The Public Speaking Blues: Childhood and Adolescence in a Performance Anxiety Funk

The Public Speaking Blues: Childhood and Adolescence in a Performance Anxiety Funk

When I was attending Chapel Street elementary school in Georgetown, Ontario, back in the 1960s, public speaking was an integral part of the curriculum in the senior grades.

And terror was the order of the day.

My public speaking anguish typically manifested itself through chronic insomnia.

As a prelude to every speech, I literally would not sleep a wink at night, instead rehearsing for hours in my fevered brain, while shimmying and shaking as beads of perspiration trickled from my forehead to dot the pillow.

My innards also performed insidious acts of betrayal as the bladder and intestines erupted like a physiological Vesuvius immediately before every presentation.

Yet the ironies of fate are boundless: I actually managed to win public speaking contests at every turn, including for the school and for the entire town.

A highly successful, compliant, and thoroughly traumatized trained seal.

When our family moved to London, Ontario in 1964, my mother, who sought status and recognition vicariously through her children, insisted that I take public speaking lessons.

So the torment was doubled. There was of course mandatory public speaking at school, and Mom also forced me to take Friday evening lessons dispensed by the local Optimist Club, under the auspices of Mr. Ralph Yates.

So for two years, I was entered in city-wide Optimist Club competitions, speaking on such topics as “Optimism: Spirit of Youth” and “Optimism: Youth’s Greatest Asset.”

In fact, I would have felt much more at home at a Pessimist Club, if such a beast had existed. As a teen, my prospects for love and popularity seemed bleak, and winning public speaking prizes only darkened the already ominous horizon.

You need your head examined,” my father used to tell me. ”You’re a devil for punishment.”

It’s true that the fabric of my life is woven with multitudinous strands of near inexplicable masochism.

So often I love what makes me miserable and I’m miserable doing what I love.

Acting, teaching, radio broadcasting and storytelling, social activism, creative writing and translating – all these vocations have stoked the flames of chronic, already inherent anxiety.

And yet such pursuits are in many ways my reason for being and are clearly what I do best.