How to Conquer Fear of Public Speaking: Why What You’ve Tried Hasn’t Worked Yet

By Victoria Lioznyansky, M.S., M.A.  |  Updated: January 22, 2026

Are you struggling to overcome fear of public speaking (also known as glossophobia), despite trying everything? If so, you're not alone. 

Many entrepreneurs, executives, and high-level professionals find themselves stuck in a cycle of anxiety and dread when it comes to speaking in front of an audience, even though they really know their stuff. And no matter how much they practice or how many tips they follow, nothing seems to help. I've been there myself. I share my own journey of overcoming this exact struggle in my podcast episode "How I Conquered the Fear of Public Speaking: My Own Journey". 

If you’re searching for how to conquer fear of public speaking, chances are you’ve already done what everyone told you to do.

You practiced. You prepared. You followed the tips. You pushed yourself to speak even when it felt awful.

And yet, the fear is still there.

I’m here to set the record straight on why traditional approaches to public speaking haven’t worked for you (hint: it’s not your fault).

And how you can actually overcome your fear for good using an evidence-based approach.

Conquering fear of public speaking doesn’t start with techniques or performance tricks.

It starts by understanding how your brain learned to associate speaking with danger... and retraining it to experience speaking as safe, familiar, and grounded.

That’s the shift most advice never addresses.

Why Traditional Public Speaking Fails to Address Fear of Public Speaking

Maybe you’ve tried reading books, watching YouTube videos, going to Toastmasters, or taking a course. Maybe you’ve even hired a speaking coach before. But if you’re reading this, it’s probably because none of that has helped. 

You still feel miserable when all eyes are on you. Your hands get sweaty, your heart races, and you start shaking. Your audience can sense your fear. You stumble over your words and your lack of confidence shows. 

Maybe you have restless nights just thinking about your next presentation. 

Maybe you even avoid public speaking entirely. You’ve convinced yourself it’s ‘just not your thing’ so you hang back while others take the spotlight. 

This is the core reason most people remain stuck, even after years of effort, something I explain in depth in my Confidence Within podcast episode.

If you want to hear this broken down conversationally, with real examples, you can listen here:

Yet, you know that hiding in the shadows is holding you back in your career or business. You’re missing out on so many opportunities that could change everything for you. Like a promotion, more clients, and growing your income. 

Well, I’ve seen firsthand that it’s possible for anyone to obliterate their fear - if you have the right framework. Here’s why traditional speaking programs don’t work (and could be making your anxiety worse):

The Problem Most Public Speaking Programs Are Actually Solving

One of the main reasons why many people struggle to overcome their fear of public speaking is that most programs and resources focus solely on building communication and presentation skills. They approach speaking from a technical standpoint, going over topics like how to structure your content, add humor, use visual aids, and minimize filler words. 

If you’ve ever had someone count how many times you said ‘like’, ‘um’, or ‘you know’ during a speech, then you’ve witnessed this yourself. 

These techniques polish your soft speaking skills, but they don’t address the root cause of your anxiety or how to build confidence. So you still end up panicking, shaking, and stumbling over your words when you get in front of that audience. 

The problem is, most speaking programs out there weren’t created by people who’ve experienced debilitating public speaking anxiety themselves. 

In fact, many of the instructors have natural charisma and have been great speakers since those grade school presentations most of us dreaded. So they don’t understand the fear you’re feeling. They can't truly empathize with what you're going through. 

They may touch on confidence-building techniques, but they’re often surface-level and fail to provide the deep, transformative work needed to conquer your fears. They’re more likely to give you a pep-talk than a solution. 

So you might learn a lot, but is it really helpful if you can’t apply that knowledge in real-life situations? It’s a frustrating catch-22. You end up knowing exactly what to do, how to structure your message, how to engage the audience, and how to get them to take action. 

Yet, when the moment of truth arrives and you're looking at a bunch of expectant faces, all of that goes out the window. The fear trumps the skills, rendering them useless. 

The harsh truth is that until your root fears, doubts, and limiting beliefs around public speaking are addressed at a core level, simply learning techniques and strategies will never be enough. 

Why Looking Confident Doesn’t Create Real Confidence

Most programs also focus on teaching you how to appear confident, addressing the symptoms instead of tackling the core of your fear.  

You might learn body language techniques, specific words to use, or to “just do it scared.” They might even teach you tricks to fool yourself into thinking that your anxiety is excitement.  

All of this can help people with a few jitters look more polished, but it doesn’t work for true, deep-rooted fear.  

