Here's how you get over it: exposure to the thing you fear. Theater, acting and improv are all awesome ways to get exposure to social pressure in a positive en

Here's how you get over it: exposure to the thing you fear. Theater, acting and improv are all awesome ways to get exposure to social pressure in a positive environment! I'd also recommend dance classes, particularly partner dances like salsa and tango. Learning to talk to women helped me. I'm still not perfect but I used to have intense social anxiety in my late teens and early twenties. At age 26, a lot of people would describe me as confident and outgoing (it does take a lot of energy). Exposure does two great things: - Teaches you that rejection does not kill you. If ask a girl out or ask someone to invest in your company the right way, even if they say no they'll respect you more. If you ask the wrong way and it goes horribly, life goes on and you'll feel more self-respect for having tried. :) - Gives you positive reference experiences. It takes time to get them, but they are truly the fruit of laboring at improving an anxiety. I still get nervous before first dates and I've gone on a lot of them. Recalling all the good ones I've had doesn't make the nerves go away, but it makes them wayy less intense. Same deal with ambitious engineering projects. I'm still nervous before them, but I've succeeded in spite of nerves before so I can definitely do it again. Putting exposure into a wider context, there are a lot of therapeutic approaches to treating anxiety—all the successful ones have substantial exposure components. I went through CBT for anxiety but the cognitive component is mostly there to help you productively process experiences when doing the behavioral component, exposure. Another interesting modality is systematic desensitization [1]. I'm a huge nerd so I got a kick out of making exercises for myself (eg. go tell 5 girls that they look really cute today) that took me through a systematic desensitization process. A random sidenote, once I got past my own insecurities I was able to pay more attention to whoever I was talking to. You start to notice their insecurities! Everyone's got em! Very attractive girls will be self conscious about their braces. Speaking specifically to professional networking, everyone is trying to impress each other but you don't have to let it affect you. I talked to a cousin of mine this christmas that has had extreme success. He sold a business for more than $40M in his twenties. I just chewed the fat with him and listened and he was trying to impress me, a definite tell for insecurity! My business doesn't make anywhere near that much. I can feed myself lol. Getting out of your own head and over your insecurities is difficult but totally worth it. Keep at it! [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization