Sailing classes capsize on purpose so the real thing isn’t your first time. Practice the scary thing in safe water.

Rehearsal turns panic into procedure. The first time anything goes wrong you lose a chunk of yourself to pure novelty, and novelty is the part you can actually remove in advance. Tipping the boat on purpose, with a coach watching and warm clothes on shore, means the real version arrives as something your hands have already done once.

Find the safe-water version of whatever you are dreading. Say the hard sentence out loud in the car, give the talk to an empty room, run the drill at half speed. Do it badly on purpose a few times.