How to Manage Public Speaking Jitters
Public speaking jitters are the nervous feelings you get right before or during a presentation. Your heart may race, your hands may shake, or your mouth may feel dry. These reactions are a normal response to the stress of speaking in front of others, and they often start to settle once you get going.
In this article, you’ll learn why public speaking jitters happen, what they can feel like, how they differ from public speaking anxiety, and what you can do to feel more comfortable before and during a speech. The same strategies can help when you’re nervous about speaking in a meeting, interviewing for a job, or giving a toast at a family event.
Key Takeaways
Public speaking jitters are a normal stress response: A racing heart, shaky voice, and sweaty hands can happen when your body's fight-or-flight response is activated. For many people, these signs are strongest in the moment before they start to speak or shortly after they begin.
Listeners often notice less than you think: Research suggests speakers overestimate how obvious their nervousness is to the people listening.
Preparation can help: Rehearsing out loud and practicing your opening can make the situation feel more familiar, and slow breathing can help you manage the jitters before you speak.
Public speaking anxiety can interfere with daily life: If anxiety about speaking brings a lot of distress or leads you to avoid situations where you need to speak, a doctor or licensed mental health professional can help.
What Are Public Speaking Jitters?
What Do Jitters Feel Like in Your Body and Mind?
Are Jitters the Same as Public Speaking Anxiety?
How Can You Calm Your Nerves Before a Speech?
What Should You Do if Nervousness Hits During a Presentation?
What We See Working with Clients
What Are Public Speaking Jitters?
Public speaking jitters are the nervousness many people feel before or during a speech. Fight-or-flight is one of the automatic responses you have when you're stressed. When a group turns its attention to you, your body can release stress hormones, such as adrenaline, as part of that response.
| When | What you notice | What tends to help |
|---|---|---|
| Days or weeks before | Anxiety about forgetting words or making mistakes | Rehearsing out loud and preparing your main points |
| Just before you speak | A faster heartbeat, faster breathing, and a dry mouth | Getting familiar with the room, slow breathing, and a short walk |
| The first minute | Jitters that can feel strongest at the beginning, often with a shaky voice or hands | A well-rehearsed opening and speaking at a comfortable pace |
| The rest of the speech | Nervousness that can begin to settle, with moments of going blank | Pausing, checking your notes, and brief eye contact with one listener at a time |
| Connected Speech Pathology | connectedspeechpathology.com | ||
Public speaking can feel threatening because other people are watching you. The sense of being judged can set off your brain's stress response.
Worry about a talk can begin days or weeks in advance, especially if you fear forgetting your words or making mistakes. Physical signs, such as a faster heartbeat or a dry mouth, can become more noticeable just before you speak.
Anxiety can feel strongest just before you start and during the first minute of your speech. For many people, the nervousness then settles, and the rest of the speech feels steadier.
In a 2006 study in the Southern Communication Journal, researchers at Texas Christian University tracked the timing of stress during a speech. Calmer speakers' stress peaked right before they started, while more anxious speakers' stress peaked about a minute after they began talking.
What Do Jitters Feel Like in Your Body and Mind?
Jitters can affect both your body and your thoughts. Common symptoms include the ones below.
Your heart can race, and your breathing can become faster and shallower.
Your mouth can feel dry, and your hands can become sweaty.
You can get a shaky voice, or your hands can tremble.
You can feel muscle tension in your neck or throat.
Jitters can also affect your mind in other ways, including your ability to focus or remember what you planned to say. Sometimes your mind goes blank on a point you knew well an hour earlier. Worry about whether the audience notices your nervousness can also pull your attention away from what you want to say.
In a 2003 study in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Kenneth Savitsky and Thomas Gilovich found that people giving a short speech believed their nervousness was more obvious than it was. Speakers who were told about this pattern beforehand gave speeches that observers rated more positively.
Are Jitters the Same as Public Speaking Anxiety?
Public speaking anxiety can feel more intense than typical jitters. Jitters often ease after you have been speaking for a while, but public speaking anxiety can last throughout the talk. You may also start feeling anxious days or even weeks before you have to speak. Some people with a stronger fear of public speaking start to avoid speaking situations, and that avoidance can make the fear harder to overcome.
Fear of public speaking is one of the most common fears, so you are far from alone if speaking in front of others makes you anxious. Public speaking anxiety is sometimes called speech anxiety. Stage fright is a related term that refers to nervousness about performing in front of others, such as giving a speech or presentation, acting in a play, or performing in a concert.
For some people, fear of speaking in front of others can be part of social anxiety disorder, also called social phobia. In one form of the condition, the anxiety occurs mainly when you speak or perform in public.
A doctor or licensed mental health professional can evaluate you for social anxiety disorder. Treatment can include cognitive behavioral therapy and gradual practice with speaking situations you fear, sometimes using virtual reality. Some people also ask about beta-blockers for the physical signs of performance anxiety. A doctor can determine whether this type of medication is appropriate for you.
Overcoming Public Speaking Anxiety
Our guide to the fear of public speaking and strategies that can help people practice speaking with less avoidance.
How Can You Calm Your Nerves Before a Speech?
Rehearsing out loud, practicing your opening, and slowing your breathing can help calm your nerves before a speech. A public speaking coach can help you practice different strategies and find the ones that suit you as a speaker.
Rehearse Out Loud
Rehearsing out loud lets you practice the words, pacing, and transitions you will use when you speak. Timing each full practice run shows you whether the presentation fits your time limit and whether you need to adjust your pace or shorten any sections.
A group like Toastmasters gives you regular practice in front of an audience, while presentation coaching gives you individual feedback on the talks you are preparing to deliver.
