Thank you for your excellent posting. You are most insightful and express yourself so well. My instant identification with your described symptoms and, thus, my attraction to someone like me is obvious considering that this is my 3rd effort at a reply, my previously lengthy and "eloquent" [gag] responses having gotten me booted twice now. Better shorten it down, I guess. Your success with work is a good opportunity for forced social interaction, as is making pleasant comments to fellow sufferers in the grocery check out line. Maybe you could expand on this.

Unless there has been a misunderstanding [can you become comfortable with asking your therapist for clarification?], your therapist seems to be saying,"Kindly keep paying me, but just accept the symptoms that brought you here." You know better. You have been better and you can return there. Is it possible that she was trying to say "accept yourself" [not your symptoms] The following are just ideas. You have received many excellent responses from those more knowledgeable than me. As light as my response might be, I feel desperately for your pain, which is so like my own.

Is a med change needed?

As you are walking about "paste on" a smile, just enough to look pleasant, but not so much that you appear to be listening to voices. Look at people occasionally. Typically they will smile back

The body dysmorphic symptoms you mention probably mean that you are very much more attracive to others than you are to yourself. Just to keep your anxiety in this area at minimum, however, try to be at essentially your best in terms of cleanliness and grooming when you go out. It's easy not to care when you're depressed.

Forgetting about what others might be thinking for a sec, pretend to be invisible, and take a good hard look at others. How many are really having a good time? The answer is not many, unless they are drunk or drenched in endorphins from dancing the night away. The humongous response to your posting shows you how many of us are helping you prop up that wall, albeit in other locations. That's why forums such as this excellent one, and chat rooms in general, are so popular. Social anxiety is a form of internal torture, and it is on the rise. This forum seems to be a forerunner as a safe place. Please keep posting. You already have friends here. If you persevere with making friends here, those friendships grow easily. It is an important solution for the socially shy.

Forgetting about what others are thinking for just one more sec, try to imagine why types of problems those around you have at home. If they are one of those "idealized" folk, with spouse and kids, they have PROBLEMS at home." I promise you.

"Having a boyfriend" was important to me for a long time, too, but you have managed to avoid the pitfalls i fell into in addressing my social anxiety - drugs, alcohol and "settling" for bottom-of-barrell types. CON-GRAT-U-LA-TIONS!!

Make it a point to add a sentence or two to the forced interaction you have on the job. Concentrate on the problems others might be having rather than what they might be thinking. [I'm not SAYING I can DO any of these things]. And keep on posting. Chances are excellent that you will get to know many people here; that you will keep up contacts with some of those; that you will get an occasional phone #; that you will make many friends and learn to talk again. You have a friend here. billieJ