This story is part of How to Get Better at Public Speaking, the Forge guide to talking in front of a crowd.

Let’s get one thing straight right away: Almost no one actually enjoys speaking to a crowd.

Sure, some people make it look effortless, sauntering around a stage with a microphone, talking as easily as if they were in their own living room. But those people are just better at faking it, says Scott Berkun, the author of Confessions of a Public Speaker. “If you had a heart rate monitor on them, they’d have the same physiological response as someone who’s too afraid to speak to a room of 10 people,” he says.

Among the great orators of history “there are almost no examples of anyone who wasn’t afraid,” Berkun adds. Even Thomas Jefferson had someone else deliver his State of the Union address.

That’s because glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, is baked right into the experience of being human, starting with our earliest ancestors. Thousands upon thousands of years ago, if you were standing alone, exposed, with several sets of strange eyes staring at you, it was probably because you’d just waded waist-deep into danger. Your amygdala — the part of the brain that regulates fear — would kick into fight-or-flight mode, flooding your body with adrenaline.

That response is still ingrained deep in our psyches, even though having all eyes on you no longer presents the threat it once did. “Just because now I’m in a conference room, wearing a tie, the amygdala doesn’t care,” Berkun says. Rationally, you know that the crowd you’re presenting to won’t turn into a violent mob. But try telling that to your racing heart and sweaty palms.

Still, while you can’t change what your mind has evolved to fear, it is possible to control that fear response a little bit better. There’s not much scientific evidence to support cracking a cheesy joke to break the ice (please don’t do that), but there are a few tried-and-true strategies you can use to keep your stage fright from getting the best of you.

Recognize the tricks your mind is playing

Public speaking is scary enough in the abstract. But when you’re actually up there in front of an audience, reality distorts to make it that much worse, says Graham D. Bodie, a professor of communication at the University of Mississippi.

Part of that distortion, he explains, is a result of something called the “spotlight effect,” our tendency to assume that other people are watching us much more closely than they actually are. You might be utterly convinced that everyone heard the slight tremble in your voice at that last sentence, or that they’re monitoring the progression of your anxiety sweat stains as they spread slowly across your pits. But really, no one’s judging nearly that much. They don’t care. They’re listening, but they’re also thinking about what to pick up for dinner or the emails they have to send when they get back to their desk.

Giving a talk on something you care about — which, considering you prepared a whole speech on it, is a reasonable assumption — can amplify any fear of rejection you may already been feeling. “That topic becomes attached to your ego, your sense of self,” Bodie says. “It’s nerve-wracking to be in front of a group where you don’t know how they’ll react, and being rejected would deliver a very personal blow.”

That fear can also create a self-perpetuating cycle. For people with agoraphobia — literally, the fear of being so afraid that you begin to panic — it’s not even the speech itself that’s terror-inducing. Rather, says Pearl Hu, an assistant professor at the Boston University Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, it’s the fear of your response.

“People are afraid they’re going to have a panic attack,” she says.“Sometimes we feel uneasy and we don’t know what we’re afraid of. We start to think about the worst-case scenario,” — and, in doing so, unwittingly usher it in.

All of which is to say that the fear of public speaking isn’t just one fear. It’s a multi-headed beast. The first step to defeating it is to narrow down the specific root of your fear; once that’s done, you can move on to treating it.

Channel the adrenaline

Berkun, who makes his living as both a speaker and a speaking coach, says that the panicky energy you feel right before a speech isn’t something that needs to be quashed; instead, you harness it into something that works in your favor.

In terms of physiological response, “the difference between fear and arousal is almost nothing,” Berkun says. “As you prep backstage, your heart rate and blood pressure start to go up. When I get that, I have to frame it as, ‘Okay, I’m glad I have this energy.’ It’s about balancing that physiological response and putting it into a healthy mindset.”

Experts call this technique “reappraisal,” and research suggests that it really does work. In one study, for example, standardized test takers performed better if they were told to think of their jacked-up emotional state as an asset, not a hindrance. Another found that people can successfully convince themselves that what they’re feeling is excitement, not anxiety, simply by saying it: “I’m excited.”

If you lean into it, your adrenaline can propel your performance in positive ways. When your energy is up, it’s easier to engage and entertain your audience. If the venue is conducive to movement, walk around a bit while you talk, which can burn off some of the extra energy and help you develop a rhythm. When you feel the blood thudding in your ears, tell yourself it’s your body’s way of getting you psyched up to succeed, and you might start to act as though you believe it.

Develop a mental muscle memory

“Practice makes comfortable,” says Bodie. Okay, that’s not exactly how the adage goes, but you shouldn’t be aiming for perfect. Perfect will only stress you out further.