Know Your Opening
Practicing the first minute or two of your talk until it feels familiar can make it easier to get started, even when you feel nervous. After practicing your opening, you can use your key points to guide the rest of the presentation instead of memorizing every word.
Get Used to the Room
Seeing the room before the actual presentation, even for a few minutes, can make the setting feel more familiar. Check where you will stand, make sure the microphone and slides work, and imagine what the room will look like with the audience in their seats. A short walk before you speak can also ease some of the restlessness that comes with nervous energy.
Slow Your Breathing
Before you speak, take a few deep, comfortable breaths, breathing in gently and letting each breath out slowly. Breathing more slowly can help your heart rate settle and reduce anxiety.
Try Calling the Feeling Excitement
Calling your nervousness excitement, rather than trying to calm down, can help some speakers. In a 2014 study that included a public speaking task, Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School found that people who said “I am excited” aloud felt more excited and performed better than those who tried to calm down.
What Should You Do if Nervousness Hits During a Presentation?
If you start to feel more nervous during a presentation, pause for a moment before you speak again. If your voice starts to shake, try slowing your pace and breathing out slowly before your next sentence. A short pause can feel longer to the speaker than it does to the audience.
Pause When Your Mind Goes Blank
When you forget what comes next or lose your place, stop, breathe, and look at your notes for the next point. You can practice pausing for a few seconds so that a brief silence feels more familiar when you need time to gather your thoughts.
Consider Speaking From Bullet Points Instead of a Script
Short bullet points or simple visual aids, such as slides with only a few words each, can help you find your next point if you forget what you planned to say. For some speakers, relying on a full script can make it harder to continue if they lose their place.
Make Eye Contact With One Listener at a Time
Making brief eye contact with one audience member at a time can help you focus on individual listeners instead of the whole group. You can start with a friendly face, make brief eye contact as you complete a thought, and then look at another listener.
Focus on What the Audience Needs
Anxiety can become harder to manage when you focus closely on how your voice sounds or how your body language looks to the audience. Instead, focus on what you want the audience to understand, such as an update, a single main idea, or a decision you need from them. Doing so can shift your attention away from worrying about how you are doing.
What We See Working with Clients
Our communication coaches work with adults who are capable in their jobs but find speaking in front of others a challenge. The examples below are based on real clients we have worked with. Identifying details have been changed to protect privacy.
One client, a project manager, noticed that her voice shook every week when she had to present status updates to senior leaders. She had started keeping her updates as short as possible, so leaders often asked follow-up questions she was not prepared to answer.
We practiced her opening lines out loud until she felt more confident saying them. Next, we practiced taking a slow breath before she started to speak and rehearsed what to do if she lost her place. She still got nervous before the meetings, but she said her voice was steadier and that she was able to finish an update without rushing.
Another client, an engineer, was preparing for his first conference talk and had lost his place more than once during rehearsals at work. He had written a full script and believed he had to remember every word.
We rebuilt the presentation around a few main points and practiced the first minute until he was comfortable delivering it. Sessions also included practice runs with interruptions and challenging questions to build his confidence. His presentation ran on time, and colleagues told him it was easy to follow.
Frequently Asked Questions About Public Speaking Jitters
1. Why do my hands shake when I speak in public?
Shaking hands can happen when your stress response releases hormones like adrenaline. The fight-or-flight response can tense your muscles, speed up your heart rate, and make your hands or voice tremble.
2. How long do public speaking jitters last?
Public speaking jitters have no fixed duration. For many people, the jitters ease after they have been speaking for a while, but public speaking anxiety can last throughout a talk.
3. Is it normal to still get nervous after years of presenting?
You can still feel nervous even after years of speaking experience. Experienced speakers, elite athletes, and other performers can get jitters before an important event, too.
4. Can speech anxiety show up in meetings, not just speeches?
Speech anxiety can show up in meetings, phone calls, and interviews too. People who experience it before a formal speech can also feel nervous when speaking in groups, and some of the same strategies can be useful.
5. When should you get help for a fear of public speaking?
Consider getting help when the fear causes real distress or affects your work. A fear of public speaking can interfere with daily life when you regularly avoid situations where you need to speak or feel intense anxiety about them well ahead of time. A doctor or licensed mental health professional can assess anxiety, and a communication coach can help you practice skills for speaking clearly and confidently.
How Connected Speech Pathology Can Help
At Connected Speech Pathology, our communication coaches help adults practice the speaking skills they need to build confidence at work. Sessions are held online, and you can use your upcoming presentations, meetings, and interviews as practice. The goal is for you to use these skills in future talks, too.
Coaching can help you prepare for a presentation by organizing your main points and practicing your opening. It can also include breathing and pacing strategies for a shaky voice, as well as practice answering unexpected questions. Our online communication coaching is personalized to your job and the speaking situations you face.
Summary
Public speaking jitters are a normal stress response to speaking in front of others. They can include a racing heart, shaky hands, or other signs of the fight-or-flight response. Public speaking jitters often feel strongest just before or at the start of a speech.
Rehearsing out loud, practicing your opening, and slowing your breathing can help you manage your nerves before you speak. If you lose your place, a brief pause can give you time to check your notes and find your next point.
Fear that feels overwhelming or leads you to avoid speaking can be more than typical jitters, and for some people, it is part of social anxiety disorder.
About the Author
Allison Geller, M.A., CCC-SLP, is a communication coach, speech-language pathologist, and founder of Connected Speech Pathology, an international online practice providing professional communication coaching and speech therapy for children, teens, and adults. With more than two decades of experience, she has worked in medical and educational settings and published research on aphasia. Today, she leads a team of specialists who help clients improve their skills in public speaking, vocal presence, accent clarity, articulation, language, fluency, and interpersonal communication.
