How can I get over my social anxiety?

When I am with someone, I can never think of anything to say. I sometimes worry that they are judging me or something. And for some reason, when my brother is with me and someone, I can strike up a conversation with ease. I have no idea why that is. Lately, my social anxiety has been worse. How do I overcome my social anxiety? How can I gain more self confidence?

The only way to get over it is to do it. That is be social. The more you do the more confident you can become, even if you start by pretending, after awhile you will start to build more confidence. The best way to get confidence is the pretend you have confidence. Fake it until you make it is the advice. Look, I know how you feel, as a teenager, I couldn’t even talk on the phone without fear that I would say the wrong thing and people would think terrible things. I couldn’t walk into a strange place by myself either. I just kept ending up in situations with my job that required me to go get answers, to go places, to talk to people and well, honestly, that helped. I needed to get answers and results and that was my motivation.

So, my advice to you is when you start to feel self-conscious, turn that part of your brain off and start to pretend you are somebody who has confidence. What might help is something actors do - they identify a character and character traits that they would like to have and they pretend to be that character. So, look for someone you can emulate - a character on tv or in film, someone who has the characteristics you would like, and then pretend to be them. Mine was from the old tv show "Soap" and it was the character Benson - he was cool, confident, and told everybody off. He was my hero, and though I didn’t get the telling off right, I got the confidence enough to stand behind the behavior and got more confident. You need to know that everybody is afraid of something, and especially being around other people - everyone is nervous to some extent. The difference is that they found a way to pretend that they weren’t nervous and they started role-playing and that’s how the make it through.

Technorati Tags: Actors, Advice, Benson, Brain, Brother, Character Traits, Extent, fear, hero, Job, motivation, Old Tv, Reason, Self Confidence, Soap, Social Anxiety, Strange Place, Teenager, Terrible Things, Tv Show