Romboy1

Richard Romboy
Dr. Lynn Kilpatrick
Engl 2280
2 December 2014
2531 Words
Tongue Dread

I have adult onset glossophobia. Treatment is extremely difficult and usually involves a
combination of cognitive restructuring, behavioral therapy and in extreme cases heavy
medication. Ive got it pretty bad too. My hands shake and I sweat no matter how cold the room
is, in really bad instances there is vomiting and even uncontrolled bowel movements. My
classmates are very sympathetic and I do like getting those its going to be okay looks from the
pretty girls but I cant keep living like this. Its starting to affect the relationship with my family.
It is a subject we have stopped discussing but it hangs like a pall over our house. Both of my
parents are excellent public speakers.
Glossophobia also known in the Greek as tongue dread is not just the fear of public
speaking; it is a clinical diagnoses of extreme social anxiety brought on by speaking to a group.
And I have it. It never used to be this way. All the way through high school I never had any
difficulty raising my hand in class or participating in discussions. I was usually the first one to
raise my hand but times have changed. After I graduated, I pursued my dream of becoming a
chef and have spent the last ten years or so in restaurants and catering companies where I spoke
to no more than a handful of people at any one time. Food service is an anonymous business; if
service and food is done well it appears on the table by invisible hands and customers needs are

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met in advance. When you work in food, the last thing you want is to be noticed, it means
something bad has happened. There is nothing more embarrassing for a cook than to be called
out of the kitchen. It almost always means something has gone terribly wrong and cant be fixed
by anyone else.
A quick web search showed that the fear of public speaking is very common. A Gallup
poll and the article with it, written by Geoffrey Brewer, has fear of speaking in public as 2nd only
to snakes as Americans worst fear and states that on most surveys people would rather die,
literally, than speak in public. There had to be help out there for me somewhere and I wanted to
find it soon. Im back in college now and about to transfer to a four-year school. I am right on the
cusp of acceptance into business school, a dream I have nurtured since I realized restaurant
owners dont get days off, let alone vacations. So far I have managed to stay on the sidelines for
group projects and presentations. My group mates are usually more than willing to take the
microphone while I do most of the research and writing. Someday I want to take some credit for
this work and my ideas, but first I need to be able to talk to more than four people without
sounding like an imbecile or crapping my pants (yes, that really happened).
I started with some hard-core research from authorities; peer reviewed articles and the
clinical experiments of mental health professionals. I found a couple thorough examinations of
the various ways Public Speaking Anxiety or PSA are treated, one from Communication
Education by Graham Bodie and the other in Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, based on a
study by Virginia Cunningham and her colleagues at the University of Arizona. Both works
contain extensive use of cognitive therapy, cognitive restructuring, and Bodie uses something
called adverse stimuli reconditioning with mixed results. I learned some stuff though. I learned
that a hundred pages of science can in fact make the human eyes bleed (my own), my childhood

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wasnt as bad as I thought (see Cunningham), and that there is this group of people called
Toastmasters who give speeches for fun. I began to doubt the credibility of my sources.
Every web search I had done about PSA had come back with at least one hit on
Toastmasters International. I decided to give it a look. According to the website TMI is a learnby-doing workshop in which participants hone their speaking and leadership skills in a nopressure atmosphere. Okay so far, and they have 313,000 members. The website appeared tailor
made for people like me, under the section on Fear is written, Believe it or not, your chances of
dying of stage fright are extremely slim. You might feel as if you are dying on the stage, but
chances are good your audience wont even notice your wobbly knees and sweating armpits. I
did a quick club search and found no less than five Toastmasters Groups within ten minutes of
my house. These people are everywhere, why hadnt I heard about this before? It looked like
most meetings were held at churches and private businesses but there were a couple at public
libraries. The program consists of several work-at-your-own pace manuals with different kinds
of speeches given before the club. It sounded legit enough to try.

Meeting 1 Parliamentary Clique

The basement of public libraries all look like bomb shelters to me. As I walked into the
bare concrete walled conference room with postage stamp sized pictures of the American
landscape and clouds it seemed a likely place to wait for the atmosphere to recover after
Armageddon. With barely a glance, the twenty or so people in various degrees of business casual
to boardroom dress dismissed me as obviously lost.

