People who have never had these social difficulties to the extreme will never get it. It's hard for us to tell ourselves what to do. This isn't the "cute" shyness people get from time to time, it's unrelenting and quite paralyzing unless you try to fix it. I remember being in high school and not even wanting to go down to the gas station to buy a pack of gum, that's how bad it is. I wanted to kill myself when I was 17 because of it.

I can't offer you much advice, because I suffer from the same thing, but I find forcing it in mild doses helps. For instance, if there's a happy hour after work, I go and manage to stay for at least 2 hours even if I'm not having a good time. Some people see through me and others think I'm not shy at all. I guess I could win some Oscars. Go figure. I also recently got a performance review at work saying I was "a lot of fun". I thought WTF?? I am in the wrong business. LOL.

One thing I need to ask, and I don't mean for this to sound unkind - are you generally nice to other people or are you totally moody/glum (you have good reason to be with this awful anxiety, you know what I mean) and present yourself that way? I try the "fake it 'till you make it" approach. I will tell you a little story. 3 weeks ago a new person started in my group at work, and my boss said it was "my turn" to take this person out to lunch on their first day (it's company policy, part of their orientation). I was dreading it for obvious reasons, I did not want to do it. But I didn't have a choice. So here I go, I pick her up down at reception, I take her to this place across the street, and we ended up having a good time. It was easy to talk to her because I assumed ahead of time that we had the same career background/interests, which we did. And now she e-mails me every day asking me for help with various things (settling into the job) and wants to know how my weekend was, etc. She's nice to work with. See what I mean? If I had totally revealed how crap I was feeling, I would never have made this connection with this person. I know people say that it's not good to hide how you're feeling, but when you're dealing with an odd psychological disorder such as this one, faking a smile can open a door to new relationships/encounters that you never saw coming, and you never knew just how good some of those experiences could turn out to be because you were holding yourself back.