Fear of rejection in public speaking

Whenever I work with people to help them overcome anxieties associated with public speaking it's obvious that one of the main difficulties they have is the fear of rejection in public speaking. This usually goes back to childhood. Children are fantastic public speakers: once they have learned to speak at around the age of two, they love showing off their new found skill. Any parent will know that children are chatterboxes. However, once they get to school this is not such a useful skill. Teachers can't do their job if the class is chattering away. So at around the age of four or five children start to get the message that speaking is not a good thing. This is one of the fundamental reasons why most people perceive public speaking to be a problem. Our fear of rejection in public speaking stems from the fact that in order to be accepted by our teachers at a very young age we had to stop speaking in public and learn to be quiet. Then if a teacher did ask you to speak in public, it was often only to answer a question. Since at five years old your knowledge is pretty slim, many children get the answers wrong. This further compounds the problem. Not only is speaking in public perceived by children as a difficulty, of they do say something they are likely to get criticism for being wrong. The result is that the education system makes us afraid of speaking in public and gives us a deep seated fear of rejection in public speaking.

Labels: fear