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The room had been set classroom style with long tables facing a podium covered with a
gold brocaded Toastmasters International Banner bedecked with various ribbons. As soon as I sat
down an immense young woman in a blouse and dress pants lumbered over to me. She asked if I
was there for TM and introduced herself as the Vice President of Membership. She seemed
somehow put off by my presence yet attempted to welcome me to the meeting nonetheless.
Before we could exchange any more awkward questions somebody at the front rapped a gavel
too loudly for the size of the room, calling the Toastmasters to order.
What I witnessed in the next hour was less a speaking group than a bunch of snooty
professionals trying to out Roberts Rules of Order each other. Every thing was strictly by the
book parliamentary procedure. One Toastmaster was even reprimanded for improper hand
shaking behind the podium. Throughout the three pretty mundane speeches I was riveted to the
politics at play. There was a Toastmaster counting all the ums and ahs of the speakers but
those were far outnumbered by the dirty looks and smug I told you so winks shot back and
forth during the proceedings. In the midst of all this apparently was a listening quiz to make
sure people paid attention to the speeches, an official club grammarian in charge of proper use of
language and a word of the day to incorporate into every speech; perspicacity.
After the prepared speeches the meeting moved into what is called Table Topics, where
members are called on at random to speak off the cuff and see how quickly they can think on
their feet. I was acutely aware from the website that guests could be called upon to speak
extemporaneously during table topics. I had vowed to give it my all if called upon but thankfully
the Table Topics Master called on another guest, a college age Latino woman. She walked up to
the front of the room and croaked like a frog, she tried to gather her composure and croaked
again. This went on for several minutes until she looked at the carpet and apologized before

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scuttling back to her seat. A Ha! I thought. I am not the only one! I felt deeply empathetic for the
poor girl but nevertheless supremely grateful it had not been me up there. I myself have had to
finish whole presentations by staring at the ground. Its the only way to get through it sometimes.
The meeting got even worse. In every Toastmasters meeting the speakers vie for awards
but every single speaker had gone over their allotted time and were all disqualified. I found this
fairly amusing to watch because there is also an official timer in charge of letting the speakers
know how much time they are taking. This information is communicated with a mini traffic
light, that used I noticed eco-friendly red, yellow and green compact fluorescents. The speakers
could not stop talking in time, carried on by waves of their own self-import, they just went on
and on, even in the face of the red stop light. Needless to say no one answered the quiz
questions correctly, no one got an award, and only two people used perspicacity correctly. As
soon as the gavel came down for the last time, I shot out of there before the keychain knife fights
started.

Meeting 2 Clicked to Death

There was no way I was going to join that group, but there was still hope. I had seen
some of what TM had to offer and it seemed like a solid premise. I just needed to find the right
club. The next club on my list was at a different library. Again I found myself walking into a
concrete bunker. This group looked more casual but older. It was like the 50th anniversary
episode of friends. There was a an old hippie chick in flowing skirt and headband, Phoebe; a tall
good looking professorly gentleman, Ross; a fat guy in a uniform shirt who seemed all too
interested in the club ladies, Joey; and a short businesslike woman in a pantsuit standing next to a

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table full of brochures and perfectly aligned rows of name tags, Monica. She looked up at me
with bright hungry eyes and shot out from behind the table with her hand straight out. Monicas
name was actually Wanda and she welcomed me a little too warmly with a slight Canadian
accent. She gently insisted on getting me to sign the guest book and had a nametag written and
stuck to my chest before I could finish my last name. I was handed a very professional looking
agenda as she escorted my elbow to a chair.
A handful of normal looking people filtered in; a few looked like university students but
most were past middle age. One young man in his early twenties was wearing a brand-shiny-new
three-piece suit. The club members all chatted amongst themselves as I looked at rows and rows
of award ribbons hanging from a curtain rod precariously laid across the top of the podium. This
group had some serious speakers who had won divisional, regional and national awards and they
were obviously well organized. I had to RSVP through meetup.com just to attend as a guest even
though the club is listed on the TMI website as open to all.
The first speech of the night came from Phoebe, who even though very hippified was in
fact a psychotherapist. Her speech was about how to recognize suicidal people. Very well done,
with stage props and good cadence, it was a really informative lecture well within the time
constraints. The next speech was by a tall middle-aged man about the proper etiquette of
workplace emails. He too was a polished presenter; he had a slow and steady voice but clear and
it projected well. Both speakers so far had been perfect in their own style without pauses, or ums
or ahs and made excellent eye contact with the audience. There was a lot of experience in this
room and I was beginning to like this club. I felt like I could learn how to speak very well here if
given just an iota of assistance.

