Great suggestions here and I'll add my own. As a person who also struggled with social anxiety for the better part of my life, I tried a lot of ways to move through it and made strides using methods suggested here, which proved to be quite helpful. Then, somewhere along the way I came to realize something. I started paying attention to what people were talking about in day to day conversations and low and behold, most folks, even those who talked a lot, often said nothing of monumental or life altering importance which was actually very reassuring to one who felt they had nothing of much worth to offer in conversation. Most of the time it was social chatter, what happened today, yesterday, what I'm going to do next week or they talked about their interactions with others and on and on. Heck, I had those very same kinds of thoughts in my head but was afraid to express them and when I became aware that we all had something in common - a need to share and if I opened my mouth I could share right along with them.
Since I wanted to be able to socialize more, listeneing seemed like a boring, negative thing to me but when I put that thought aside and actually began listening to others it became apparent that there were times when people simply needed to be heard and acknowledged. So times I either didn't feel like talking or was out of my sphere when others shared specific topics I knew little of or when I came upon someone who simply needed to share, I became the good listener.
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