I agree with Anne about “feel the fear and do it anyway.” I never found therapy to be any help with this— in fact, therapy made it much worse. Just recently, I was struggling a bit with anxiety related to teaching. I have simply never felt very confident with public speaking or being the center of attention. It has never come easily to me. All therapy did was make me obsess about it and over-analyze it. I also tried medicating it. Finally, about a month ago, I just decided “**** it.” I decided to just do it and not worry about it. Just decide I’m going to go in there with bravado and own it. Even if I didn’t feel cofident, I would simply act like I was and let it roll off my back. I don’t exactly know why or how, but it’s like my anxiety and fear were instantly gone. Feeling so relaxed about it has increased my self-confidence and prompted me to take bigger risks in other areas too. I’ve been going out more, meeting new people, walking into events alone and chatting up strangers, etc. I think deciding that I don’t care what people think really helped. Just be myself, act confident, take a risk— and then I start really feeling that way. Everyone talks about how it is this long process, but for me, it really was like a switch flipped overnight.