“Faking it” doesn’t work 

You’re essentially learning how to pretend - to "fake it till you make it". It's a temporary band-aid solution that doesn't address the root cause of your public speaking anxiety. So you still feel miserable on the inside. 

Additionally, putting on a mask can actually be more damaging than helpful. You could end up feeling like more of an imposter than you did in the beginning - further contributing to your fear. When you feel inauthentic, like you’re putting on a performance, it can make you feel like you aren’t “good enough” to be yourself. 

It’s also not a long-term strategy. You can only pretend for so long so it’s not very sustainable. Your inner anxiety will eventually catch up with you. 

True confidence comes from within. It comes from acting externally the way you feel internally. It means acting authentically. Once you learn how to feel confident, public speaking becomes easy. But until then, you’ll always struggle with it.

The “Practice Makes Perfect” Myth in Public Speaking

If you’ve been struggling with public speaking anxiety for a while, you’ve undoubtedly been told to “practice, practice, practice”. It seems to be the golden rule, but it doesn’t work. 

I had one client whose job was to give presentations at work. She did this for 15 years almost weekly. Despite well over a decade of practice, she was still nervous, stressed, and couldn’t sleep the night before each of her presentations. 

And I’ve worked with so many other clients who struggled immensely despite speaking constantly (in some cases, on a daily basis!)

How Practice Could Be Making Your Anxiety Worse

Not only does practicing not help your anxiety, but following this advice could actually make your fear worse.

Let’s break it down. The idea behind “practice makes perfect” is that by repeatedly putting yourself in situations where you have to speak in front of others, you'll eventually become desensitized to the fear and anxiety. 

However, this can backfire and reinforce the very habit you're trying to break. When we repeatedly do something while feeling a certain way (in this case, anxious), we form a habit and develop muscle memory for that emotional state.  

So, if you continue to practice public speaking while feeling anxious, you're essentially cementing the habit of always feeling anxious when you speak. This is why psychologists don’t treat phobias by just throwing a patient into a scary situation - they teach effective coping mechanisms and work on their mindset first. 

As NFL coach Vince Lombardi once said, "Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect." If you're practicing the wrong thing (speaking while feeling anxious), you're committing that habit to your muscle memory just as effectively as if you were practicing the right thing (speaking confidently). 

The truth is, practice doesn't make perfect; practice makes permanent. When you practice, you’re creating muscle memory. And if you're practicing speaking while feeling anxious, you're strengthening that mental muscle telling you that speaking is a scary thing.

If this idea challenges what you’ve been told before, I explain it in the video below:

The Difference Between Learning and Transformation

The biggest reason why most public speaking programs and resources fail to help you overcome your fear is that they focus on providing knowledge instead of creating true transformation. 

Most programs are designed to give you information, make you feel good about what you've learned, and then send you on your way. It’s similar to taking a class at school. Taking a public speaking course doesn’t make you a confident speaker, much in the same way that taking a science class doesn’t make you a scientist. 

That's where transformational coaching comes in.

Why You Need a Transformational Approach to Public Speaking

Overcoming your fear requires more than just knowledge; it requires a deep, internal shift that changes the way you think, feel, and behave. 

A transformational approach doesn't just teach you techniques and strategies; it guides you through a process of self-discovery and inner work that addresses the root causes of your anxiety. It's not just about learning how to appear confident while speaking. It's about learning how to be a confident speaker. 

You also learn how to coach yourself. This skill is crucial to developing long-lasting confidence and being able to prepare and adapt while speaking in any situation. 

Through transformational coaching, you'll learn how to conquer your fear of public speaking for good, craft truly powerful presentations that connect with your audience, and prepare for any meeting or interview in a way that stops anxiety in its tracks. 

Implementation is also key to internalization and transformation. It’s not about practicing your speaking skills, it’s about practicing feeling confident. 

People who come into transformational coaching programs often arrive feeling hopeless, having tried countless other methods without success. But within weeks of starting the program, they begin to see tangible changes in themselves, changes that not only allow them to skyrocket their career or business, but also ripple into every area of their life. 

Here’s what this kind of transformation looks like in real life. These are clients who once struggled deeply with public speaking anxiety, and now show up with calm, confidence, and authority.

How to Conquer Public Speaking Anxiety (What Actually Works)

Again, to reiterate: 

Public speaking anxiety is not a personality flaw.
It’s not a lack of skill.
And it’s not something you’re born with.

It’s a conditioned response.

When all eyes are on you, your brain interprets the situation as dangerous even though no real danger exists. It reacts the same way it would if you were facing a physical threat: racing heart, brain fog, shaky voice, sweaty palms. Your nervous system is trying to protect you, not sabotage you.

