Public Speaking Anxiety is Common

When I was taking my first psychology course in college, our professor was talking to us about different phobias and the anxieties they can cause. When she asked the class what people were most afraid of, about half of the students said speaking publicly. We would soon find out that public speaking anxiety is a relatively common phenomenon.

She asked us what it was that worried us the most about speaking in a public setting. Most people said that it was the idea of messing up, forgetting what to say, stammering or speaking too quickly, or looking out into the audience and seeing that people were bored.

The professor said that kind of public speaking anxiety stems from an insecurity that we have that people would judge us for such a mistake. She said for most people, a fear of speaking publicly is spawned by a lack of confidence and a fear of failure, and said that they really were unwarranted, because public speaking was difficult for most people.

A public speaking anxiety, she said, could also be caused by a low self-esteem. Some people, she said, do not feel that they are worthy of standing in front of a group of people and speaking, as they feel they will be ridiculed or it will be revealed that they are an impostor, because in the minds of many such people, they are.

It was really interesting to hear the reasons for public speaking anxiety, because I had never really thought about it like that. I had never really had much of a fear of public speaking, but I know that a lot of people do, and I had always just assumed that it was nervousness. When I started to understand why that anxiety came about in the first place, it was pretty amazing.

Then our professor made a lot of the student's worst nightmares come true when she asked everyone who had said public speaking was a major phobia of theirs to come to the next class with a one-minute speech prepared about why such a phobia is unfounded.

You could hear a collective grumbling by those with public speaking anxiety, and I was grateful that I had not mentioned that my biggest phobia was heights. I can only imagine what she would have made me do for the next class!

As it turned out, the students who mentioned having a public speaking anxiety really benefited from the exercise. I think they realized that most people really didn't care how they looked or talked, but just that they had something important to say. When the class was over, I heard many of the students say that they were glad they had done it and that it had really helped them.