You say you’re afraid of public speaking. But watch what happens when you dig deeper.
You’re not actually afraid of standing in front of people. You’re not afraid of the physical act of moving your mouth and producing words. You’re afraid of the moment when you see judgment in their eyes. You’re afraid of the silence after you finish, unsure if it signals respect or contempt. You’re afraid of saying something that reveals you’re not as competent as your position suggests you should be.
But go deeper still.
You’re afraid that if they see through your performance, they’ll discover what you’ve suspected all along: that you don’t belong in that room. That you’ve been accidentally promoted beyond your actual capability. That your success is an administrative error that’s about to be corrected.
And beneath that?
You’re afraid that if you’re exposed as inadequate in one area, the whole facade will crumble. Your relationships, your career, your sense of identity. Everything you’ve built will be revealed as constructed on false foundations. You’ll be alone, unsuccessful, and worst of all, yourself without the protective layers you’ve spent years building.
This is what you’re actually afraid of when you say you’re afraid of public speaking. Not the podium. Not the audience. But a existential unraveling that begins the moment someone sees past your carefully maintained image.
And you think you’re the only one carrying this secret terror.
Every fear you name is a spokesperson for a deeper fear you can’t quite articulate. The fear of failure is really the fear of discovering you’re not who you thought you were. The fear of rejection is really the fear that there’s something fundamentally unlovable at your core. The fear of success is really the fear that achievement won’t fill the void you’ve been trying to escape.
We spend our entire lives running from surface fears while the real predators hunt us from below.
The question nobody wants to ask is: what happens if you stop running? What happens if you turn around and look directly at what’s actually chasing you?
Most people never do this because looking directly at your deepest fears requires admitting they exist. And admitting they exist feels like confirming they’re true. If you acknowledge you’re afraid of being fundamentally inadequate, doesn’t that mean you are inadequate? If you admit you’re terrified of meaninglessness, doesn’t that make your life meaningless?
But fear and truth aren’t the same thing. Fear is your mind’s prediction about what might happen or what might be true. It’s a warning system, not a fact-checking system. Your fear that you’re inadequate doesn’t make you inadequate any more than your fear of plane crashes makes planes less safe.
Understanding this distinction changes how you relate to fear.
Over 120,000 people now read Stoic Wisdoms, with hundreds of paying subscribers applying these lessons daily. If you haven’t upgraded yet, you can unlock this full post and all Premium content including the Confidence series & Stoic Reflections.