In high school, one of the requirements for graduation was a speech class. I had to take it THREE YEARS in a row! My anxiety about speaking was that bad....I went through the class and at the end you had to perform a speech, a certain number of minutes long. I refused. Finally, the third year, I had a different teacher. A teacher who seemed to understand. She let me perform my speech in front of a camera. I finally passed speech class. Congrats to you for doing that!!! A couple years ago I went thru AA with a friend of mine. I don't drink, but went every Tuesday to her AA meetings (family night, she went four nights a week). When she"graduated," I wrote a speech, letting her know how proud I was. I managed to stand up and give it, she was shocked. The true gift wasn't in writing the speech, she knew it was in giving it in front of a room full of people. I was pretty proud of myself...