It's not about public speaking, its about public looking!

 One sentence from Brené Brown's book Daring Greatly really struck me.  

"We can't let ourselves be seen if we're terrified by what people might think" .

For me that seems to be at the core of why people are scared of public speaking. If I speak out; people will find out my faults, they will see all my weaknesses.

What she's talking about it is shame (the belief that we are not worthy enough for love, belonging or connection). She talks about 12 categories of shame that have emerged from her research (• appearance and body image, • money and work • parenting • family • mental and physical health • addiction • sex • aging • religion • surving trauma • being stereotyped or labelled).

Our shame, in whatever form, can stop us for being seen if we allow it. We think we know what people are thinking. We think we know what the expectations are of the audience and quite often these are really tough expectations. "I have to be perfect when I speak, I can't make a mistake, People are expecting me to be really impressive etc. Underneath these expectations is the thought that I'm not good enough, I'm flawed and I'm ashamed". One of the problems with Anxiety is that it distorts reality. It makes you think that everyone is thinking about “ME”. And the brain also throws up thoughts about everyone can see the hell I’m going through (aka the illusion of transparency cognitive bias)

Tough stuff - its no wonder people don't want to do public speaking.  We create these thoughts often when we are under pressure and falsely project these thoughts onto an audience with a sea of blank faces. So if we fail to understand what is going on with that audience our shameful thoughts seem to be right infront of us. And that is not pleasant.

But it doesn't have to be like that at all. What's needed is a radical re-think of what we are doing with an audience and to learn the ability to drop the struggle with anxiety, to learn about audiences (blank faces are normal/they are not really thinking that much about you), learn to unhook from thoughts like “I’m not enough” and not to get entangled with "What do i think the audience is thinking".

When you do that work then you realise that no one has been thinking much about you at all. And that is not sad, it’s a liberation for most people.