Okay, now finally, let’s talk about where and how to push the boundaries of your social anxiety. I see there as being three social domains: family, community, and world.

World is the whole big wide world of strangers. In many ways, this is the easiest domain to push your social anxiety with, because you never have to meet any of these people again. A great hack here is travelling. Go to some other country and stay in the hostels. You are suddenly thrust into a situation where everyone wants to meet everyone including you. Literally all you have to do is show up and say yes when someone asks if you want to go somewhere or do something. This can also work going to festivals or conventions. Go to places where strangers want to meet each other and have fun - play life on easy mode! Go to these sorts of events and places regularly, and you’ll gradually find that it is easier and easier to introduce yourself to strangers and strike up a conversation. Then you can transfer this skill to, say, the grocery store or the park or your neighborhood street.

Next is community. This domain is where your social anxiety is related to your fear of damaging your reputation. For example, at work, in hobbyist clubs, in your neighborhood. Improving your “world” social anxiety can help a lot here, since once you know that you can meet people and strike up a conversation and make new friends, you have a much easier time taking risks in your community - after all, even if you literally burn down every community relationship you have, you know you can just move on to another community and start over, since you have the skill of introducing yourself and making friends, and you now have a lot of practice being authentically yourself around people where the stakes are low. The hack here is to try joining a bunch of different communities, and to try to be your authentic, honest self in each of them. Hobby groups are great for this - join a pickup soccer league, or a DnD group, or a cooking class. Anything where you are regularly interacting with the same group of people, where you can expect to get to know people over time. Your goal here is to overcome your anxiety to the point where you forget about it, and instead are completely engaged in being a good community member by helping the group. For example, if you are part of the pickup soccer group that meets in the park every Tuesday, you might wave to strangers who look at you curiously, and invite them to come play. Or if you are part of a DnD group, you might make pizza for everyone every week so that no one is hungry. By showing up consistently, regularly pushing yourself to be authentic and honest, and showing that you care about what you are doing, you will develop strong relationships with others in the group. As these relationships get stronger, you gain a support network of people who you feel care about you for you, and who you feel you can trust and rely on. This is what I would call your “family”.

So, finally, your family. I don’t necessarily mean blood relatives here, but rather, people with whom you have deep, lasting long term relationships. This is probably the hardest domain for you to tackle your social anxiety, since these are the people who know you best. You fear that if you are your authentic self around these people, that they will reject you, and that this rejection will be made with the full knowledge of who you are as a person. This is terrifying. But being able to speak authentically and honestly with the people closest to you is probably the most important thing you can do to be happy and successful in life. Note the catch 22 - at the beginning of this essay, I noted that one of the most important things you could do is recruit the people closest to you to support you in your struggle to overcome your social anxiety - but if you are terrified of talking to the people closest to you about your anxiety, then you can’t get their support, which you then can’t use it to overcome your anxiety about talking about your anxiety with them! Again, working in the broader community domain here is helpful, since if you have built up close relationships from your community before, you know you can do it again, and so it is easier to be vulnerable with the people who are close to you. In this domain, there is no real hack, other than to just do it. When you are spending time with a close friend or family member who you trust, just vomit out whatever is eating you up. Or fuck it, if that is hard, just send them a text about it. Give up on being perfect, just say whatever is on your mind and get the ball rolling. Then you can figure it out from there.

I should note that in all of these cases, you will be uncomfortable. Putting yourself out there and being vulnerable to others rejection is naturally terrifying. You will be terrified. But if you want to overcome your anxiety and more fully live your life, you need to recognize that growth happens when you face your fears and have the courage to act anyway.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got. Good luck!