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How to overcome social anxiety?

Start with small groups and then move to larger groups

Katherine, a 25-year old lesbian in Minneapolis, is extremely shy and unassertive. That has resulted in problems with her relationships in the past and she now wants to work on improving her self esteem and becoming more confident and secure. She writes, "I have been told about joining a group where you can be working on a project with people. I think that I am going to start volunteering for a GLBT activist group. I am not a political person and that is why I have never become involved in any activist group, but it is for a cause that I believe in. It would be really nice to make friends with some lesbian or gay people. The biggest problem is that it is hard for me to commit to things like this because of my social anxiety. A lot of times I will end up staying home because I get so anxious about going to a group activity. What do you think?"

Photo of a nervous woman. While I am supportive of your decision to join a non-profit group like this, as you said, I am slightly concerned about the social anxiety issues. Joining a politically active group means that they might ask you to take on big responsibilities right away and may expect you to even take on a leadership role. While you may be able to meet like-minded people there, the members of such organizations (because they have to fight discrimination) can often be somewhat more aggressive - not the right environment for you at this time.

I would recommend something that requires more one-to-one or small group interaction. Some ideas that come to mind are helping seniors, or teaching something that you are good at, or helping a small organization with a task that you can do in your free time (for example, several organizations seek help updating their websites once a week or so - you get to work with just one or two people in the organization for a few hours).

So see if you can find something like that so you can make friends too without the stress of becoming very visible right away. At this GLBT organization too, find out if there are such volunteering opportunities rather than being asked to organize a big demonstration.

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