You’re the epitome of confidence in front of the bathroom mirror. You invite a friend to view your presentation and dazzle her with your poise. She loyally claps and smiles and offers words of encouragement.

It’s just that there’s this nagging flutter in your stomach every time you think about getting up in front of a group to speak. A nagging flutter? Are you kidding? More like an attack of killer butterflies! Even the thought of speaking in public can start your heart pounding, palms sweating and fill your mouth with cotton.

If you make it to the stage, your knees knock, your breath comes in gasps and you feel light-headed. Even if you get past all that, you’re voice shakes. You experience “brain freeze” and you “choke”. You open your mouth to speak and…nothing. At least that’s your nightmare! It usually is just a nightmare; the fearful things we conjure up in our imagination are almost always worse than the real thing.

But when we’re in the middle of the anxiety we think, “JUST a nightmare? Is there anything scarier than getting up in front of a group of people to speak?” Apparently not. There’s little we humans are as universally afraid of as speaking in public. It tops the list. Personally, spiders that bite and being stuck in quicksand top my list.

If you're fearful of speaking in public, you’re definitely not alone. Public speaking is stressful to a large number of people. Our bodies don’t seem to know the difference between being chased by a hungry saber-toothed cat and being stared at by an expectant, friendly audience. Most of our fears are imagined, but that doesn’t make them any less potent.

It’s not the speaking or the audience that’s the problem. It’s the fear! Our bodies are programmed to protect us from danger, real or imagined. Under extreme stress our bodies shoot hormones of adrenaline and noradrenalin into our blood stream so we can