When speaking feels like an exam

Thursday 15th October 2026

A woman smiling and looking to the right, in front of a tree

Olga

Olga Bednarski tells us how the anticipation of stammering left her feeling drained, and how not seeing speaking as something to win or lose helped changed her relationship with it.

I used to experience speaking as if I were sitting an examination. Every conversation had a predetermined outcome, standard, and expectation. Every phone call was a test. Every introduction, question, or social interaction was an opportunity to either succeed or fail.

The strange thing was that the examination and my frantic preparation often started long before I actually opened my mouth.

If I knew I was going to meet someone, answer a question, or speak in a group, my mind would begin to rehearse. I searched for the 'right' words and imagined exactly how I would say them. I dissected every tiny aspect, anticipating where I might get stuck and how I would manoeuvre if I did.

Without realising it, I was essentially priming myself for the very experience I was desperately trying to avoid.

Then my mind produced scenarios. I could see myself running out of breath or getting stuck on a word. I could feel the silence of a block. I imagined people giving me funny looks or turning away in discomfort. I tried to read their minds, judging them while judging myself.

Without realising it, I was essentially priming myself for the very experience I was desperately trying to avoid.

It was a horror film that only a person who stammers could fully comprehend. I was both the protagonist and the person in the audience watching myself 'fail', as I saw it. The exam had begun, and I hadn't even entered the room yet.

Performing, not communicating

Looking back, I can see how much energy went into trying to make speaking go 'right'. Was I fluent enough? Did they notice I was 'different'?

I thought I was simply trying to communicate and avoid being 'found out' as an impostor in a world of perfect speakers. But I wasn't communicating; I was performing. There was an invisible audience in my head, even when nobody was judging me.

The more I tried to control it, the less natural and more stress-provoking it became. Think about driving: if you are a hyper-anxious driver, constantly anticipating everything that could go wrong and micromanaging every movement, you don't become safer. You become tense. The journey becomes exhausting for you and uncomfortable for your passenger. Speaking was exactly like that for me.

There was an invisible audience in my head, even when nobody was judging me.

Underneath it all was one rigid assumption: my speech must be fluent and perfect. I must not lose control. The funny observation I made looking back is that I even tried to hide the fact that I was breathing while trying to speak, simply because I didn't want to give away my agitation or nervousness.

One of the biggest things I wish I had understood earlier is that I was playing a game: How 'well' can I speak? Every interaction gave me a score. Sometimes the score felt good; sometimes it felt devastating. Either way, I was trapped inside my own bizarre performance. I was not fully with the other person — I was watching myself be with them. No wonder social interaction felt so draining, both mentally and physically.

Not having 'to win'

Then something began to change. I started becoming interested not only in how I spoke, but in my relationship with speaking.

What if I did not have 'to win'? What if speaking wasn't an examination or performance? What if I could speak, stammer, pause, lose my words for a moment — and remain completely unfazed by it, simply carrying on with what I wanted to say, knowing I was still completely worthy of being heard?

I gave myself permission to take up space, have an opinion, and speak before I had perfectly prepared what I was going to say. I started to feel more at home in my own world, more at peace, and discovered a true sense of belonging. I reconciled with the fact that I might be 'imperfect' and that it was no reason to feel bad or 'less than'. Once that performance pressure eased, I could breathe. I could listen and hear the other person instead of being consumed by the particulars of my own performance.

I began to see that I had been treating my predictions about what people might think or how they might react as if they were facts.

And what happened with other people? The conversations simply became much more natural and enjoyable. I began to see that I had been treating my predictions about what people might think or how they might react as if they were facts. When I stopped doing that, I discovered that nobody was secretly analysing me or thinking all the negative things I had imagined. I was the one playing that game with myself. I began to feel more at home with people, more welcome, more like I belonged.

Even when I did stammer, I didn't immediately go into alert mode as I used to and tell myself, "That's it. I failed, again," the moment just passed. There was no mental autopsy of the situation, no aftermath. The conversation just continued.

The social anxiety that haunted me for years lessened significantly, and as a result, my social life improved. I now eagerly wanted to meet new people — something I would not easily agree to do before, even if you paid me.

Enjoying speaking

Because I had stopped hyper-controlling, surveying, and creating so much stress and tension, I soon found myself getting carried away by conversations and actually enjoying speaking. I became completely consumed by the conversation itself — just enjoying it, fully present. The speech performance simply stopped being the central piece on the stage of my life — it moved into the background where it always belonged.

If you stammer, you may have spent years trying to 'fix' the moment of speech: the word, the block, the breath, the technique. But what happens if we look one step earlier?

If speaking has become an examination, the struggle isn't only happening during the moment you speak — it begins with the belief that you are being tested. What if you stopped playing that game? Instead of asking, "How perfectly fluent can I be?" or "How can I avoid stammering?", what if you asked: "How FREELY can I speak? How FULLY can I participate? How present can I be? How willing am I to let another person hear me exactly as I am?"

Freedom does not begin with fluent speech. It begins when speaking stops feeling like a test.