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Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers · Communication & Mindset Coach Sarah Mikutel

Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking with Stoic Psychology

·20 min·1 clip
Seneca's 2,000-year-old claim explains why public-speaking fear can exceed the speech itself.
1. Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers presents “Overcome Your Fear of Public Speaking with Stoic Psychology.” 2. Sarah Mikatel, identified as a communication and mindset coach, explains speaking anxiety and offers Stoic practices for expressing thoughts, feelings, and ideas. 3. The episode asks what people actually fear when they say they dislike public speaking, arguing that vague fear becomes more manageable when named. 4. Sarah cites Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural speech, delivered during unemployment, failing businesses, and public panic in the United States. 5. Roosevelt's phrase “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” is connected to bank withdrawals and other fear-based decisions during economic crisis. 6. Sarah compares that panic with people hoarding groceries during the COVID pandemic. 7. Seneca's statement, “We suffer more in imagination than in reality,” becomes the episode's explanation for why anticipated speaking can feel worse than speaking itself. 8. Sarah lists speaking-anxiety symptoms including shaky speech, accelerated talking, fidgeting, sweating, trembling, flushing, self-criticism, and staying quiet. 9. She says unexamined fears can produce a self-fulfilling cycle in which fear of failure causes stumbling, lowers confidence, and reinforces negative expectations. 10. Sarah identifies James McCroskey's four types of communication apprehension as trait-based, context-based, audience-based, and situation-based. 11. Trait-based anxiety involves fear across most speaking situations, including conversations with friends and formal presentations. 12. Context-based anxiety can appear when someone comfortable in one-on-one conversations becomes nervous during group discussions or presentations. 13. Audience-based anxiety depends on who is listening, such as presenting comfortably to a team but panicking before a board of directors. 14. Situation-based anxiety arises during specific circumstances, including a first date or a wedding toast, even when ordinary conversations feel comfortable. 15. Sarah's Stoic model separates an event, the initial impression it creates, evaluation of that impression, assent or rejection, and the resulting impulse to act. 16. In Sarah's example, Michelle challenges the thought that colleagues think she is unintelligent by recalling performance evidence or replacing it with the belief that colleagues want useful presentation information. 17. The episode is a solo educational essay with a coaching-oriented delivery, direct questions, practical examples, and repeated invitations to examine thoughts. 18. Its philosophical style combines Roosevelt, Seneca, Socrates, Epictetus, Stoic virtues such as arete, and pre-meditation of adversity with workplace speaking scenarios. 19. Best for people preparing presentations, meetings, interviews, or wedding toasts. 20. Skip if practical speaking-anxiety exercises and Stoic philosophy feel repetitive.

As heard by us

A calm, practical look at how speaking fear gets examined and loosened over time.

Public speaking fear is treated less like a flaw and more like a habit of judgment that can be examined. Sarah Mikatel walks through Stoic psychology with a steady hand, showing how an impression gets checked against judgment before it becomes impulse or a stronger emotional…

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Why you'd press play

Turn public-speaking panic into something you can actually examine, step by step.

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