By Jill Szoo Wilson
“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”— Eleanor Roosevelt
I teach communication courses. Public Speaking is my mainstay. I also teach theatre, but communication has taken the front seat in my heart because I can see—clearly, daily—that the younger generation longs to become confident and competent in their ability to connect with other people. It isn’t a weakness in them, as many older adults like to say. It’s a weakness in us if we don’t equip them now to adapt their unique voices to their audiences.
My generation shared this desire when I was in school, but the landscape has changed since then. We lacked information; this generation is drowning in it. Growing up, our question was “What should I say?” Theirs is closer to “Who will hear me?” They are not unsure of what to speak about as much as they are unsure whether anyone is listening in a world where voices collide, compete, and vanish into the noise.
Yesterday, as this semester wraps up, I asked my class, “Has public speaking gotten easier for you?” I fully expected the usual yes. For a couple of decades, I’ve almost always heard that answer. But this time, about 80 percent said yes, and the other 20 percent said they are more terrified than ever.
I stopped everything and asked them why.
When a student feels afraid, I take it seriously. I feel a brief window of responsibility to help them leave stronger than they arrived, so they do not carry unnecessary fear into the rest of their lives.
One student said, “I felt fine on my first speech. But then I had to miss one, and on the next speech, I felt like I was behind. My chest tightened. I felt like I needed to escape—run out the door—but I knew I couldn’t. So I felt trapped. Feeling trapped, my fear grew and soon it was like I couldn’t see anymore. It’s like my mind escaped the room, but my body had to stay here.”
What a remarkable way to describe panic:
“It’s like my mind escaped the room, but my body had to stay here.”
I won’t unpack the whole conversation we had afterward, but I share this because it highlights how essential it is to equip young people with the communication tools necessary not just to present information, but to remain present within themselves when they feel afraid. Even though these students know each other well by now, even though there’s camaraderie and safety (even in disagreement), they still confessed thoughts like:
Do I sound stupid?
Are they judging me?
What if I fail?
What if I’m not good enough?
Why didn’t I rehearse more? Now it’s too late. I’m going to crash out.
I want to disappear.
So I told them that if they remember anything from this entire semester, please let it be this:
- There are always a hundred things happening at once in any moment. That’s life. It’s okay. You can’t control that part.
- What you can control is your preparation and your focus—look outward to the audience you’re giving something to, not inward toward fear.
- Adapt your message to your audience (using recency, locality, psychology, physiology, and economic factors), and speak from the heart as though you’re giving, not taking.
Fear lasts because communication touches identity. No teacher can remove that for another person; we can only help them learn how to stand in it.
Speaking always involves two kinds of work: thinking and being seen. When a student puts their ideas into words, they’re not only organizing their thoughts; they’re placing those thoughts into a space where others can evaluate them. That movement from inner reasoning to public expression activates the body just as powerfully as the mind. The student feels exposed because, in a very real sense, they are. Communication invites others to witness our thinking, and the body responds as though it must protect what has just been revealed. In this light, courage is not the absence of fear in communication, but the willingness to let one’s thinking be visible while learning to stay present in that exposure.
[C]ourage is not the absence of fear in communication, but the willingness to let one’s thinking be visible while learning to stay present in that exposure.
Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux demonstrated that the brain processes emotional threat more rapidly than conscious reasoning, producing instinctive reactions before the mind has time to interpret them (The Emotional Brain, 1996). When speaking, that instinct narrows attention and draws awareness inward. The student’s focus moves away from the audience and toward the self: What are they thinking of me saying this? In that moment, communication shifts from sharing ideas to guarding the identity that feels exposed. The body prepares to protect the thinker, even while the thinker is trying to speak.
To teach how to communicate through fear, then, is not simply to teach speaking. It’s to teach attention. Communication is an outward-facing act in which meaning is co-created between speaker and audience. The student is not performing for a passive group but participating in a shared moment of understanding. When fear sends the mind fleeing—“escaping the room while the body stays behind”—the pedagogical work is to help students return to that shared moment. This does not mean suppressing their anxiety, but retraining where they place their awareness. Instead of monitoring their own performance, they learn to notice the listeners they are addressing: how the audience responds, where clarity is needed, and where curiosity sparks. They begin to read the cues that help them stay present, such as facial expressions, body posture or stillness, eye contact, moments of confusion, or quiet signs of interest like leaning forward, nodding, or attentive silence. Attention becomes the bridge that allows the speaker to stay present long enough for communication to take shape.
You may wonder, Isn’t it scarier to notice the people in front of you? I would respond with another question: Isn’t it far more frightening to stand in front of others while constantly critiquing yourself in your own mind? When students shift their attention outward, they no longer face the audience alone. They begin to share the work of understanding with the people who are listening.
