What causes the fear of public speaking? If you could pinpoint the reason for your own fear, how could that help you overcome your anxiety?
In Speak With No Fear, Mike Acker suggests that the root of the fear of public speaking often lies in past traumatic experiences. He offers strategies to identify and work through these memories, helping you move past your anxiety and become a more confident speaker.
Keep reading to understand Acker’s insights on uncovering—and healing from—the experiences that hold you back.
Dig Up the Root of Your Fear
Acker explores what causes the fear of public speaking, suggesting that it’s likely a humiliating or otherwise traumatic experience from your past that makes you afraid to stand up in front of a crowd. To fully overcome your fear, it’s crucial to identify that root cause and work through the negative feelings associated with it. Otherwise, this past event will continue to hold you back in the present.
For Acker, the root cause was obvious: He first tried public speaking in high school and his classmates viciously mocked his performance. However, the reason you’re afraid might not be so clear, so be prepared to dig into some of the most painful moments of your past. For instance, think about times when you became the center of attention for something embarrassing, times when groups of people made fun of you, or times when you were put on the spot for something you weren’t prepared for.
This is a difficult process, but an important one. A traumatic memory that you’ve buried is a bit like a broken bone that healed crookedly, Acker says—you have to re-break the bone and set it properly in order to make it whole and strong again. That’s what this first strategy does for your psyche: You go through that pain again so that you can truly recover from it.
| Emotional Trauma Can Be as Harmful as Physical Trauma A physical injury like a broken bone is an apt metaphor for emotional trauma. This is because the human nervous system—particularly the parts of the brain that deal with trauma—processes physical and emotional pain in remarkably similar ways. Therefore, it’s normal that a memory of being humiliated in front of a crowd would leave you afraid to put yourself in that position again, much like a child is (rightfully) afraid to touch a hot stove after getting burned. Studies using MRI scans have revealed that people who’ve recently experienced rejection have brain activity patterns that closely resemble those of people experiencing physical pain. This finding suggests that the key components of the nervous system involved in pain processing may not differentiate between physical and emotional sources of pain. To further illustrate the point, psychotherapist Pete Walker (Complex PTSD) says that people can develop trauma-related conditions from verbal or emotional abuse, not just from physical abuse, as many believe. In short, the psychological impact of emotional trauma can be just as significant as that of physical trauma, with long-lasting effects on a person’s mental health and well-being. |
How to Move on From Painful Memories
Acker says that when you find a memory that brings up the same feelings of fear and embarrassment you have about public speaking, you’ll need to do the uncomfortable work of reliving and processing those emotions so you can finally move on from them. For instance, one effective way to do this is through art: Write, draw, or craft something that tells the story of what happened and how it made you feel. However, if you’re truly feeling stuck in that memory and unable to move on, you might need to talk about it with a therapist.
Once you’ve gotten the uncomfortable feelings under control, Acker’s final suggestion is to look for a more positive way to think about that experience—perhaps there’s a lesson you could learn from it, or the pain helped to make you more resilient. Doing this will finally break that memory’s hold on you, allowing it to become a source of strength rather than a source of fear.
| Should You Try to Harness Post-Traumatic Growth? The process Acker describes here—thinking deeply about an upsetting experience, working through those memories, then harnessing them as a source of strength—is what mental health professionals call post-traumatic growth. This is essentially the opposite of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD): It refers to the positive psychological changes that many people experience after living through traumatic events. Such changes often include increased emotional resilience, greater confidence in one’s own abilities, and a newfound appreciation for life. Furthermore, some research has shown that post-traumatic growth becomes more likely the more someone thinks about a traumatic event. This is because remembering an upsetting experience over and over gives them the chance to reflect on that experience and come to terms with it. However, some experts warn that trying to intentionally remember and reframe a traumatic experience can backfire terribly. For instance, in The Body Keeps the Score, psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk says that intentionally reliving trauma can actually make it worse; also, far from helping people to move past painful memories, it often causes them to become even more fixated on those past events. |
