How I Used the Desensitization Technique to Control My Fear of Public Speaking
Practice doesn’t make perfect; practice reduces imperfection.
I have always been bad at talking to people, be it to strangers, or to distant relatives, or in meetings. I am a man of very few words. Once I am done with “Hello, how are you,” I struggle to find topics to sustain the conversation.
And it's not that I do not want to, I just can’t. I go to parties and I am mostly restrained, standing in one corner. I go to meetings and I am mostly silent. I am scared of being proved wrong, I am afraid of being perceived as an idiot. When someone asks me a tricky question in a meeting, my chest tightens up with panic and my head starts to spin. My brain does not react well to being in the spotlight.
All of this was OK because it never bothered me. Early in my engineering career, I was not supposed to set the world on fire by talking to people. My job was writing code, and I just focussed on that. I could easily shy away from doing a presentation, or knowledge transfer sessions.
But all of this changed when I took a job at one of the biggest tech companies in the world — Apple. My role was of a senior engineer, and it needed me to talk to senior managers, product managers, and even directors. It needed…
