Have you ever completely blanked out during a presentation or felt your confidence collapse in front of an audience? If so, you’re far from alone and in this episode of Speaking with Confidence, I tackle exactly how to recover from those “crash and burn” public speaking moments and get your confidence back on track.
I’m Tim Newman, and as someone who once threw up before giving my first college presentation, I know firsthand how devastating public speaking anxiety can feel. This week, I’m drawing on both scientific studies and coaching experience to help you move forward from setbacks and rebuild your core presentation skills, one step at a time.
I’m going deep into the mechanics of bouncing back from a public speaking “freeze.” I break down why our brains sometimes fail us under stress, how anxiety is triggered both by internal self-esteem and external factors like the room or audience, and most importantly, what you can do to start the recovery process today.
Here’s what I cover in this episode:
- Understanding why you might suddenly forget your words or lose your flow during a speech and why it’s usually a stress-driven system breakdown rather than a lack of knowledge.
- The five interconnected parts of effective public speaking: content mastery, physical control, audience awareness, emotional regulation, and delivery mechanics.
- Real-world examples of how even highly skilled professionals can “crash,” and the neuroscience behind how adrenaline and panic disrupt your memory.
- How confidence and public speaking ability reinforce one another, plus how environmental factors (like room layout and audience engagement) can shape your anxiety level in real time.
- Practical steps to identify exactly where you tend to stumble using a technique I recommend to all my clients: recording and reviewing your last few talks to pinpoint specific breakdowns.
- The value of gradual, targeted practice to rebuild your skills, including insights from virtual reality training studies that show even small, structured exposures lead to measurable improvement.
- My recommended “exposure ladder” for resetting your confidence: from practicing alone to speaking in front of a small, trusted audience, and then slowly simulating real-life settings.
- An evidence-based way to turn setbacks into learning opportunities using structured reflection, journaling, and a four-step mental reframe to immediately convert mistakes into specific action steps.
- How to design your speech outlines to lower your risk of freezing, and why preparing the opening lines for common questions in Q&A makes a big difference.
- The importance of brief, focused daily practice and getting specific peer feedback to reinforce positive changes and accelerate growth.
- A quick three-day reset challenge you can try right away to get yourself unstuck and moving forward.
Throughout the episode, I remind you that rebuilding confidence is less about perfection and more about systematic progress about strengthening the “subsystems” of your communication, piece by piece. If you’ve just had a tough public speaking experience, I want you to leave this episode with hope and a toolkit you can use immediately.
Don’t forget to check out speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com after the show to
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Transcript
Tim Newman [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to Speaking with Confidence podcast that helps you build the soft skills that lead to real results. Communication, storytelling, public speaking, and showing up with confidence in every conversation that counts. I’m Tim Newman, a recovering college professor turned communication coach, and I’m thrilled to guide you on your journey to becoming a powerful community indicator. Thank you so much for supporting the show. If you have a question, comment, or want something covered on the show, just send me a message. Surveys and popular estimates vary, but many studies and polls suggest that a majority of people often cited between 40% and 75% experience some level of public speaking anxiety. Many surveys even rank giving a speech among people’s top fears. I’ve told the story many times of me throwing up before my first presentation in college.
Tim Newman [00:00:57]:
It was a big hit to my confidence and I had to find a way to get that confidence back. So if you’ve ever had your mind just kind of go blank in the middle of a speech while the audience waits, that gut punch moment doesn’t have to be the end of your confidence either. The good news is this. Your brain can adapt and bounce back. And today I’ll walk you through exactly how to reset after a crash and burn moment using practice based training and exposure style rebuilding proven to restore confidence and it starts with understanding why these breakdowns happen. That sudden blank out during a speech isn’t random, it’s a system breakdown. Effective public speaking relies on five interconnected parts content mastery, physical control, audience awareness, emotional regulation, and delivery mechanics. When stress hits, it often disrupts mental retrieval and focus first, which then cascades into other areas.
Tim Newman [00:02:02]:
One weak link can strain the rest. Consider the CEO who froze during an earnings call. He knew the material cold, but a surge of adrenaline and stress disrupted the prefrontal cortex, an effect clinicians describe as the brain’s retrieval functions going offline under panic. This wasn’t about forgetting the facts, it was about a stress response, shutting down access to them. Confidence plays a key role here too. Research has found a moderate positive relationship between self esteem and and public speaking ability. Those with higher self esteem often reported lower anxiety and communicate more effectively. It’s not that skill alone guarantees success.
Tim Newman [00:02:50]:
Confidence and technical skill feed into each other. Environmental and audience factors also influence performance. Studies and reviews show that room layout, audience size, and engagement levels can increase or reduce anxiety. Larger spaces or higher ceilings can subtly increase scanning and distraction, while even a small attentive audience can make a speaker feel more at ease. Factors like audience facial expressions and perceived evaluation can shift your stress levels in real time. Sometimes Creating a feedback loop that derails delivery, and these breakdowns can happen very quickly. Poor breathing control affects vocal stability. Weak structure planning adds cognitive load, making it harder to stay present with your audience.
Tim Newman [00:03:40]:
Physical tension from skipping a warm up can restrict gestures and pacing, and each falter compounds the rest. The first step towards fixing the problem is knowing where it starts for you. Record your last three talks. This is a technique widely recommended in public speaking training, and review them carefully. Watch where you lost your place, when your breathing became shallow, or when your gaze and gestures changed. These are measurable markers that you can target. Identifying these patterns gives you a specific starting point for strengthening the right subsystem. Instead of just practicing everything in hope that everything improves.
