by Jael Ravalyn

Created on: December 27, 2009   Last Updated: March 21, 2010

It was surprising that this student had such a strong reaction to being called to read her homework assignment aloud in front of the class.  She was just as shocked by her reaction since she had no clue that she had stage fright; as this was the first time she had ever been in front of a group of people.  Her walk to the front was sure-footed, and she began reading without looking at the class with a loud enough voice.  But something, maybe a pencil scratching, a foot tapping, or a throat clearing, made her look up and all of the class’ eyes gathered into one like Sauran from Lord of the Rings.  Her hands began to shake until her assignment fell to the ground, her next move was not to pick it up and continue, but to dash out the door and keep running until she could not anymore.

Stage fright, glossophobia[1], communication apprehension, social anxieties…are amongst the various labels for this anxiety over speaking to/in front of people.   Surveys have revealed that people are more frightened of speaking in front of an audience than dying. This does not make it sound so easy to overcome. But, the thing is, a lot of research has been run to understand and test the characteristics of the thought processes of a person experiencing stage fright.  Research has discovered three prevalent assumptions amongst those experiencing stage fright:

1 That often the fear is fed by a belief that those in the “audience” will know how nervous the speaker/performer is. 

2 Those who suffer from such nervousness are convinced no one else feels as nervous as they.  This culminates to the belief that the nervousness is a rare, abnormal experience. 

3 Hopelessness seals the deal—the assumption that stage fright is incurable. 

  How has the researched fared in verifying any of these assumptions? Let us take this point by point:

Point ONE: Can a group of people actually tell exactly how nervous a speaker/singer/actor is?  NO, they CANNOT.  This is not a conciliatory assurance—this is a documented surety[4].  Have you ever been called at a bluff?  How about being caught in a lie?  Did you know that a person is at their most nervous when they lie?  But there is no human lie detector because no one can tell all the time reliably when anyone else is lying even when trained at recognizing “tells” (indicators of deception) because these are unreliable predictors.

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