From Panic Attacks to Parliament: How to Conquer Public Speaking Anxiety

Dani Payne carried a doctor's note through her teenage years—official permission to sit out presentations at school and university. The anxiety was real enough to warrant medical exemption. She would panic at the thought of standing in front of others and speaking. Now, at 28, she does it most days. She has spoken in parliament. She sits on discussion panels. She presents videos for social media. She works in politics at a cross-party think tank. The shift from that anxious teenager to someone for whom public speaking is routine work happened not through avoidance, but through the opposite.

When Payne was 15, she developed a severe anxiety disorder and began having panic attacks. Her instinct was to avoid public speaking entirely—and for years, she did. But avoidance, she came to understand, only deepened the anxiety. The more you dodge what frightens you, the more it frightens you. The turning point came in her second year of university when she was invited to present research she had conducted for her dissertation. The subject was sexual misconduct in academic fieldwork settings. She cared about it. She had done the work. She knew the material. And because the topic mattered to her, she found she could speak about it. That presentation became her entry point. Her advice now is straightforward: pick something you genuinely feel strongly about, then look for or create opportunities to speak about it. Passion makes the words come easier.

Other people have found different routes into confidence. Daisy Schofield, a 32-year-old documentary producer and journalist, had her first panic attack during a university presentation. She managed to avoid public speaking until she landed her first job and discovered she had to present company statistics every Monday on Teams. To build her confidence without the pressure of a real audience, she bought a virtual reality headset online for £10 and downloaded an app that creates a fake audience. Practicing in that simulated environment felt more engaging and realistic than rehearsing alone at home. It gave her something closer to the actual experience without the immediate stakes.

Neuroscientists and coaches have identified specific techniques that work. Nazanin Derakhshan, a neuroscientist at Birkbeck, University of London, recommends focusing on slow breathing before you present—six breaths per minute, achieved by breathing in for five seconds and out for five seconds. This kind of breathing improves communication between the brain and heart, and when those two are in harmony, you feel better about yourself. Viv Groskop, a stand-up comedian, writer, and public speaking coach, suggests choosing a single word that captures what you want your speech to convey. It might be clarity. It might be something else. The point is to give yourself a measurable goal you can't fail at. After you finish, you can ask yourself: Did I achieve that word? Was I clear? Yes. It's a win. Groskop also advises practical comfort measures—get good sleep, stay hydrated, wear something you can forget about, do whatever makes you feel at ease in your own body so you're not distracted by your appearance.

Derakhshan cautions against focusing too hard on people's faces while presenting. We tend to misinterpret facial expressions, reading disapproval or confusion into expressions that might mean anything at all. It's better to accept that you can't know what a face means and to distract yourself from trying to decode it. She also emphasizes that being vulnerable is an asset in public speaking. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone forgets things. It's not catastrophic. If you can acknowledge the mistake and even find humor in it, audiences are usually forgiving and accepting.

The underlying principle that ties these strategies together is this: public speaking is not a talent you either have or don't have. It's a skill you develop through practice, like learning guitar. Payne points out that no one would expect to pick up an instrument for the first time and play a song. Public speaking works the same way. You have to be bad at it first. You have to do it repeatedly. Groskop notes that people who are good at public speaking have simply been doing it more. Many people now spend eight hours a day on Teams or Zoom calls. A television newsreader has been trained for years. The difference between someone who seems naturally gifted and someone who struggles is often just accumulated repetition. Early in your career, the people around you don't expect you to be a master the first time. They expect you to be learning. That permission to be imperfect, combined with deliberate practice on topics that matter to you, is how anxiety becomes routine.