Glossophobia - The Fear of Public Speaking

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Please take a moment to answer this question.

Which one among these five do you fear the most?

1. Death
2. Snakes
3. Public Speaking
4. Spiders
5. Heights

Are you through? Okay, now let's continue.

If there is one thing that could be dealt with and which, by so doing, would unleash much of the greatness in people it would be the fear of public speaking. In oratory, this is called stage fright but, believe it or not, it is far more complicated than its name suggests.

Etymology, Prevalence & Damage of Glossophobia

Public speaking fear has many names. Some choose to call it speech anxiety; some stage fright; some fear of speaking; and others speech phobia or performance anxiety, whichever name that catches your fancy. It is a social phobia that is related to self-presentation in front of an audience. Scientists sometimes call it “social anxiety disorder”. The medic term is glossophobia; from the Greek words “glossa” meaning “tongue” and “phobos” meaning “fear” or “dread”. For the purpose of this discussion, the most popular name—stage fright—will be used.

As one who has been in the business of training people in public speaking for several years, I have not been faced with any other problem more often than I've had to deal with fear on stage. Stage fright is so common in our society that the spread of its prevalence could almost beat your wildest imagination. Below is the result of a poll I stumbled upon sometime ago. It lists human fears in order of prevalence and found that the fear of speaking in public is the number one fear among human beings. It even ranked higher than the fears of dying and of spiders! Here are the rankings:

1. Fear of public speaking (Glossophobia)
2. Fear of death (Necrophobia)
3. Fear of spiders (Arachnophobia)
4. Fear of darkness (Achluophobia, Scotophobia or Myctophobia)
5. Fear of heights (Acrophobia)
6. Fear of people or social situations (Sociophobia)
7. Fear of flying (Aerophobia)
8. Fear of open spaces (Agoraphobia)
9. Fear of thunder and lightning (Brontophobia)
10. Fear of confined spaces (Claustrophobia)
[source: www.speech-topics-help.com]

I wonder if you noticed a strange absence from this list—the fear of snakes was outside the top-ten! Although these results may not actually reflect the situation on this side of the world (it was carried out in some so-called First World countries), it does however, give us more than just an idea of just what people fear the most and also by how much.
Now in addition to the matter-of-fact rankings above, here are a further six bare facts about the fear of public speaking.

Fact One: Fear of public speaking has negative effects on careers and influences success in life negatively when you do nothing about it. It is more than capable of ruining yojur career.
Fact Two: Three out of every four individuals suffer from speech anxiety—that's a whopping 75 percent!
Fact Three: Up to 5 percent of the world population (yes, hundreds of millions) aged between 18 and 54, experience this kind of social phobia at least once in any given year.
Fact Four: Women and men are equally affected although there are fear-of-public-speaking statistics that present figures in which more women suffer from speech-anxiety related problems than men.
Fact Five: More men than women seek “treatment” to cure their fear of public speaking (e.g. by way of training courses). Some public speakers have turned to beta-blockers or hypnosis therapy to find relief. But I prefer self-help materials.
Fact Six: According to scientific studies of glossophobia, social phobias often start with shyness in childhood or early adolescence and progress during adolescence.

Getting Help

Many people actually realise that they have this problem but the sad thing is that they are just too complacent in finding a solution to it. Okay, complacency might not be the only reason. It may well be a lack of opportunity of dealing with it. There is a real danger here.

Glossophobia can deprive you of the rewards of making the most of your potentials. Stage fright could easily embed itself in your subconscious that, quite often, you hear a negative, defeatist voice that resembles your real conscience. When you decide to get help by signing up for a speech class, the voice would usually say something like, “You know you can’t do this, why stress yourself with these lessons?” Or, “Why did you even sign-up for this programme?” Worse still it might say, “Orators are born not made. You’re either born with it or you just don’t have it. No speech lessons can change that” or “Public speaking isn’t something one can learn. Forget it!”

If you are one of those who get negative thoughts such as those, there’s only one thing to do with them: DISCARD THEM as fast as they come! You either do something about this problem now or be prepared to stand by and watch one opportunity after another pass on to somebody else simply because when it mattered, you just couldn’t . . . talk! Or, maybe you spoke up, but no one heard; perhaps they heard, but no one was moved; someone might have been moved, but in the wrong direction!
If you say one thing but your listeners hear another, you are moving them in the wrong direction. This is NOT good for you (except that’s really what you want!).

You might be speaking before your company Board delivering a presentation for, perhaps, a promotion; or you’re a student defending your thesis before the department or faculty staff; or perhaps you’re a marketer/sales rep trying to convince potential clients to patronise your products/services. In any of these situations (and very many more) there are only two directions in which you could move your listeners. You could either win them to your side or you could repel them to the other side. Somehow, your audience must reach a conclusion about you from your speech. This conclusion will be different from what they had thought before your presentation. Now because it is extremely important to you that your audience “get your message” you need to move them in the right direction—in your favour.

Unfortunately, you cannot move anyone if you refuse to mount the stage. Note that “mounting the stage” here doesn’t necessarily mean there must be a spotlight or a formal setting and a big gathering in a big hall at a big occasion. No. It doesn’t have to.

Great opportunities to speak usually come in semi-formal and even informal settings. Do not wait for that “big stage” opportunity before you test yourself. Start by speaking before small groups then move on to bigger ones as your confidence builds. It might be at work, at school, or in church. Just start somewhere, anywhere. At the end of your speech, your audience ought to get your message. They ought to get the idea you intended them to have. If they miss it, you have failed (Sorry!).

But relax, it’s not that bad. There are steps you could take to instantly boost your speaking confidence. These steps however, are not the whole deal but they can be great help for a start. By using the more advanced methods you could eventually cut down on your failures and improve on your successes. What you need for yourself first is a positive realisation of need; the need for improvement. Remember, if you do not make an expression you cannot make an impression. Defeat your speaking fears first.

Helping you to build your confidence and literally taking the bull by the horns in any situation you might find yourself in is just one of the many benefits you stand to gain by enrolling at the LiveSpeech Training Programme. So join a class today!!.

Glossophobia — The Fear of Public Speaking