What are the causes of fear of public speaking?
I often get asked "what are the causes of fear of public speaking?". There are two answers to that question. One is "it depends", the other is, "there is only one cause". The real cause of all the symptoms associated with the fear of public speaking is a rise in a hormone called adrenalin. This hormone gets pumped out from glands next to your kidneys, in your back, when you are under some kind of threat. The rise in adrenalin helps your body to become prepared to deal with the threat by diverting your blood supply away from the central part of your body, to where it is needed most - your muscles. The hormone also triggers a release in energy supplies from the liver and gets your heart and lungs pumping to get the oxygen around your body. Thanks to the rise in adrenaline your body can cope with anything - well almost. Your body cannot cope that well with constant adrenalin - so once you have started to deal with the threat, adrenalin is switched off and you can deal with whatever the problem is. The difficulty for most people with a fear of public speaking is the fact that the threat - the audience - never goes away. Hence adrenalin continues to be pumped around the speaker's body, putting them in an every-ready state. But in order to cope, they need the adrenalin switched off - and with the ever present "threat" of the audience, that never happens. This then leads to excess adrenalin circulating in the bloodstream, which is then responsible for all those nasty symptoms.
What can sometimes take time to discover is why an audience is perceived as a threat. For some people it is embarrassment triggered by memories of school-days having to stand in front of the class. For others it is fear of criticism. In fact there are several possible reasons why the adrenalin rise is triggered. But they all point back to one thing - someone frightened of speaking in public sees the situation as personally threatening. Once you have located that specific threat you no longer have to worry what are the causes of fear of public speaking - you just deal with the threat.
What can sometimes take time to discover is why an audience is perceived as a threat. For some people it is embarrassment triggered by memories of school-days having to stand in front of the class. For others it is fear of criticism. In fact there are several possible reasons why the adrenalin rise is triggered. But they all point back to one thing - someone frightened of speaking in public sees the situation as personally threatening. Once you have located that specific threat you no longer have to worry what are the causes of fear of public speaking - you just deal with the threat.
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