Speaking anxiety is a common fear among people of all ages. It affects people in all walks of life regardless of age, gender, race and culture. Also called speech anxiety or glossophobia, this disorder shuts down your ability to think clearly and leaves you out of control of your thoughts. When you start to think of fear, your body resonates with the anxiety and later on you will be totally disoriented. You start to have a queasy stomach, hyperventilation and excessive sweating. Later, you will be totally out of context and you will lose control.
Talking about the physiological basis of the anxiety, speaking anxiety come from the autonomic nervous system and the adrenal gland. These internal components of the body prepare the body for action in times of emergency. One common verbal action noticed among people who have the anxiety is, shortness of breathe, stuttering and speed talking. In non-verbal cases, the person may find it difficult to establish an eye contact with others,
and jerking in the pace of talking.
For the most part, speaking anxiety is an environmentally endowed disorder rooting from a culture of overwhelming expectations. We are in the pretext that everyone should be perfect in delivering something in front of people. This in return makes people anxious. Emotions create emotions, when one is overwhelmingly afraid of something it somehow transfers to another person. Eventually, this will breed a generation of fearsome people and the bad news is, we have managed to keep this cultural trait for ages.
Individuals who are not used to public speaking may manage to escape a few occasions but not in the long run. There will come a time that these people get boxed up in a situation where they really need to give a speech in front of other people. Whether it’ll a simple family gathering, a small circle of friends wanting to hear something, or who knows what.
Even worst, in one study a number of students revealed that they fear speaking in front of people than death. This is a very irrational behavior isn’t it? In these cases, people never really took time to work on their fear. They just ignored it and most of the time avoided situations where they require speaking to people. Over the years, these people have been hiding and defending themselves to get rid of the situation. When the inevitable took place, they were scared to death!
These are just one of the few grim things an anxiety can do for you if you don’t act as soon as possible.
