What Causes Speech Anxiety and Fear of Public Speaking?

If you would like to impress someone with an interesting fact, you can try this: fear of public speaking is one thing people mention more often than the fear of death. Well, in reality, many fears are ranking higher than death, but the point is that speaking in front of a group takes the lead.

Many people feel deep anxiety when faced with the prospect of public speaking. And there are many reasons for it too. Here are a few of them:

• Feeling self-conscious in front of a big group — perhaps the most notable reason for feeling anxious about public speaking lies with the fact that we are just a little too self-conscious when it comes to speaking in front of others. It is one of the major problems speech coaches need to deal with first. Many individuals are okay speaking in front of a few people but feel stressed out when there is a bigger group. The things that help out the most with easing such a feeling is to remember that talking to a group of people is the same as talking to them individually. Also, many individuals find that a shift of mindset from ‘presenting’ to ‘talking’ seems to do the trick also.
• The fear of appearing nervous in front of others — the fear of looking fearful and nervous in front of others is another reason that causes anxiety. It is easy to think that when the audience senses these nerves, they will consider that we don’t know much about the topic, or that we aren’t as credible as we are claiming to be. But the reality is that there is no clear connection between the two things. Many people would much rather sympathise with a nervous speaker, rather than judge them.
• Fear of being judged — this is a tough-love message that many people are telling themselves. That people in the audience don’t care much about a speaker and that they will criticise their performance. But if they have invested their time and effort to be there and listen to the speaker, wouldn’t they rather want them to succeed?
• Previous blunders — the thing about public speaking anxiety is that it often comes as a learned behaviour. Many individuals judge themselves too harshly over past failures and plant a seed of self-doubt, which remains there to plague their current efforts. Preparing well in advance should give us no reason to think that something like that can happen again this time around.
• Not enough preparation — this is directly linked to the previous reason. For those that don’t do their homework and don’t prepare fully for a speech or presentation, there is always the fear of not being able to successfully deliver a speech or presentation. Being unprepared can undermine one’s confidence. Thankfully, that is one of the things people can control — how much they prepare for a speech. Investing more time can have a positive impact on confidence.
• Inadequate breathing — there is a proper way to breathe when an individual is giving a speech. Because it usually requires more air than vegetative breathing and needs more controlled exhalation, many people feel they cannot sustain the end of them speaking out a sentence. The way to control all of this lies with diaphragmatic breathing. It is great for calming down a racing heart.

Knowing the reasons why we fear public speaking is important because it can also give us the tools to properly address these fears and overcome them.

© Presence Training