Act as if
I Conquered Social Anxiety And Fear Of Public Speaking With One Simple Trick
“Dean would have shotgunned three beers, then had sex with at least two of the women and one of the men… perhaps I could adopt enough of his persona to break the ice”
If you’ve read me before, you know I don’t usually write about self-improvement except in fits of satirical whimsy. However, this is a real technique that worked for me, and you can take it for what it’s worth.
I was a shy, quiet kid with a smart-ass sensibility, and grew into a shy, churlish, young adult with social skills built around evasion and pre-emptive sneering.
When socializing was unavoidable, I perfected the technique of constant motion as a means of avoiding futile — and potentially humiliating — interactions with other humans. Parties and events found me striding back and forth between bathroom and bar, or circling the perimeter of conversational clusters like an awkward shark at the feeding frenzy.
This approach ensured that both my career and my personal life would grind forward in tiny increments, if at all. Discouraged by the idea of a half-century or more without getting laid or promoted, I sought a solution.
The internet didn’t exist in those days, and God knows I couldn’t afford therapy, so it was on me to figure it out.
The Revelation
I was in my early twenties when the epiphany arrived.
I was attending an apartment party hosted by a married couple. Both partners had invited friends from their respective workplaces, and intentionally or otherwise, he’d invited almost exclusively men, and she, women.
Whether this was an attempt to play matchmaker I don’t know, but if so it was a colossal failure. Attendees self-divided by gender, flattening themselves against opposite walls of the living room like a middle school dance where the kids had failed to steal booze from their parents. I parked myself with five or so other men on “our” side of the room — which had, hilariously, been cleared for dancing — and we stared blankly at the girls five feet away while they ignored us and talked among themselves.
As I considered how early I could leave without insulting my hosts, an idle thought came to me. I’d been reading Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and become enamoured of Dean Moriarty, the charismatic sociopath based on Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady.
I wondered, “What would Dean do in this situation?”
Most likely Dean would have shotgunned three beers, guzzled a handful of pills, then had sex with at least two of the women and one of the men. I wasn’t ready for that, but perhaps I could adopt enough of his persona to break the ice.
I imagined exactly how Dean might approach the girls on the other side of the room — the attitude, the words, the cigarette dangling from his lip. I ratcheted the intensity back by about 98 percent and stepped across the floor.
“Hi, I’m Patrick,” I said to two of the women who’d been chatting.
I was still shy and awkward, but the character I was playing wasn’t. It was all about acting — as long as I was Dean Moriarty I didn’t have to be embarrassed, or clumsy, or worry about consequences. I could be self-assured, absolutely confident that people would like me, because they always did.
If this all sounds a little too facile, well, it worked and I got a date out of it (although this is not one of those stories that ends with “and now we’ve been married for thirty-five years!” — we went out twice, didn’t like each other, and that was that.)
This new understanding turned my social life around. I began emulating not just fictional characters, but friends who were charming and popular. Eventually, the acting part was irrelevant, as the new attributes just became part of my personality.
I still find social events draining, but now I actively enjoy getting to know new people. and suffer far less anxiety in the process.
A Fear of Public Speaking
This article is a two-fer since the same principle can be adapted to overcome a fear of public speaking, although I didn’t figure that out until a few years later.
When I started business school some decades ago, on the first day we were required to go around the classroom in alphabetical order and say a few words about ourselves.
As an “M” name, I would speak somewhere around the middle of the sixty-person class. That meant that before my turn I had to listen to thirty overachievers orate in confident, mellifluous tones about how much more successful they were than me.
I was already nervous, and as the figurative baton inched inexorably closer and I heard all the A through L people talk about their start-up and investment banking triumphs, my discomfort turned to terror. I suffered a full-on panic attack, heart pounding and sweat pouring from every orifice as if I were running from the bulls at Pamplona, except I was naked and the bulls were laughing at my shrivelled endowment as they gored me.
Seriously, I was scared shitless.
I had staked out the nearest exit and was probably no more than three minutes from literally fleeing the room when my turn came. Through luck and willpower, I held it together long enough to squeak out a thirty-second summary of my inconsequential achievements, but it remains one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
Because the key objective of business schools in those days was to turn bright, promising, young people into hyper-opinionated loudmouths, I knew there would be more public speaking in my future. To manage my fear, I’d need options in my toolkit other than shrieking and fleeing.
Again, it came down to acting.
In this context, it would have been interesting but inappropriate to lift personality traits from Dean Moriarty. But I realized I didn’t need to act like any particular individual, just feign the useful abilities of the person I needed to be.
I set my mind to putting myself in the skin of a hypothetical person who not only didn’t fear public speaking but who actually enjoyed it. It would no longer be me at the podium, but this new individual who got a kick out of entertaining a crowd. And make no mistake — entertainment is what it’s all about, and getting positive audience feedback on your performance stimulates a feedback loop that enhances confidence.
The brain is a marvellous thing, and in relatively short order I was able to transform myself into the obnoxious blowhard that I’d always dreamed I could be, and who I remain to this day.
Conclusion — everything is acting!
While I’ve never become Dean Moriarty or Winston Churchill, over time, improved social self-assurance and public speaking became reasonably integrated into my personality.
There are always glitches, of course, like the meeting where I had to introduce a woman I’d known for two years and inexplicably drew a blank on her name. It happens — you just have to roll with it, take the hit and make light of it, because that’s what your new persona would do. Like everything else, it gets easier with practice.
I eventually came to enjoy public speaking so much that I became President of a local Toastmasters chapter, simply to have more chances to speechify (I’m no longer a member, but recommend it if you’d like to become a more confident and practiced speaker). I also ran for the Green Party in a federal election, and while I didn’t care much for politics in general, I absolutely loved being a smartass at all-candidates speaking events.
Do I think that putting on a fresh facade to function more easily in society is dishonest or manipulative?
Nah. I have zero patience for the “I’m not gonna be a phony, man!” bullshit excuse. Our personalities are an agglomeration of the traits we were born with plus whatever character barnacles have attached themselves to us through experience and education.
Teaching yourself to engage people more effectively is no more dishonest than training for the high jump.
If you can make yourself believe it, other people will too.
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