Paralysis of Self-Consciousness

Why Letting Go Helps You Speak Better in Public

It’s often said that public speaking is our greatest fear—beating even the fear of death. As Jerry Seinfeld once joked, more people at a funeral would rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy. Speaking in front of others makes us feel exposed—not only to them, but to ourselves. We imagine how we must look, sound, and seem under their collective gaze.

Public speaking throws us into a state of acute self-consciousness. Why? Because we are not only the protagonists of our lives—we are also the spectators. In the theatre of existence, we live in a dual role: we act, and we observe. As actors, we move through life driven by instinct, habit, and desire. As observers, we pause, analyse, judge. We toggle between these perspectives—subject and object—and this internal split can be paralysing.

Philosophers and psychologists have long reflected on this human trait. In living our lives, we also narrate, analyse, and often pathologise them. We stand outside ourselves, narrating our own experience as if from afar. When our inner observer dominates, the richness of direct experience fades. We become entangled in meta-awareness, evaluating ourselves in real time. Our capacity to stand apart from ourselves—to become objects to our own gaze—can burden us with a crippling awareness. In moments of high pressure—like speaking in public—this can lead to psychological gridlock.

Moritz Schlick, a key figure in the Vienna Circle, proposed that the meaning of life lies in play—not in the frivolous sense, but as a mode of action pursued for its own sake. “Play,” he wrote, “is activity which is not directed toward an end outside itself” (Schlick, 1930/1979, p. 140). Public speaking becomes torturous when we shift from doing to judging—from performing to calculating. The moment one becomes overly concerned with outcomes, with appearances, or with how one's life is being evaluated by others, the playfulness of existence collapses. Joy becomes calculation; spontaneity withers into analysis.

Mark Rowlands, in The Happiness of Dogs (2024), explores this dynamic, diagnosing the infamous yips—a sudden, often inexplicable inability to perform a well-practised skill. For Rowlands, the yips represent “paralysis by analysis”—a breakdown triggered not by incompetence, but by excessive reflection real time (Rowlands, 2014). Rowlands argues the yips are not confined to sport; they are, in fact, “an affliction caused by reflection,” and mirror a more general human condition.

Jean-Paul Sartre put it bluntly in Being and Nothingness: “The Other is the indispensable mediator between myself and me... I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other” (Sartre, 1943/2003, p. 289). This shame isn’t about guilt. It’s about visibility. It’s the feeling of being made an object in someone else’s reality—of being watched, judged, fixed in place.

Most of us occasionally experience this discomfort, especially in unfamiliar or high-stakes situations. But when it becomes chronic—when we live perpetually under the imagined gaze of others—it can develop into a deeper psychological condition. The perpetually self-conscious speaker lives not in their body, but at their body, constantly scrutinising every movement, every word. Advice like “picture your audience in their underwear” is an attempt to reverse this gaze—to re-establish the speaker as the subject, focused outward, rather than the object of attention.

If you spend significant portions of your day ruminating about how others see you, or agonising over your life's direction, you may be suffering from a generalised, existential form of the yips.

What can help, then, is not not caring—but caring differently. A speaker’s goal should not be to erase awareness altogether, but to redirect it. Speak from within the moment, not above it. As Schlick suggests, treat the act of speaking as play. Be immersed. Let the doing be enough.

Psychologist Paul Gilbert notes that self-conscious emotions like shame can become toxic when they inhibit connection and corrode self-worth (Gilbert, 2007). The danger isn’t in having a reflective mind—it’s in being consumed by it. The art of living well, and of speaking well, may lie in learning when to reflect and when to act. Speak first. Analyse later.

In public speaking—as in life—you don’t need to stop caring. You simply need to stop watching yourself so closely. You must become the actor not the watcher. Don’t try to perform for an imagined judgement. Instead, be present, be engaged, and, most of all, be in play. Speak through the body, not at it. You can always reflect later. But in the moment, let yourself act.

References

Gilbert, P. (2007). The Compassionate Mind. London: Constable.

Rowlands, M. (2014). Running with the Pack: Thoughts from the Road on Meaning and Mortality. London: Granta.

Rowlands, M. (2024). The Happiness of Dogs. London: Granta.

Sartre, J.-P. (2003). Being and Nothingness (H. Barnes, Trans.). London: Routledge. (Original work published 1943)

Schlick, M. (1979). Problems of Ethics (D. Rynin, Trans.). New York: Dover Publications. (Original work published 1930)