I have social anxiety problems, I sweat a lot in public. I have also had stammering problems some years ago but I overcame it. I have great fear of giving or being in any type of public performance like speech .I have a habit of observing people and their actions. They irritate the hell out of me and I think they would be better off. I have short temper. I can not converse long with people and also do not even wish to talk to others. These days I'm having depression and feeling miserable and misanthropic. Everyday this trial of my monotonous life scares me at the end of the day. Will my life change? Will I be able to come out of this deep pit? Please give any guidance & help me out.

Dr. Saul PereiraPsychologist46yrs exp

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It seems that you are scared to talk to people. The desire is there but the fear is crippling you. You need to meet with a counselor to deal with this fear and learn how to express the feeling as well as to reach out. Are you afraid that you may not speak well, or that your ideas are not that good, or that people will judge you, or that they will find out about how poor you are intellectually, etc. These are unnecessary dialogues you have and they are not true at all. When people are in conversation, we are listening to information and how you present the same. You are very harsh on yourself and have decided, for some reason, that you are not good enough. You may have been reprimanded in childhood for speaking or your parents may have been too strict at home. These could intimidate you when you are to speak in front of people. All these matters must be taken up with the counselor. Start talking to people at home first, particularly children, and slowly grade up to older teens and then to adults, as you build confidence. If you prepare and rehearse the conversation you are likely to have, you will do very well when you actually do it. Now there is no guarantee that whatever you prepared is going to be the exact conversation but since you are prepared most of the conversation will go according to script and the rest will be easy to handle because they will be minor deviations from the main course. You could attend the Toastmasters Club, and go for conversational skills courses too. Good social practice will eventually see you through. Nothing will happen, if you are passive about this. For your information public speaking is the number one fear of all mankind. Yet, people speak and appear so confident: it is because they use the fear to advantage and prepare themselves well. So you are not alone. When you get angry, you may be escalating over the fear. This will not help you because you will not be dealing with the fear in the bargain and the fear that is now trapped in you will trouble no end.  

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