This is why “just pushing through it” doesn’t work.

Every time you force yourself to speak while feeling anxious, you reinforce the habit of fear. Over time, your brain learns: public speaking = threat.

To conquer fear of public speaking for good, you have to retrain your brain to stop seeing speaking as danger and start experiencing it as something safe and familiar.

In other words:

Public speaking should feel like a conversation.

When you talk to friends, colleagues you trust, or family, you don’t worry about being judged. You don’t monitor every word. You don’t freeze. You simply speak.

The goal isn’t to “perform better.”

The goal is to feel the same internal safety when you speak publicly as you do when you speak privately.

That shift happens from the inside out.

Step 1: Break the Fear–Judgment Loop

For many professionals, fear shows up as thoughts like:

• What if they judge me?

• What if I don’t sound smart enough?

• What if they realize I don’t belong here?

This is imposter syndrome in action, and it intensifies the brain’s threat response.

To conquer anxiety, you must identify the beliefs that make you feel “less than” in the spotlight and replace them with grounded, empowering truths. These beliefs are often learned early, repeated unconsciously, and mistaken for facts.

Once those beliefs lose their power, your nervous system starts to calm.

Step 2: Retrain How Your Brain Sees Public Speaking

Your brain doesn’t distinguish between real danger and perceived danger.
It only responds to how you interpret the situation.

Most advice focuses on changing the outside — posture, tone, gestures, eye contact. But those changes don’t alter how your brain feels on the inside.

Real change happens when you shift how you think about:

• yourself

• your audience

• the act of speaking itself

When your brain no longer interprets speaking as a threat, the fear response fades naturally.

Step 3: Build Real Speaking Confidence (Not Performance Confidence)

You already have confidence in your work.
The problem is your ability to access that confidence when you’re in the spotlight.

True speaking confidence isn’t about pretending to be someone else. It’s about becoming the best version of yourself when you speak — calm, grounded, and present.

When confidence is internal, your voice steadies, your thoughts flow, and your body language aligns automatically. You don’t need to “act confident”, you are confident.

Step 4: Turn Confidence Into a Habit

Fear is a habit your brain learned.
Confidence must become a habit your brain practices.

Through repetition, your nervous system learns a new default response: safety instead of threat. Over time, this makes calm, clear speaking feel natural, not forced.

This is how people move from dreading presentations to volunteering for them.

This is also why lasting change doesn’t come from tips or tricks. It comes from internal rewiring and consistent application.

The Only Proven Way to Conquer Your Fear For Good

After decades of struggling with my own fear, I’ve seen firsthand that traditional approaches don’t work. With a background in software engineering, I was determined to create an evidence-based approach to conquering my fear once and for all. And after years of trial and error, I finally got there. 

Today, speaking in front of an audience is something I do with joy. It propelled my corporate career to new heights (from a software engineer to a VP of Operations) and helped me launch several successful businesses. 

I’ve appeared on Fox Morning News and have been featured in numerous publications, including NBC, CBS, and BizWest Media. 

In addition, I’ve helped 100s of executives, entrepreneurs, and professionals overcome their fear using this same approach. Here’s how my ​​Anxiety-to-Authority Framework™ works: 

First, you need to address what’s causing your fear and overcome it before practicing. In order to do this, you have to completely transform your mindset and obliterate limiting beliefs so you can build genuine unshakable confidence that you can whip up on demand before any presentation. 

Next, you’ll learn how to craft a powerful message that moves your audience to take action. Then, you’ll discover how to prepare and practice for any presentation, meeting, or interview, big or small. 

Finally, you’ll learn what to do once you’re in front of an audience (whether that’s in a meeting, on video, or onstage) to connect and engage with them to create the biggest impact. 

By addressing the root causes of your fear and guiding you through a journey of self-discovery and inner work, you’ll feel the confidence in your bones. 

Want to know how this framework could be customized for your specific challenges and goals?

Book a Strategy Call with me!

Ready to Build Real Speaking Confidence From Within?

If you've been struggling to overcome your fear of public speaking for some time, know that you're not alone, and it’s not your fault. The truth is, most programs and resources just aren’t set up in a way that builds real confidence. 

They focus on communication skills, ‘faking’ confidence, practicing endlessly, and imparting knowledge, instead of creating deep, inner transformation - which is the only real way to conquer your fear for good. 

Anyone can obliterate public speaking anxiety and show up with genuine confidence, authority, and influence in any situation. Even if you’re an introvert or English isn’t your first language. All you need is the right framework and support!

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