(((Trembling Voice))),

Well, starting here is a good idea. But what you have to keep in mind, it that this often begins in our childhoods and as time goes on and we continue to have difficulty, we begin to keep convincing ourselves that we have poor skills in communicating with others.

The reason why I suggested being around children is that children, especially young children are very forgiving and simply just enjoy attention. I was very shy myself, but when I got old enough, around 10 and 11 years old I started to baby sit. It was not long before I discovered that the children I babysat for would be amused by all the things I loved to do myself. I had just started to play the guitar and I wasn't real good at it, but the children didn't care, they just loved to watch me strum the guitar and sing. And I used to make up little songs, and the children loved to do that too.

Reading aloud?, well for small children their books are short and simple and they can leave lots of room for adding emotions as well. I can actually relate to your discomfort in reading aloud, I had that myself in school and when I got chosen to read aloud, I used to stumble over my words because of nerves or fearing I would make a mistake. Also for me that was hard because my father bearly let me finish a sentence without correcting me, and while he thought he was increasing my skllls, he actually disturbed my ability to speak fluidly. So, just my ability to speak to others made me feel like any second that other person was going to correct or interrupt me, I was hesitant because my brain had learned I was going to be interrupted so I developed a kind of struggle to get a word in my brain to form into speach.

So Trembling Voice, when you do this self talk and share with others, always remember that what you tell others about you, you also tell yourself. So, it is important to include a small word that opens up to "improvement" and that word is "yet". I don't always remember to do this, but I make sure that when I share, I remind myself later, "OE, yes so far you are stuck in this one area, but that is not forever, you just haven't gotten past this "yet"".

Reading aloud has been very difficult for me so far, while I have tried it on different occasions, even to myself, I have not felt at ease with it "yet". Is what you should say and "think" in your mind.

So, if you find it difficult to read aloud, what you CAN do is find simple children's books and begin with that. Read these simple books out loud and to yourself first.
You can go to the local library and you can take out some simple books. Every night before you go to bed, read a book or two out loud to yourself. Believe it or not, that is also very comforting. As you "gain" in that comfort level, you can pick books that have even more substance to them, for example an age group higher.

Now, I did this activity with "live children" as my audience. I got to feel very comfortable because the young children didn't know how to interupt me like my father did. I still had trouble reading in the classroom out loud at school around my peirs, but somehow in my brain I thought of that challenge as something I had not achieved comfort with "yet".

Everything we do is a skill we somehow learn. When we are not good at something, even writing words here at PC?, well that is just another "yet" and as we practice, we find we "can" make progress.

The brain is a pretty amazing thing, so it is always important to consider that whatever we cannot do, is just something we cannot do "yet".

Just some food for thought,

Open Eyes