked for them, it will likely work for you as well.
It’s Not About Public Speaking
Whenever someone says they fear public speaking, I always shake my head and say, “You are afraid – but not of public speaking.” When I tell people this, I usually get a dirty look or an audible scoff. “No?” they ask, “Then what am I afraid of?” I usually answer the question with a question, and it goes something like this.
Me: You’re talking to me right now, aren’t you?
Friend: Yes.
Me: And there’s other people around who could hear?
Friend: Yes.
Me: Are you afraid to talk to me?
Friend: No.
Me: You’re talking to me in public, so you’re not afraid of public speaking.
Friend: Well, this is different. I’m not afraid to talk to you.
Me: Exactly.
Public speaking, at its core, is about relationships. Many people think public speaking as conversation on a larger scale, information exchange, or performance, and while those are all elements of public speaking, they all stem from public speaking’s relational nature. What that means, then, is people don’t fear public speaking – they fear relational consequences. We are comfortable talking to people according to our level of interpersonal depth with them. We might discuss religion and politics with close friends, but never with casual acquaintances. We don’t want to let others down, and there are few people in our lives with whom we are secure enough to truly talk about anything.
Think about giving your friend a birthday present. While you’re relatively certain she’ll like it, there is always a seed of doubt until she actually opens the box, and it is accompanied by an element of fear. The gift is, in part, a proxy for the relationship. When we give “good” gifts, we credit ourselves with being good friends and knowing others well, but when we give “bad” gifts, we worry that we will damage the relationship, that our friend might even think less of us.
Fear of public speaking stems from the same root. What if I get something wrong? What if I sound weird? What if it doesn’t make sense? What if my coworkers think I’m stupid? What if my boss thinks I’m incompetent? What if I don’t get asked to go to that conference because I can’t even string a sentence together? What if I miss out on that promotion? All of these are concerns about damaged relationships and the perceptions of others.
Now, there is a smaller group of people for whom fear of public speaking owes to lack of skill. For many, public speaking is seen as a dark art that some are born with, but most are not. I can tell you from long experience with many students that this is patently false. Public speaking is a skill like any other and can be learned. The challenge with public speaking is that nearly all of the skill development is internal and psychological. A coach can fix your form when you throw a ball. A master plumber can tell you when you’ve let the torch go too long on a piece of pipe. For public speaking, there are very few external behaviors to fix like body language or a shaky voice. The rest is internal.
So what can we do?
Don’t Do Drugs, Kids
I have a friend and mentor who was a nervous wreck before his first graded brief in the military. A combat veteran who had been in more than a few scrapes, the idea of talking to a small room of evaluators terrified him more than manning a gun turret in Afghanistan. This being some time ago in what we would call a “different” Air Force, his supervisor pulled him aside a little while before the brief and had him down two shots of whiskey to calm his nerves. He did fine, and that was the threshold he needed to cross in order to start his journey toward being an excellent briefer, trainer, instructor, and speaker.
While stories like the above are amusing, I always advise against chemically addressing fear of public speaking, whether with alcohol, propranolol, or any other pharmaceutical treatment. I know there are plenty of people who routinely take anti-anxiety medications before speaking and swear by it. Hop on the r/PublicSpeaking and you’ll find dozens upon dozens of posts discussing what to take and how to take it, and while I would never judge someone for their choice, I strongly discourage it.
For one, any crutch is a vulnerability. Suppose you become comfortable speaking at work so long as there is a little something in your system. You generally have time to prepare or at least are knowledgeable enough on a subject and have enough notice that you will be able to pop a pill before speaking. What happens the one time it becomes urgent? Your colleague Jim was supposed to present to the client, but he called in sick, and you’re the only one available, except Jim was more knowledgeable on the account, and so on. You’re told to be in the conference room in two minutes, and you left your propranolol at home. Now what?
Two, pharmaceutical treatments address symptoms – not the root cause. You are nervous, anxious, and jittery because you’re afraid – not the other way around. Continue to rely on chemical means to get through, and you’ll never overcome the true roadblocks to public speaking success. What’s more, as stated in the above section, fear of public speaking largely stems from relational issues, so working to understand and overcome those root causes can have tremendous benefits elsewhere in life, not just when addressing an audience.
If all of that is true, how do we proceed?
Own, Identify, Condition
The first step to facing fear of public speaking is to own it. Many people accept that they fear public speaking, but that is not the same as owning it. When we encounter unpleasant memories, our first impulse is usually to push them down and ignore them. Unfortunately, that can actually make the problem worse because it lingers in the back of our minds, unaddressed and unresolved. The same is true of fear. The more we avoid it, ignore it, or suppress it, the worse it gets every time we have to face it. Accepting fear is saying “I am afraid.” Owning fear is saying, “I am afraid, and that’s okay.”
Identifying the fear is the next, and far harder step. As written above, fear of public speaking is not about public speaking. Because so much of public speaking stems from the same phenomena that govern relationships, it is often difficult and sometimes impossible to pin down any single driving factor behind the fear. It might have been an overbearing parent who never let you speak, a botched first speech in school that earned you a nickname, a bombed presentation at work, an abusive relationship, fear of failure, or any combination of infinite variables that shaped your perception of public speaking over the years.
Having worked with hundreds of speakers, there is sometimes a bit of borderline therapy that goes into uncovering uncomfortable memories which might influence the student’s mental state. Sometimes it’s just a few key questions, other times it’s multiple periods of introspection over days, weeks, or months that discern the root cause. The truth is, most people never fully uncover the reasons, but it’s the discovery process itself that helps, because naming a fear is often the first step in overcoming it.
Once a student starts to get a handle on the root cause or causes of their fear, the final step is conditioning the fear, or more accurately, counter-conditioning. I have yet to meet someone who was truly, pathologically, utterly afraid of public speaking since birth. While the triggering events may be far enough back that an individual doesn’t remember, I have not personally run across someone so primally afraid that they can’t overcome it. Such individuals may exist, but I have not encountered them. What that means is that the events which made a person what they are can be unmade as well.
Sometimes it’s about simple encouragement, letting a person know that they are doing well and building their confidence. Often it is about a sense of progression and advancement. This can be difficult because actual progression does not always carry a sense of progression. Most often the counter-conditioning comes down to a matter of repetition. Like any other skill, the more times you speak in public, the better you’ll get at it. I encourage students to join organizations like Toastmasters so they can develop and refine their skills in a conducive environment.
At the end of the day, there is no silver bullet to completely alleviate fear of public speaking. I know some speakers who, despite impeccable poise, delivery, and deep experience, they still get butterflies before every engagement, but their depth of counter-conditioning has brought them to a point where they can act in spite of their fear and crush it every time. As stated in the beginning, this article is meant to provide insight – not a how-to guide, though future posts will go into more depth on specific methods for addressing fear of public speaking. For now, know that it is something you can overcome, and it may not be as unreachable as you think.