Getting public speaking anxiety even though I was fine with public speaking before?

I don’t know if this is the right place to write this down but here goes nothing.

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A little bit of context: growing up I struggled with severe social anxiety up until lockdown, when I had then started working on my body, my looks, my speech clarity, and more such ‘confidence boosters’. After lockdown I came back to school as a whole new person; the nerdy whimpy socially awkward kid came back with confidence and charisma, at least that’s what was being displayed.

I still had social anxiety leftovers from my childhood that I repressed by this whole new ‘persona’ of mine. I guess it was my way of “faking it til I make it”.

I wanted to completely get over my social anxiety therefore I purposefully put myself outside my comfort zone and decided to face a big fear of mine which was public speaking. Although I knew I was bound to be anxious but some part of me was excited to be finally facing my fears and actually having the courage to give a speech in front of an audience.

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Our English-Language assignment was to give a speech on one of a few given topics. My class had about 25 students, and say 15 students actually gave a speech and the rest chickened out. I was the last one to give a speech, and according to my classmates and my teacher, it was “outstanding”. Even I thought I did a great job, way to boost my confidence.

Fast forward a semester, where the the students with the best speeches had to give a speech in front of the entire school for some sort of ‘speech competition’, I was nominated to give a speech. Again, I took this as an opportunity to step out of my comfort zone and toughen myself up. I gave a speech in front of the entire school, and again, I was deemed outstanding by many, and even ended up winning the competition.

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Fast forward to senior year. The high ego and confidence boost I had from junior year was slowly running out, but I didn’t think much of it. It’s speech assignment time again, and based on last year’s performance, I think to myself this is baby-work. I even challenged myself even further this time by having myself fully improvise the speech on the spot without any preparation/rehearsal beforehand. It’s my turn to give the speech, and it’s going great so far for about 2 minutes in, but the bell rings halfway through my speech, and thus my turn to give the speech got postponed to next class the next week.

Here comes the next week, and it’s time to give my speech again – keep in mind people are having really high expectations of me and my ego is telling me that I’ll easily ace this – but something goes horribly wrong, I start shaking, my train of thought goes off the rails, my throat goes dry, my heart beats as fast as it could, and I want out; I don’t want to do this anymore. I fucked up my speech terribly and I’ve embarrassed myself in front of everyone who was having such high expectations from me.

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Ever since, my social anxiety started coming back again. I can’t publicly speak to save my life now. I still seem confident in regular interactions with people but the idea of having to speak publicly again sends chills down my spine. There have been a few occasions where I had to do subtle ‘public speaking’ i.e. introducing myself to my class, having to give an answer from all the way to the back of the class, and more such cases.

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Now I’m in college first year, I am yet to give many presentations in front of hundreds of people, and just the thought makes my heart subtly race. I don’t know what went wrong. I went from being known to give the most outstanding speeches to the wuss that I am today. I’m afraid of public speaking. I’m afraid I’ll fuck up again. And it’s not even a matter of practice. My body literally doesn’t allow me to speak publicly. My legs shake uncontrollably. My throat goes dry to a point where I literally can’t speak. My breathing is all over the place. My heart beats rapidly. I start sweating. My body and mind both sabotage me into breaking down in front of audience.

I don’t know what to do to fix this. For a while I’d completely gotten over my social anxiety and my fear of being the center of attention but now it’s back and worse than ever.

Any help on how I may fix this would be highly appreciated.

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TLDR: I had severe social anxiety as a child. I tried to overcome it by facing my fears and giving public speeches. My first 3 public speeches went great, and on my 4th speech I fucked up severely and my social anxiety had come back even worse ever since.