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The final speaker was the young man in the three-piece suit. Wanda welcomed him to the
podium as the clubs newest member and about to deliver his first prepared speech for the club.
He began smoothly enough, getting about a minute into his speech before he paused and a brief
Ah escaped his lips. At that point two things happened, Taylor (the young man) grimaced and
Ross, the professor suddenly came to life. Ross sat up in his chair and I saw him bring something
out of his pocket. Taylor continued for a couple more sentences before an um slipped out.
CLACK-CLICK! Ross that old devil had pulled a metal clicker out of his pocket. Taylor grimly
plodded ahead but the professor was on him now. Every time Taylor missed a beat, stuttered,
umd or ahd he would viciously click-clack him. This did nothing to help Taylor get through his
speech, he slowly lost momentum and I watched the confidence and enjoyment leak out of him
with every mistake and corresponding metallic scolding. Although I am pretty sure that the San
Bushmen would have understood the click-talk perfectly, his English was being drowned out in
the flurry of clacks. I was shaking by proxy, there was absolutely no way in hell I was going to
subject myself to that kind of torture. I had read about it though: adverse stimuli reconditioning. I
was offered a spot to speak during table topics and I shamefully declined. I was seriously
beginning to doubt whether Toastmasters was for me at all.

Meeting 3 I Click

After the second meeting I took a break from any thoughts of TM. I dont like to quit
though and I knew that I would need to deal with my fears sooner or later. Hopefully before it
affected my academic career. When I first started to send feelers out about TMI I had emailed the
Treasurer of a group I really had no interest in even visiting (a meeting at a car dealership in a

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donated room behind the parts department) just to get some free information about the
organization. The woman was up front in her emails that her group was pretty laid back and
maybe not the best example of a TM group, but after the last two fiascos I was willing to do
away with strict adherence to TM guidelines. I looked up what the initials after her name meant.
DTM. Distinguished Toastmaster. Of 4 million past and present Toastmasters only 20,000 or so
have achieved DTM. That got me off the couch for one more try and as soon as I walked in
everything felt different. There were only about ten people, of all ages and walks of life. They
had drinks and candy and I couldnt see a Toastmasters logo anywhere. But most importantly
they all looked like fun people and I could see they genuinely liked one another. The meeting
commenced a little late with a soft knock of the gavel and the speakers werent perfect. In fact
some of them were downright inept but that didnt really matter because the energy was there.
Everyone in the room of all ability levels just wanted to be better public speakers. And I spoke.
Even though I totally sucked at Table Topics, and barely managed to go a minute without calling
it quits, I did it. I shook like a leaf and totally sweated through two layers of shirts in 45 seconds,
but I spoke and they clapped.
This is the right meeting for me and I am joining this Toastmasters Group. I cant wait to
start and get better. Sharon (the DTM) told me I could start working on the first manual The
Competent Communicator as soon or as late as I please. Soon. Definitely. Im hooked.

Meeting 4 The Click of a Cane

I am thorough to the point of obsession. I have a problem just taking stuff as it is,
especially when that stuff involves me. Everything I do has to be 100% perfect. Its a great
quality, my bosses have always loved me for it and so do my professors, mostly. Only people

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who spend more than 8 hours a day with me dont seem to appreciate it. My girlfriend said
something like anal retentive ASSHOLE! when she left my place the last time. Ive been
meaning to ask her exactly what she meant by that but I guess she hasnt charged her phone for a
couple months. Shes not good at remembering to do little things like that. But I digress; the
point of this is that before I gave my first prepared speech (called The Icebreaker) to my new
Toastmasters club I wanted to consult an expert. I figured that by interviewing a professional
speaker I could get some really good tips and wow the club with the best first speech they had
ever heard.
I had no idea where to start so like most proud 34 year olds when confronted with the
unknown, I called my Dad. Although pissed off at being disturbed while watching football he
walked the twenty or so feet to my room. It was serendipitous too, because my Dad used to work
with the wife of a guy who was some kind of professional speaker before he became a teacher
at the local community college. I found him pretty easily on the college directory and fired off an
introductory email. Brett Campbell got back to me the very next day and wrote that yes he had in
fact been a paid professional speaker and he would be happy to answer all of my questions about
public speaking via email but wondered if I would like to meet for coffee. His wife Kathie hadnt
seen my Dad since he retired and would love to come along and catch up with him while we did
the interview. He asked for a copy of the questions up front and we set a coffee date for the
following week.
As my dad and I sat in the coffee shop waiting I remarked it was nice that Bretts wife
wanted to come along and see how he was doing. My dad looked at me sort of funny and said
She drives him most of the time, so she would probably be with him anyway. I must have

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looked puzzled because he smiled and said Brett is blind, you know. Aha, hence the sunglasses
in the faculty photo. I sensed real opportunity to get to the bottom of stage fright.
Bretts appearance and demeanor surprised me at first. He is a fairly tall guy with long
hair and surfer good looks that belie his erudite and precise speech. There was very little
awkwardness and we became fast friends as I went through the questions with him. I had a
printed copy of the responses he had sent me and we discussed several of them at length.