The goal is to get to a place where, even if you stumble over your words or use the wrong term, you’re at ease enough to keep on going. And the more familiar you are with your material, the more confident you’ll be going in, which can help you both handle the anxiety and temper any fear of damage to your ego.

In a 2010 review paper published in Communication Education, Bodie identified three primary methods of treatment for public-speaking anxiety: systematic desensitization or exposure therapy, cognitive modification, and, simply, skills training — the idea that the better you are, the more confident you’ll be.

The two former options — exposure therapy and cognitive modification — can go hand in hand. It’s incredibly helpful to find a relatively low-stakes environment where you can practice repeatedly, and an audience who will help convince you that some of your fears are unfounded.

“We always catastrophize things and expect the worst,” Bodie says. So prove to yourself that the worst will not happen: Stand over the couch and deliver your speech to your (willing) roommate. Find an empty conference room and rehearse in front of your best work friend. Video chat your mom. You don’t even need to ask for feedback if you think it’d make you more nervous — just talk, and when you’re finished, listen when they point out that you did not freeze, did not blank, did not start speaking gibberish.

The best thing you can do to help yourself is to become so familiar with your material that you barely need to think about it, a skill that develops through repetition. Bodie suggests finding a public speaking course at a local university, or joining a group like Toastmasters International, a nonprofit whose clubs offer members the chance to workshop speeches. (Toastmasters has been around forever, but there’s a reason for that: It really works.)

If that sounds too daunting, start smaller: Tell a long story. Give a toast.

At Boston University, Hu works with patients over the course of 12 to 20 weeks, helping them with cognitive restructuring and occasionally gathering a group to act as an audience. Over the course of her program, the average patient will move from speaking for a few seconds to comfortably delivering a longer address.

This gradual progression is the foundation of exposure-based treatment, which is a common method for treating phobias of all kinds.

Use crutches with caution

If you don’t have 12 to 20 weeks to complete a full-blown regimen of exposure therapy, there are certainly other ways to deal with your fears, though Berkun cautions against some of the more obvious ones, like knocking back a shot of “liquid courage.”

“If you’re convincing yourself you need a drink first,” he says, “you’re just telling yourself that you aren’t confident in your material and your ideas.”

An alternative — but still fraught — chemical solution is low-dose beta blockers: medications, typically prescribed to people with high blood pressure, that block the blood-pressure-boosting effects of adrenaline.

In recent years, a handful of startups have begun marketing beta blockers specifically as a treatment for performance anxiety, offering prescriptions written after a telemedicine consult. One such startup, Kick, pitches the medication as a tool to be used in conjunction with more typical treatments like therapy. “To be clear, beta-blockers won’t eliminate the fear of public speaking,” the Kick website reads. “They control physical symptoms, keeping your body calm even when your mind is racing. Still, preventing the physical symptoms of anxiety is certainly helpful. Many people report feeling calmer and more centered on beta-blockers.”

Some research does back this up: A 2015 survey analyzed by the Center for Performance Science at the Royal College of Music found that 72% of musicians have tried beta blockers to treat performance anxiety, and of that group, 37% found them “very effective.”

But as Bloomberg recently noted in a story about Kick and its ilk, marketing beta blockers for off-label use is a “legal gray area.” And though they’ve been prescribed off-label to people with general anxiety for decades, a 2016 review concluded there was no real evidence to support that use.

Ultimately, “it’s a crutch,” Berkun says. “The goal should be to use them less and less.”

Yes, that means slides, too

“PowerPoint is like a security blanket for people,” Berkun says. Having a slide deck to click through might reduce anxiety in the moment, but it’s not a sustainable aid in the long run — when you pack your slides with information, that’s where both you and your audience will direct focus. “Those are just props,” Berkun says, “and the quality of your ideas is way more important.”

To that end, changing the way you use visuals can make you a much more polished speaker. “Rather than making the slides first, then putting together the presentation, start thinking about the visuals after you have a structure you’re comfortable with.” he says. Stick to a sentence or a picture per slide, no more, to keep your audience engaged with what you’re saying — which, if we’re going full circle, keeps you feeling confident.

Think of the bigger picture

Depending on what you do for a living — and assuming no one ever asks you to deliver a wedding toast or eulogy — it’s possible you could skirt a fear of public speaking by simply avoiding it forever.

But that would be a mistake, Berkun says, because it would mean missing out on one of the best parts of being a person: storytelling. Stage fright might be an evolutionary package deal with our existence, but so is the ability to connect through stories.

“Even in the most businesslike setting, [public speaking] has a narrative structure, and storytelling is a fundamental element of what people do with each other,” he says. Learning how to speak publicly means learning how to make things engaging and compelling. “That’s the center of every community, how we tell stories to each other.”

But try to ignore the story your brain is telling you in that very moment: Your mind may be saying you should be scared, but you don’t have to believe it.