Hello sidony,

I see your point, although I never had problems with shyness or blockades in groups. There were times, when I suffered from social phobia - in public, and worse, on the job. It occurred when I felt weaker and more vulnerable than usual, and it was not so much the feeling to be not a person that fits well to other cheerful healthy people or the fear to maybe be a boring or a tiresome person, but more the thought of not being and not performing adequate. To be somehow under group standard.

You describe it as being afraid to talk crap. What kind of reactions do you expect, if you would make an experiment and really talk crap? There would be reactions, of course. But would they be as negative as you assume they "have to be"? I bet no! Because everybody makes mistakes, talks nonsense, misspells, mispronounces,... and talks crap sometimes. No one is safe from that. And everybody understands, if this happens, since it happened often enough to oneself.

Do not judge what you want to say in advance. It could be that you judge yourself much more severely than anyone else would. You cannot know how people evaluate what you do or say without testing it. You do not know, if a group is indifferent or hostile or whatever towards you, until you probe them.

Of course this will need all your courage. But that is the fine thing with blockades: once broken, it's quite easy to slip through *wink*

Without actively taking a feedback, you will never know what is fact and what only your imagination! Watch what in reality happens when you start talking. Observe what you feel when this happens!

Contrary to many other writers here I want to encourage you to go through this. When it feels uncomfortable, take a sharp look at it. Where it hurts, there is a message waiting, or an important lesson - that is what I have learned in therapy. And always when I followed that route I made progress.

I wish you well,
bluna