It’s primarily fear of embarrassment taking the form of something very similar to, if not exactly similar to, anxiety.
Anxiety, judging by the couple of times I’ve experienced it, originates from over-and-behind, is tinted reddish-orange and tastes sharp, and feels somewhat like you’ve consumed too much caffeine (these descriptions may or may not make any sense to you, and may not translate correctly even if they did make sense owing to the subjective nature of emotion) - there’s a need to act, to do -something-, which I think is supposed to express as a feeling to get away from the current location, but may get expressed instead as, for example, a need to pace.
Fear of public speaking is similar, with tinges of yellow and sour—embarrassment, I think. There’s a bit of a leftish direction to it? It expresses more as a need to do nothing, to prevent anything from being done wrong. It provokes a curious mixture of a need to run away and a feeling of being pinned in place and being unable to. When you start talking, the need to “run” pushes into your voice, and you talk too quickly, while the need to do nothing may cause you to stand completely still, doing nothing but speaking.
Fear of public speaking seems only weakly influenced by the audience—it’s an internal experience. Everything will get interpreted according to the internal narrative—people looking at their cell phones are rude if you’re feeling okay, and bored with you and your terrible presentation if you’re still feeling anxious.
People studying you with a blank expression will intensify the feeling of being studied for any mistakes, but how you interpret their expression in the first place will, again, be largely determined by the internal narrative.
It’s primarily fear of embarrassment taking the form of something very similar to, if not exactly similar to, anxiety.
Anxiety, judging by the couple of times I’ve experienced it, originates from over-and-behind, is tinted reddish-orange and tastes sharp, and feels somewhat like you’ve consumed too much caffeine (these descriptions may or may not make any sense to you, and may not translate correctly even if they did make sense owing to the subjective nature of emotion) - there’s a need to act, to do -something-, which I think is supposed to express as a feeling to get away from the current location, but may get expressed instead as, for example, a need to pace.
Fear of public speaking is similar, with tinges of yellow and sour—embarrassment, I think. There’s a bit of a leftish direction to it? It expresses more as a need to do nothing, to prevent anything from being done wrong. It provokes a curious mixture of a need to run away and a feeling of being pinned in place and being unable to. When you start talking, the need to “run” pushes into your voice, and you talk too quickly, while the need to do nothing may cause you to stand completely still, doing nothing but speaking.
Fear of public speaking seems only weakly influenced by the audience—it’s an internal experience. Everything will get interpreted according to the internal narrative—people looking at their cell phones are rude if you’re feeling okay, and bored with you and your terrible presentation if you’re still feeling anxious.
People studying you with a blank expression will intensify the feeling of being studied for any mistakes, but how you interpret their expression in the first place will, again, be largely determined by the internal narrative.