Q. First of all can you give me some background on the type of public speaking you do and what
got you started?
A. My style of speaking presentations may be classified as motivational, self-awareness and
problem solving. I began professional speaking as a means to gain employment.
Brett originally was asked to come to public schools to introduce children to his seeing
guide dog and apparently decided that he could get paid to do it. He hired an agent who booked
him to speak at schools, conferences and workshops all over the west coast. He did this with his
wife who drove him from venue to venue over the course of 6 years, sometimes doing as many
as 4 presentations a day, 9 months out of the year.
Q. What level of stage fright did you have to begin with and has this changed over time?
A. I had a high level of stage fright in the beginning. I was quite concerned with giving the hiring
party their moneys worth. To this day I still experience a moderate level of stage fright. Ive
learned to reduce stage fright with a lot of self-talk before and during the event.
In follow up he added that he likes to listen to loud upbeat music on the way to the event
and tells himself over and over that the crowd is going to love him. On questioning about selftalk during a speech he explained that it is a great idea to noticeably pause during your speech.

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It actually brings the focus of the crowd back to the speaker, and it gives you a chance to tell
yourself that the crowd loves you, everybody loves you, and that you are a big hit.
At this point I couldnt help but ask how he thought he experienced PSA differently than
a sighted speaker. Brett told me he thinks its worse for him. He hears the boredom in the crowd:
chairs scraping, people tapping their pens, and yawning. He went on to say that his mind can run
away and play tricks on him, imagining that everyone hates him and that he is bombing simply
because he doesnt get the instant visual feedback a sighted speaker gets.
Q. What tricks do you use to engage and interact with the audience?
A. Tricks indeed. When speaking to school age kids, I use actual tricks (magic) that Ive spent
much time practicing. I use the magic to illustrate an object lesson and keep their attention in an
entertaining manner. Adults arent so simple. I try to speak to the group as though Im speaking
to each person as an individual. While speaking, a long enough pause in just the right spot can
keep attention. I also try to maintain genuine enthusiasm in my voice.
He also added that in the beginning his speaking actually suffered from the magic tricks.
He confessed that he was so engrossed in trying not to screw up the trick that he lost his train of
thought a few times.
Q. How much of your speech is prepared in advance versus extemporaneous?
A. In most cases Id say around 80%. Often times, as I get the feel for my audience during a
presentation, material comes into my speech I wasnt planning to say.
Q. How do you stay within allotted time frames?
A. Practice the presentation over and over for timing. Be knowledgeable and flexible enough
with your topic to be able to adjust the time one-way or the other if necessary. Keep an
unobserved eye or in my case finger on the clock.

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Q. What is the best advice you could give to someone with a fear of public speaking?
A. Speak as often as you can. Experience brings confidence. Remind yourself that the audience
will forget your mistakes by the time the presentation is over. Dont take yourself too seriously.
Our conversation had run to more than two hours and I was deeply inspired by Bretts
story. Here was a normal guy with his fair share of self-doubt and stage fright who had become a
professional speaker. One thing that especially struck me was his emphasis on repeating key
points. He freely admitted that no one can keep every person in a crowds attention for a full
speech, and a constant theme, oft repeated will eventually make its way to every one in the
audience.
Meeting 5 Clicking in the 8 Ball
The night of my speech I must have changed clothes about five times. It wasnt because I
wanted to make a good impression, every time I rehearsed my speech I started to smell, a kind of
sickly sweet cloying and claustrophobic smell, the stink of fear. I kept running through my
speech, drilling it like a long flashcard, double checking my notes and trying to believe that the
club would forget my mistakes before I was done talking. I drove to the car dealership with a
Bach for relaxation CD at full blast. It must have worked because when I got out of the car my
hands had stopped shaking, I couldnt feel anything below elbows at all now. That ended as soon
as I walked into the room.
There was only one member there, Ron, who is about the nicest guy you could ever meet.
He has been part of one Toastmasters club or another for 30 years and he very gently asked me
if I was ready to speak. I cant remember what I said but it ended with a lame self-deprecating
joke and then I bolted outside to furiously smoke another cigarette before the meeting. Several
more Toastmasters filed past me as I stoked my camel like a human forge billow. I dont

