Why does Fear of Public Speaking get worse?

Many of my clients start working with me after a period of months or years in which their fear escalated, even leading some to not go to work after a perceived failure to perform well.  They may experience fear in more and more situations, which hadn’t bothered them previously.  This is quite frightening for anyone going through it.

A few answers:

1. In the beginning, you just fear the situation, and avoid it if possible, but since you can’t absolutely avoid being in the spotlight sometimes, you develop fear of the fear symptoms as much as the situational reaction while you’re on the spot. and the uncontrollable nature of those symptoms becomes a new focus of anxiety.

2. The part of your brain which initiates fear reactions, called the limbic system,  underneath your thinking brain, the cortex (grey wrinkly matter), doesn’t repond to logic; in fact during fear reactions, the limbic system shuts down the thinking brain, and that’s why you pretty much can’t think.  And you can’t get through to it with logic.  So it starts a bad memory list and every subsequent fear reaction is logged on to that list, making a long history of uncontrollable fright.  And when we can’t control our lives, the fear that we are out of control escalates quickly.

3. So, now you may have a long list of associated fears which build up to bigger and bigger fear reactions.  Add to that the growing fear that you can no longer hide it from co-workers and superiors at work.  Add on the fear of complete failure, never mind your now forgotten wish to build your career, not to lose it.

So, what’s there to do about this?  Fortunately, this escalation is typical and really doesn’t interfere with recovery.  It’s a matter of being helped with the right techniques that address the origin of that fear.  It requires a commitment to yourself and to improving your life, but the benefits are plentiful.

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