# Speech on Social Anxiety



## Felren (May 9, 2010)

This was a few months ago, I've been meaning to put this up at some point but kind of got burnt out of this website I guess.

SO..... ya........

Senior year, last semester

What class do I put off?

Speech of course!

Introductory speech was our first speech. I thought it was a one day only thing, but it ended up dragging on too long so there was a second day of the speeches. I show up for the first day, I don't volunteer to get it over with or anything.

Second day of speeches. The anxiety the day before and the day of it ate me alive. I didn't show up. Not the first thing i've skipped due to anxiety or anything....

The next class period. I show up. She singles me out a little, saying it isn't a thing to blow off. The next day pretty early on she emails me it isn't acceptable to not show up for a speech, and not to blow off things like this, and that she'd like to talk to me about it in person. I email her back saying I'l talk to her about it after the next class period. 

I don't trust myself. I don't like it. I run away a lot from situations that make me uncomfortable. I was thinking up excuses I could make up that wouldn't excuse me from the grade loss, but that she'd at least halfway accept. I need to pass this class to graduate, who says I won't skip the next speech if I keep running away. 

So.... I email her back again, pretty much explaining to her that I have SA and the anxiety was the reason I skipped. I told her I wanted to tell her in email first so I couldn't just make up some random excuse when I was talking to her face to face. I even wrote this in the email. She emails me back, tells me I can come to her office that day If I wanted, because she had office hours, so I went.


Well I go to an engineering school. There are a lot of nerds, and generally shy guys that don't approach women on a daily basis. I guess people with SA are more prevalent in the math/scienceish field.

This was her second semester at this college. However, she told me she had a student that told her he had SA last semester as well. He didn't blow a speech off like I did, but he still confronted her with advice and such. So, she was very understanding. I could tell she really didn't understand how it felt, but she tried and was very professional about the situation.

Our first real speech ( the introductory speech was only 5% of our grade) was an informative speech. So I decided to do mine on social anxiety. She usually wants our speeches to be on major current events, but she said she'd let me use this one even if I couldn't find a major recent news article on it(which I couldn't find one in 2010-2011, but found some good ones earlier).

I spent a lot of time preparing for the speech, and it didn't go too horribly. I like to think it helped me. I really haven't told many people I have SA, so I figured it would help me cope with having it, and not feel so horrible about it. It helped me accept it a bit more than I previously did.

I guess it was a triumph, but it hasn't made SA much easier on me honestly. Baby steps... O, and I'm still nervous and freaking hell about my next speech I'm speaking on in about 14 hours.


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