I have a fear of public speaking. It’s horrible. It’s my biggest fear.
I am a 14 year old freshman in high school, and I can’t even stand in front of my classroom to present for a single minute. No one around me understands how absolutely horrible it is until they actually see me speak publicly.
I get nervous just thinking about speaking to the class. I’m at home the day before a report, and I get choked up and my throat seems to clog. My blood starts to rush and I want to say I get cold, but it’s really like a fever, when you can just say you feel hot, but cold at the same time.
Today I pretended to lose my paper in order to skip a minute long (2 tops) presentation that only involved me asking review questions on Fahrenheit 451 to the class. I skipped it because I could feel myself getting incredibly nervous before I stood. My blood seriously starts to rush. I start shaking before I even get up there.
When I do get up, I’m practically almost on the verge of tears. I feel like I might pass out if my blood starts to rush even a tiny bit faster. I shake, so if I lift my hand, it’s very visible from a distance that I can’t keep still. My voice quivers horribly, and when I finally get back into my seat, I have to focus on nothing but holding back my tears. It takes me the rest of the day to completely calm down, and even a month to stop feeling embarrassed. By that time, however, it’s already time for me to do another presentation.
My parents tell me the more I do it the more I’ll get used to it, but that’s seriously not the case. They’ve never even watched me speak to a class, so they don’t know.
How can I even START to overcome this? I’m especially looking for answers that don’t involve simply "getting over it" or just being more confident, or getting used to it. This is too unbearable to just wait for it to pass on.
Are there any ways I can overcome this with a more in depth answer? I was thinking that I wish there was a doctor for this kind of thing.
I already do practice in front of family and friends, and it hasn’t helped so far.
I do memorize my speeches inside out, backwards forwards.
I’m perfectly fine in front of all my friends and family. It’s the people I don’t know. It’s the people who are getting their FIRST impression of me. I’m in a new school, and I only have three or four friends so far. It doesn’t helped that two of them that have actually seen me speak in front of the class tease me about it.
Outside of speaking in front of a classroom and people I don’t know, I am problem free. I never stutter, I never slip in an um or anything. Only in front of people I don’t know.
I am also the only one in my classes that has a public speaking problem. The others may get nervous, but they do well, they don’t shake, and barely stutter.
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thanks again!