Educational theorist Parker Palmer writes that “we fear the live encounter” when speaking because we are culturally conditioned to treat knowledge as a possession to defend rather than a shared activity (The Courage to Teach, 1998). Many students come to communication believing that they must display what they know and protect it from critique. In that mindset, speaking becomes an act of performance: their ideas become something like personal property on a stage, vulnerable to judgment. Fear grows because the task feels like self-presentation rather than shared exploration. The speaker begins working to preserve an image—trying not to be wrong, trying not to be misunderstood—rather than working to illuminate a topic with others. Under this frame, communication is effort spent guarding the self rather than engaging with the subject or the audience.
Instead of treating knowledge as something we defend, we can help students see it as something we share.
A helpful metaphor I offer my students is to treat ideas like campfires. When students speak, they are tending a thought long enough for others to gather around it. The speaker’s work is to make that flame visible and to offer enough clarity for others to see by its light. The heat belongs to the concept, not to the student’s identity. Fear grows when a student imagines they themselves are being scrutinized or judged, as though they must withstand the fire. But when they learn to host others at the fire of an idea, the pressure shifts. They do not perform; they invite. Their task becomes to let the thought burn clearly enough for others to explore what its light reveals.
Hosting others at the fire of an idea becomes an act of generosity. Instead of guarding an idea to protect themselves, students learn to offer it for the sake of shared understanding. In this posture, ideas become contributions rather than possessions to defend. The goal moves toward clarity, shared reasoning, and insight that others can carry beyond the moment of speaking. The speaker intends to give something away: a perspective, a question, or an interpretation that helps others think more carefully.
This change in intention helps reshape the student’s internal experience. The audience is no longer a threat to self-image, but a group of learners who can benefit from the speaker’s effort. Fear loosens not because it vanishes, but because it now serves a different purpose. Anxiety becomes a form of care: a signal that the message matters. Instead of trying to perform without fault, the speaker begins to engage in the work of making ideas accessible to others by choosing clearer examples, inviting shared reasoning, and adjusting pace and language. The focus shifts from How do I look? to What might help them see this?
Such reframing is supported by Kenneth Burke’s foundational view of rhetoric as “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols” (A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950). Burke’s definition shifts attention away from persuasion as winning agreement and toward communication as building shared understanding. He calls humans “beings that respond to symbols” because we think, interpret, and act through language. Words, therefore, do more than convey information. They invite people into a coordinated way of seeing. In this light, communication becomes cooperative work. As students begin to see their speeches as something they give rather than something by which they are measured, their attention turns toward building that shared understanding. Fear becomes manageable because their purpose becomes relational, and their speech becomes purposeful because it serves a common effort.
Anxiety, then, becomes not an obstacle but a cue that communication matters. It invites awareness rather than avoidance. As Susan Cain observes, “Fear is not a flaw; it’s a sign that something is worth doing” (Quiet, 2012). In a pedagogical context, this insight reveals fear as evidence of engagement, a marker that students are entering meaningful communicative work.
When communication is taught as outward-facing rather than defensive, students learn more than technique. They develop ethical habits of attentiveness, which are central to higher education and essential to public life. In an era marked by rapid exchange, polarized discourse, and performative speech, the capacity to direct attention outward becomes an act of civic responsibility. It equips students not merely to express themselves, but to interpret contexts, consider audiences, and contribute to understanding within complex communities.
Higher education, viewed through this lens, is not simply preparing speakers. It is cultivating citizens capable of relational inquiry. To help students remain present while speaking, to keep their “mind in the room” when fear urges retreat, is to equip them for the intellectual and ethical demands of adult life. They learn to see communication not as self-display but as participation in the shared labor of meaning-making.
This reframing transforms fear from a barrier into a catalyst. Students do not conquer visibility; they inhabit it. They learn to speak with others rather than at them and to stay present in the encounter rather than disappear into self-consciousness. In doing so, they acquire a communicative stance that extends well beyond the classroom, a stance defined not by performance but by presence.
When a student says, “It feels like my mind escaped the room,” communication education becomes a way of helping them return. We can teach them to stay present with others and to participate in meaning-making even when visibility feels risky. The work of public speaking becomes ongoing preparation for shared life: learning to offer ideas with clarity, to attend to others with care, and to keep the mind in the room where understanding can grow. This practice shapes how we show up in the world, cultivating attentiveness, generosity, and a readiness to learn in community with others.
Jill Szoo Wilson is an educator, speaker, and writer who teaches communication and theatre at the college level. Her writing explores the ethical and relational possibilities of speech in public life.
Further Reading
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. University of California Press, 1969.
Cain, Susan. Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Crown, 2012.
LeDoux, Joseph. The Emotional Brain. Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Palmer, Parker J. The Courage to Teach. Jossey-Bass, 1998.
Rosenberg, Marshall. Nonviolent Communication. PuddleDancer Press, 2003.
Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture. Ballantine, 1999.
Necessary Whispers 