Why You Go Blank When You Speak — The Nervous System Truth Nobody Talks About
Have you ever wondered why you go blank when it comes to speaking — even when you've done all the preparation? You rehearsed. You knew your stuff. And then when the moment came, you went completely blank.
In that moment, you probably asked yourself: what is wrong with me?
I'm here to tell you: nothing. And what I'm about to share completely changed the way I understand speaking — and the way I teach it.
A Moment I Still Cringe About
It was during my corporate days. A boardroom meeting. My general manager was in the room. I had done the work around speaking and confidence — it was my moment to speak up, to let my GM know what I'd been working on.
And the moment came. And I went fully blank.
Not a little flustered. Like nothing came out. I felt my heart racing. My throat restricted. I walked out of that meeting absolutely mortified.
I told myself I wasn't confident enough. So I prepared more. I practiced more. I built my public speaking techniques.
And it kept happening. Not every time, but enough to realise there had to be something else.
What's Actually Happening When You Freeze
When you go blank, when you freeze, when your voice shakes or doesn't come out — that moment is not a problem about you. It's not a problem with your preparation. It's not a confidence issue.
It's your nervous system doing exactly what it's been designed to do.
Your brain has a threat detection system — incredibly sophisticated, built over thousands of years — and when fear fires, we either freeze or we flee.
And here's the part that is so important for women leaders to understand: your nervous system cannot tell the difference between a physical threat and a social one.
Standing up in a meeting, sharing your idea, being seen, to your nervous system, this can feel as dangerous as standing in front of a predator. And when that threat signal fires, it shuts down the parts of your brain you actually need: your prefrontal cortex. The part responsible for language, reasoning, and clear thought.
That's when you blank. All the preparation in the world sits in your prefrontal cortex — the part that just got switched off.
This is why public speaking tips and confidence techniques don't work at the root. They sit on the surface. They don't touch what's actually driving the response.
The Four Layers of Fear
Through my work with women leaders, I've found there are four specific fear layers driving this response — and most women are running at least two of them simultaneously.
Fear of Judgment — What will they think of me?
Fear of Getting It Wrong — What if I say the wrong thing?
Fear of Being Too Much — What if I take up too much space, come across too strongly, overwhelm people?
Fear of Not Belonging — What if speaking up costs me my place in the room?
You can't think your way out of a fear layer. You can't prepare your way out of it either. Because it doesn't live in your thoughts — it lives in your body.
The Work That Actually Changes Things
When you clear the layers instead of piling technique on top of technique, something remarkable happens.
You stop performing with confidence. You start actually having it — embodied, felt, real. Your voice stops shaking, not because you controlled it, but because your nervous system finally felt safe. You stop going blank not because you prepared more, but because the threat signal stopped firing in the first place.
I've seen this shift happen for women in boardrooms, on stages, on camera — in the moments that have mattered most in their careers and their lives.
Nothing Is Wrong With You
If you've been doing all the right things and you're still freezing, still shrinking, still going blank in the moments that matter, please hear this:
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And it can be retrained.
The fear layers can be cleared. Your voice. Your real voice, the authentic one, not the performed one, is still in there. And the work isn't about adding more. It's about going deeper.
