Face Fear?Don't Fake It

• Author: Heidi K. Brown
• Pages: 22-23

Face Fear—Don’t Fake It

Are you a lawyer with public speaking anxiety? You are not alone

By Heidi K. Brown

While researc hing fear in lawyering, I rea d Mastering

Fear, a book by former Navy SE AL Brandon Webb. In

the book, he describe s his friend Neil Amonson, an Ai r

Force combat controller, pilot, skydiver and BA SE (build-

ing, antenna, spa n and earth) jumper. Amonson is afraid

of heights. Reading about A monson, I had a knee-jerk

response: How can a warr ior who jumps out of planes be

afraid of heights? And then I re alized my reaction mirr ors

the stereoty pical question posed to many lawyer s who are

afraid of public speak ing. How can you be a lawyer if you’re

afraid of public spe aking?

I was a litigator for 20 year s, and I was chronically ter-

rifi ed of public speaki ng. I felt ill before every combative

negotiation, deposition and cour troom experience. There

wasn’t anyone to talk to a bout my fear. If I expressed hesi-

tation toward a per formance-oriented act ivity, the motiva-

tional response of ten was, “Just toughen up. Grow a thicker

skin.” For years, I bought into the notion tha t I was a fraud,

an impostor. How could I be a litigator or even any t ype of

decent lawyer if the per formance aspects of my job presse d

me into such depths of anx iety? It wasn’t until I started

studying introversion, shy ness and social anxiet y in the legal

context that I rea lized that all the advic e I had absorbed

from perhaps well-intentioned mentors a nd naturally confi -

dent orators over the years just doe sn’t work. At least it didn’t

for me.

For years, I had heard ma ntras such

as, “Just practice! Preparat ion eliminates

public speaking an xiety!” Or, “Just do it!

Everyone is nervous. If you’re not nervous, it

means you don’t care enough.” Or the worst

one: “Fake it till you make it!” I tried fak-

ing it, mirrori ng others’ behavior, forcing

extroversion, overprepa ring, overpracticing,

for years. None of that worked to dim inish

destructive fea r. What did work was stop-

ping to look at who I am as an indiv idual,

digging into the re ality of what drives my

fear of public speaking a nd adopting new

mental and physical st rategies for stepping

into performanc e events authentically.

For me, no amount of substantive and proce dural prepara-

tion, rote rehearsa l or mustered-up bravado was ever going

to work until I direc tly dealt with the roots of my an xiety:

fear of judgment and critic ism. Ignoring our negative men-

tal soundtrack a nd automatic physical responses to str ess

doesn’t help us learn how to manage t hose tangible foes in a

constructive w ay. I trudge d forward pretending I knew what

I was doing. I didn’t.

Lawyers wit h extreme public speaking anx iety should

never feel, or be made to feel, li ke they are in the wrong pro-

fession or need to do something else w ith their lives. Instead,

with increas ed self-awareness and adoption of conscious

mental and physical te chniques, we can empower ourselves

to step into public speak ing scenarios and shine. Here is

what worked for me.

DITCH THE CLICHES

First, it is impor tant to give ourselves permis sion to reject

the soundbite messages to si mply overprepare, overpractice,

fake it and view our ner vousness as the world’s greatest moti-

vator. While that adv ice certainly might work for some folks,

for others, those simplistic sloga ns are just not viable long-

term solutions. Instea d, to amplify our advocac y voices, we

must invest in both mental a nd physical refl ection and then

convert our enhanced s elf-knowledge into con-

scious action.

On the mental side, it was es sential for me to

identify and tran scribe—verbatim—the toxic

soundtrack that ac companied me into every per-

formance-relate d lawyering scenario, such as

depositions and negotiations. The abu sive self-

talk was rema rkable: They’re going to think

you’re incompetent. You’re going to blush a nd

turn red, and th ey are going to sense weak-

ness. What in the wo rld made you think you

could be a litigator a nyway? Who are you to

have an opinion abo ut the law? Nasty unhelp-

ful stu , ever y single time I stepped into a per-

formance e vent.

The next step is to identif y the poten-

tial origina l sources of these messages,

22 || ABA JOURNAL MARCH 2019

Advocacy

EDITED BY KEVIN DAVIS,

LIANE JACKSON

Practice

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