Ask HN: How do you cope with or overcame social anxiety and/or shyness?

If you are in SF/Bay Area, I would highly recommend taking a course from Jaunty (http://www.jaunty.org).

I took their Co-Ed Comprehensive course (twice!). They are not cheap, (around $1600 for eight week course when I took it), but for me, there is a clear demarkation in my life pre-, and post-Jaunty.

I read a lot of books (Art of Conversation, Seduction, How to Win Friends and Influence People, etc), but none of them came close to this course.

They target social intelligence with basic conversation skills, humor, body language, etc.

I would also highly recommend taking improv comedy classes. In SF/Bay Area, I recommend Made Up Theater (https://madeuptheatre.com/). I took their classes for over 3-4 months. That really helped me build on conversations (Yes, and...) and not let them die.

Podcasts may not be your thing, but here's a bit of my story on how I did it.

https://completedeveloperpodcast.com/episode-190/

tldl; I used to be painfully shy and now I have a weekly podcast, speak at conferences, and am pretty outgoing. I start out with a discussion of some of the things that made me reluctant to engage with other people socially and then follow up with some strategies I used to get past them.

If you live in England you can self refer to your local IAPT service. They'll triage you and then assign you to either high or low intensity talking therapy. Current wait times are good.

Be aware that social phobia and social anxiety isn't just being anxious in social situations! here's a good guide to treatment for people who have social anxiety at the more severe end: https://www.div12.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Comprehensi...

Aside from the usual go to therapy:

A mistake you may make is reading too many things about the subject. Get a basic CBT workbook about your issue and work with it. Do the exercises. Focus on improving your main weaknesses.

Books by David Burns, who is credited with giving rise to CBT, are good. Specifically, Feeling Good.

Personally, I had pretty bad social anxiety, but worked through it with a therapist and hard work. There aren't any short cuts or magic tricks, it's hard work and it puts you out of your comfort zone.

I'll preface with saying I'm not a doctor, but, I'd avoid mediation unless you have general anxiety and/or depression. There's a lot of evidence that shows that medication and therapy are equally as efficacious for problems like this.

There is a book "Overcoming Social Anxiety and Shyness" by Gillian Butler. I think that will help you.

As far as medications go, Nardil (Phenelzine) is noted as being the best drug, though for numerous reasons it isn't prescribed much anymore.