Anxiety and Speech

Severe anxiety leads to either speaking too much or too little. If this is the case, what is the mechanism of action of this correlation? and based on this, how did it come about? Like everything else, severe anxiety is probably based on moving from dependency to indepency around the ages of upper adolescence, when one leaves home to face the world on his/her own merits. Of course there are genetic and circumstancial factors (such as looks, finances, personality, family, and intelligence) that affect self-esteem, and through it the individual’s odds at achieving independence. In this country, an early sign of future independence is quality and number of friends that develop through High School. Everyone fears a sense of lacking in themselves, but this is countered by the perceived quality of our social group, which relates to our level of self-esteem.

Lacking self-esteem is anger-provoking. The most efficient modes of countering this anger is our standing in our social group, and our social group’s standing in the increasing societal groupings around that. Therefore, the first methods of dealing with that excessive fear of inadequacy is to dominate the talking time around conversations (especially with new people), or being extremely quiet and giving nothing of ourselves for fear of looking inadequate. The anxious person can, like the old adage: “Stay silent and look stupid or open their mouth and clear all doubt”. Current theory has gone to and is called “attachment theory”. There are, I think, four levels of attachment; from healty to unhealthy (Secure, Anxious-Ambivalent, Anxious-Avoidant, and Disorganized). I have to confess, this theory was not the dominant theory when I trained, so I suggest you look up some of the experts. The only one I have read in any depth is Philip Flores, PhD. And his book deals mostly with attachment theory and addiction, but I can recommend it highly.