Glossophobia or speech anxiety is the fear of public speaking or of speaking in general. The word glossophobia comes from the Greek glossa, meaning tongue, and phobos, fear or dread. Public speaking anxiety becomes a “disorder” when avoidance (phobia) occurs and when the mental and/or physical pain of the anxiety is substantial.
Almost everyone has heard that fear of public speaking is higher on the anxiety hierarchy than death for most people, but it’s hard to understand the reason for this.
Consider why: Carol was a homemaker and mother of two. She was an ovarian cancer survivor who once said “I’d rather be back in chemotherapy than speak in from of a group. With the cancer there was no judgment.”
Treatment with thousands of patients with public speaking anxiety at Berent Associates has demonstrated that the specific fear of judgment about being noticeably nervous is the singular most common cause that drives the fear. Examples of fear of being noticeably nervous include erythrophobia (fear of blushing), hyperhidrosis (sweating), voice stammering, and selective mutism.
The fear of being noticeably nervous is a big part of the untold story. One of the reasons this piece of the story is not well known is that many public anxiety sufferers are perfectionists. The last thing a perfectionist will do is admit they are not perfect. While the perfectionism is often a major positive variable for career success, it’s also been the energy that drives the anxiety. In “Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder as Etiology for Performance Anxiety,” Jonathan Berent describes how perfectionism drives performance and social anxiety. I really hope this helps
