A client of mine — sharp, capable, good at his job — told me something that stops a lot of people in their tracks when they hear it out loud: “I could go and talk to the Prime Minister and it wouldn’t bother me. But put me in a room of people I’m supposed to just chat with, and I want to leave.”
If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone, and you’re not broken. It’s one of the more common things I sit with in this work, and it rarely makes sense to the person feeling it — which is exactly what makes it so frustrating. How can you run meetings, close deals, manage people, handle real pressure without blinking, and still feel your stomach drop at the thought of small talk at a family gathering?
The drive there is often worse than the event
The pattern usually shows up before anything’s even happened. Someone mentions an event — a birthday, a wedding, a catch-up with people they haven’t seen in a while — and it goes straight onto the calendar as a low hum of dread. As the day gets closer, the rehearsing starts: what will I say, what if there’s nothing to say, what if it goes quiet and everyone notices. By the time they’re actually driving there, they’ve already lived through the awkward version a dozen times in their head.
And here’s the part that trips people up: it’s not really about the event. It’s rarely about whether they’re actually likeable, or interesting, or able to hold a conversation — because in every other part of life, clearly they can. It’s a much older alarm going off, and it’s usually got nothing to do with the person standing in front of them today.
There’s a younger version of you still driving
When we slow this down together, it almost always traces back to somewhere much earlier — a moment, often small and half-forgotten, where being seen in a social moment went badly. Getting laughed at. Being put on the spot and not knowing what to say. Feeling exposed in front of a group at exactly the age where that kind of thing lands hard and stays.
That moment doesn’t just fade once you grow up and get good at your career. A part of you filed it away as dangerous, and it still runs the same old alarm any time the ingredients look similar: a group, an expectation to perform socially, a silence that might get noticed. It’s not that the adult in the room forgot how to have a conversation. It’s that, for a moment, a much younger version of them is the one holding the wheel.
I say this to clients often: it’s the boy in the driver’s seat, not the 39-year-old. And once you can see it that way, it stops being a character flaw and starts being something you can actually work with.
What actually helps isn’t “just relax”
Telling that part of you to calm down doesn’t work — it never has. What works is noticing it, naming it, and speaking to it the way you’d speak to an actual kid who was scared: not dismissively, but with a hand on the shoulder. Something as simple as I’m here, we’re okay, we’re going to do this together changes the entire physiology of the moment, because that younger part isn’t looking for a pep talk — it’s looking for reassurance that it’s not alone and that the adult is actually in charge.
Alongside that, there are a few physical things worth knowing. Anxiety tightens the chest, which tells your heart something’s wrong, which raises the alarm further — so slow, deliberate breathing isn’t just a nice idea, it’s a direct signal to your nervous system that you’re not, in fact, in danger. And a simple question — am I actually safe right now? — can be enough to nudge the thinking part of your brain back online, because in almost every one of these situations, the honest answer is yes.
None of this makes the discomfort disappear overnight. But it does mean you stop being ambushed by it, and you start being able to meet it — as the adult, with the younger part alongside you rather than in front of you.
If this is you
If you recognise yourself in this — capable everywhere except the rooms that shouldn’t be hard — it’s worth knowing this isn’t a personality trait you’re stuck with. It’s a pattern with a clear origin, and origins can be worked with. If you’d like some support figuring out where yours comes from and how to settle it, individual therapy is a good place to start that.