Tim Newman [00:04:21]:
Once you can see the exact failure points, the question becomes how to rebuild them in a way that’s safe and gradual and designed to restore confidence piece by piece. After a setback, tackling a full length presentation right away often backfires. It’s kind of like attempting a heavy lift immediately after an injury. Your body just isn’t ready for it. A safer, more effective route is to apply gradual controlled exposure, similar to how physical therapists build strength post injury in a virtual reality for public speaking or VR4PS. Pilot study published by Multidisciplinary Publishing Institute or MDPI. Participants reduced their filler words by about 24% over three structured practice sessions, with an overall score improvement of roughly 12%. While this was a small controlled trial, it offers a useful micro proof that step by step practice can shift habits.
Tim Newman [00:05:20]:
A practical way to start is with a progressive exposure ladder informed by exposure therapy principles. For example, on day one, record a one to three minute talk alone in a quiet space. On day three, repeat the same talk in front of one trusted listener and on day five, either at a second person, ideally someone you know less well, or recreate more real conditions through lighting, background noise or posture. The goal is to add just enough pressure to challenge without overwhelming. For each micro session, set your camera or phone at eye level and about an arm’s length away to match a natural audience sight line. Review the recording twice. First, watch for structure and flow, noting where ideas connect or stumble. Second, focus on nonverbal cues and breathing patterns.
Tim Newman [00:06:14]:
This two pass review is a standard recommendation from experienced speaking coaches and mirrors the real time and summary feedback approach used in VR training research. Keep the session measurable. Choose one skill to work on and track a clear metric such as counting filler words or note the length of pauses, or record how many times your gaze sweeps the audience. The MDPI pilot’s emphasis on discrete trackable performance markers shows how targeted attention to one variable at a time drives steady improvement. Avoid layering too many focus points at once. Instead, build each skill into your repertoire before shifting to the next. Remember that the strongest evidence for improvement comes from repeated supervised practice. The VR and exposure therapy studies are promising but small, so use low stakes environments often and if possible, seek trusted peer feedback.
Tim Newman [00:07:16]:
These sessions aren’t just about physical delivery, they’re about strengthening the mental flexibility to stay present and adapt even when things go wrong. That mindset shift is where lasting recovery truly takes root. One of the most effective shifts you can make now is in how you mentally frame a setback as it happens. In both coaching, practice and clinical approaches, structured reflection, journaling and cognitive appraisal are used to reduce rumination and turn mistakes into concrete learning steps. Instead of mentally replaying the error on a loop, you create a scaffold your brain can actually work from. A simple version I give clients is a four step reframe. First, name the slip such as Lost My Place at slide 12. Second, identify the likely cause such as room was colder than rehearsals tightening my throat.
Tim Newman [00:08:12]:
Third, choose one specific fix such as mark transitions in bold and fourth, schedule that fix. For example, practice cold room run through on Thursday. You need to write this down right after the stumble. This keeps the mind in a problem solving mode and prevents the moment from hard setting into self criticism. To support this, use a brief post event journal. Begin with a factual sequence, then write one sentence on how you felt and finish with a single targeted action step. Guidance from coaching and counseling literature suggests that separating facts from emotions and actions can interrupt unproductive rumination and give you a clear next move. You can also reduce decision load in the moment by using a three layer outline for your speech.
Tim Newman [00:09:02]:
You’ve got must say points, should say details and could say stories. Coaching sources and performance preparation guides indicate that when working from this kind of scaffold lowers freeze risk because you always have your non negotiables at hand. And for Q and A, prepare the first two or three lines you’ll use for the most likely questions. Training materials from VR pilots and performance coaches both stress that having pre built openings reduces hesitation under pressure. Feedback accelerates this process. In VR training pilots and structured practice programs, sessions with focused peer feedback outperform solo repetition. Set up a short weekly exchange with one trusted person. Give them a single prompt like Mark one place where I lose breath or pace so the feedback stays specific and actionable.
Tim Newman [00:09:56]:
Finally, anchor the habit with short daily practice 10 to 15 minutes on one skill, followed by three to five minutes of reflection or immediate playback review Multiple coaching case studies and practice systems show that these brief, focused sessions support steady improvement without overload. And when these mental and structural supports are in place, the next step is to put them into a concentrated testing period that shows you measurable progress in a short amount of time. Remember, the small VR4PS pilot published in MDPI documented measurable gains over three structured practice sessions. Again, participants reduced filler words by about 24% and showed roughly a 12% improvement in overall performance scores. While preliminary, these results align with gradual targeted exposure as an effective recovery method. Here’s a three day reset. You can run day one, record a 90 second microtalk and choose one measurable target like filler words or pause length or or breath control. On day two, use the four beat reframe on a pass stumble, apply one fix and redo the recording and on day three, deliver the same talk to one observer, tracking only that single metric.
Tim Newman [00:11:15]:
Try it and post in the comments which metric you’ll work on. Remember, confidence comes from strengthening rebuilding systems, content mastery, physical control, audience awareness, emotional regulation, and delivery mechanics. Focus. Measurable practice is the path forward. Remember, we’re looking for progress, not perfection. That’s all for today. Be sure to visit speakingwithconfidencepodcast.com to get your free eBook, the Top 21 Challenges for Public Speakers and How to Overcome Them. You can also register for the Formula for Public Speaking course.
Tim Newman [00:11:54]:
Always remember, your voice has the power to change your world. We’ll talk to you next time. Take care.