The Joan of Arc theory: your fear of public speaking comes from how a past life ended badly

On page 126 of his book The Instruction, the psychic Ainslie MacLeod claimed that:

“For almost every person who suffers from stage fright, a fear of public speaking, or who goes to pieces when forced to sit an exam, the root cause is a life in which judgment has led to death.”

In an interview he explained it in more detail:

“.... If you get a kind of panic, that really kind of strong, phobic reaction, it’s pretty much guaranteed to come from a past life. The most common one that I come across as a phobic fear is what they call a ‘phobia of judgment’ and that is the one that results in a fear of public speaking, which is apparently the biggest fear in America. And because it is a past-life fear, you get that huge overreaction. What’s happening is that the soul is being taken back to a time when you were judged and that judgment lead to your death.”

I don’t think much of this theory, and have blogged about how this fear mostly seems to show up around adolescence in this life. What do you think?