David Reynolds
A few years ago, a survey by the American Institute of Stress found that nearly half of all working professionals reported anxiety as a constant presence in their lives. The survey found that this was not a seasonal slump or a response to a specific crisis, but a steady, low-grade hum that followed them into meetings, into conversations, and then even as they slept.
When I read that statistic, I felt strangely relieved because I had spent years believing I was alone among my peers.
From the outside, my story looked great. I had built a career at a company I respected, been promoted on schedule, included in the right conversations. I had, by most reasonable measures, made it. What no one could see was the other story being written behind the scenes where I rehearsed ordinary conversations in the shower, where I checked my email at two in the morning because some irrational part of me was convinced I had misread something hours earlier, where I smiled through team meetings and felt, underneath it all, like an imposter who hadn’t yet been found out.
Then it got worse. One presentation shone the spotlight on what was happening inside me.
It was nothing unusual, just a quarterly update with a room of colleagues and managers I had worked alongside for years. I had prepared thoroughly and knew the material. And yet, standing at the front of that room, something happened. My chest tightened and my vision narrowed. My mouth went dry and I didn’t have water to quench my sudden thirst. I stumbled through my slides, excused myself multiple times, and barely made it to the end. Afterward, sitting alone in a bathroom stall with my hands still shaking, I berated myself, hoping it was a one-time thing. Nerves. Stress. Too much coffee.
In the months that followed, I became an expert at making myself invisible. I volunteered for work that happened behind closed doors and deferred to colleagues when a speaking opportunity came up. I gravitated toward roles that felt safe rather than stretching toward ones that would require me to be seen. I was shrinking and hated myself for it.
It took me longer than I’d like to admit to see what was actually happening. Public speaking itself wasn’t the problem. That was just the place where the problem became impossible to ignore. The anxiety was older than any presentation. It was about being judged, about the gap between how I appeared to others and how I felt on the inside, and it had been running in the background for years before that afternoon when panic hit.
The turning point came without much drama. I was preparing to decline a panel discussion I genuinely wanted to join and I caught myself mid-excuse. By then, I had been making the same choice, in different forms, for nearly two years! And something made me say “enough is enough.” I couldn’t ignore my mental health anymore.
So I started trying to change, imperfectly and without much of a plan. I found a therapist and began the uncomfortable work of understanding where the anxiety had taken root. I tried to sleep more consistently and to stop treating every unread message as a potential catastrophe. I started writing privately to process what I couldn’t yet say out loud. None of it felt significant at the time. I don’t have a story of abuse or anything catastrophic. But I began to feel hope that my story could be rescued.
Around that time, a colleague mentioned our company’s Toastmasters club, and I joined with the eventual goal of making it through a speech without falling apart. The meetings helped, but what I hadn’t counted on was simply being around people who were also afraid, also practicing, and also deciding to show up anyway. I was reading a lot during this period too, and one book that stayed with me was Speak With No Fear by Mike Acker, largely because it didn’t frame fear as a defect to be corrected. It treated fear as something to be understood and gradually worked through.
After reading the book, I learned that Mike Acker also offered one-on-one coaching. While therapy was helping me understand and address the anxiety itself, working with a speech coach helped me tackle one of the most visible ways that anxiety was showing up in my life. The combination turned out to be incredibly valuable. One helped me work on what was happening internally. The other helped me develop the skills and confidence to communicate more effectively when it mattered most.
After some time, I began giving speeches regularly. Some were genuinely bad. A few were good enough that I started to feel proud of myself. Over time, the nervous energy didn’t disappear completely, but it changed into an excited anticipation.
The coaching and emerging confidence shifted other areas as well. I became more direct with my team. I stopped saving concerns for hallway conversations after the meeting had already ended. I started raising my hand for projects I would have talked myself out of before. I said yes to the panel discussion I had nearly declined. I began accepting more opportunities to present, speak, and share ideas. Maybe this doesn’t sound like much to others, but for me it represented real progress. When I think back on what changed during those years, it’s not a specific speech or presentation that comes to mind. It’s the memory of sitting alone after that panic attack believing I might never get past it, and then realizing years later that I was regularly doing things I once thought were impossible.
If any of this sounds familiar, I’d simply encourage you not to ignore the areas of your life that you keep avoiding.
Sometimes they point to something deeper that deserves attention. For me, public speaking was only part of the problem. It was simply one of the ways my anxiety showed up. For someone else, it might be fitness, relationships, depression, social situations, or something entirely different. The specifics may vary, but the principle is often the same.
Growth usually begins when we stop pretending the problem isn’t there and start taking small steps toward addressing it.
Resources that Helped Me
Find an Online Therapist (BetterHelp)
https://www.betterhelp.com
Find a Toastmasters Club Near You
https://www.toastmasters.org/find-a-club
Speak With No Fear by Mike Acker
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SB61VRY
Public Speaking Coaching with Mike Acker
https://uplevelcommunication.com/uplevel-public-speaking
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