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remember any of the introductions or what the first speech was even about. I dont remember
walking up to the podium without my notes.
I do remember my speech. The Icebreaker is not meant to be a difficult speech. It is
merely a more formal introduction of oneself to the other club members. It is timed for between
4-6 minutes and unlike many of the speeches in the TM manuals you are allowed to use notes.
There are no grades, just member feedback. I had memorized the introduction to get me started
smoothly and I also memorized the closing paragraph in case I began to run long and needed to
wrap up my speech quickly and avoid disqualification. First speech or not, I still wanted to win
the Best Speaker prize for the meeting. It is difficult to explain the transformation that came
over me as I spoke. I was really nervous the entire time but the fear slowly ebbed away as I
resigned myself to totally sucking.
I ran through my opening stiffly. I had lost all feeling below the knees and elbows and
my fingers and toes were alight with painful pinpricks. I tried to use some hand gestures as I had
seen the good speakers in previous meeting use but it felt totally unnatural, like zombie arms
even though they were barely above my waist. I had to physically fight not to cross my arms and
protect my body; I simply clasped them behind my back with a death grip and plodded along. I
consciously decided to go off of my prepared material, I had lost most of the clubs attention and
had nothing left to lose. I told them why I am so scared to speak in public. It revolves around a
grade school assembly in which I spoke so loudly into the microphone that the entire auditorium
full of kids scooted back several feet. I told the story like a bad joke and the room laughed.
Feeling a surge of confidence I plunged into the body of my speech.
I told them all about my love of Pool. For several years I was a competitive pool player
and I traveled all over the west coast gambling and playing in every tournament and pool hall I

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could find. It is a subject that I still have a lot of passion for and there was no fake enthusiasm
needed to talk about it. I got lost in the tales of the road and the people and places I saw. The
entire group of Toastmasters was transfixed; it felt like I had been speaking for hours and I
looked over at the mini traffic light to see if I had hit the red yet. Sharon, eyes wide with
astonishment had her elbows on the table and her mouth had fallen open. The stopwatch lay
totally forgotten, pushed off to the side. I paused and looked right into her eyes. Suddenly broken
from the spell, she remembered the clock and quickly looked down muttering a soft ohshit as
she turned the knob directly to yellow. I had less than a minute to wrap up my speech and I
hadnt even reached my 21st birthday! I clipped through fourteen years as fast as I could and then
used my memorized closing.
The applause was long and whole-hearted and I received some really wonderful
confidence building feed back from everyone in the group. Sharon was my evaluator and her
feedback was completely positive, she even admitted to the club she had been so engrossed she
forgot to look at the stopwatch. She went on to say it was the best Icebreaker she had heard in
years, a sentiment later reiterated by other members after the meeting. I had smiled through the
entire speech a great quality that is hard to teach new speakers. Smiling is one of my defense
mechanisms (I grin like a village idiot when I dont know what the hell is up from down). One
guy told me I didnt even look nervous (liar). I didnt win best speaker but the constant theme in
the reactions was that if I continue to improve I will become a very good speaker and should
consider entering setting my sights on the TMI speaking contests.

I would love to sit here and tell you that it was easier than I thought it was going to be.
Like any performance I ever had on the pool table, the execution is the shortest but most visible

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part of a long process. I spent hours preparing for a speech that lasted less than six minutes not to
mention the weeks of research and a lifetime of avoidance. There is a small measure of relief that
I didnt fall apart but I still see my overall weaknesses in delivery. And there is the fear of my
next speech, it is not as bad as it was before, and it is a different kind of trepidation. Its a new
animal now, the fear of not improving, not preparing well enough. I dont have a date set for my
next speech, it is much more highly structured and I cant use notes even if I want to. Before I
give my next speech I am on the schedule to evaluate another speaker in front of the club. One
thing that I have learned is that I am a better natural speaker than I initially gave myself credit for
and most fears are not based on fact. We cannot discount irrational fear in daily life, but it is
good to keep a healthy perspective on them. It is highly unlikely that one will die from fright. It
makes me wonder though, what exactly is the percentage?