I’m generally not an anxious person. I’m calm, functional, and socially capable. I moved to a new city and built meaningful friendships. My baseline is stable
But I have two connected problems:
1- Public speaking triggers intense anxiety, racing heart, lost composure.
2- In conversations with people I’m not fully comfortable with, I feel pressure to react immediately. Instead of listening, I’m already preparing my response before they finish. I can’t stay present. I feel an urge to move, fill silences, do something
This became impossible to ignore once I started my job. When a colleague or manager asks me something, the situation actually requires me to pause, retrieve information from memory, and think before responding. But I can’t. I react instantly, and the response comes out half-formed or just wrong. Not because I don’t know the answer, but because I never gave myself the space to find it. It’s become obvious to me that this isn’t just a social quirk. It’s actively getting in the way of how I function in the real world
This doesn’t happen with people I deeply trust (close family). Around them, I can slow down, think, and just exist. That contrast tells me this isn’t a personality trait or general social anxiety. It’s a nervous system response triggered when I feel evaluated or psychologically unsafe
I think it originates in childhood. My father was absent and addicted. My uncle, who helped raise us, was harsh and reactive. He demanded immediate responses and met slowness or mistakes with anger. There was constant urgency. Slowness felt like failure
My nervous system adapted. I learned that being fast and hyper-alert was safe, and that slowing down was dangerous
Public speaking demands exactly what feels threatening, slowing down, pausing, tolerating silence. So I speed up mentally to compensate, which overwhelms me and makes it worse. And now work does too
My problem isn’t fear of people. It’s a learned fear of slowing down in front of people, because in my early environment, slowness was never safe
Has anyone worked through something similar? Curious if therapy, somatic work, or something else actually helped shift this at the nervous system level