Social anxiety is stopping me getting out

[paul63209]

I am a 23 year old man.

Basically I am quite shy and quiet and reserved. I prefer 1 to 1 conversations rather than large group conversations.

I am a member of a walking group and that is good because you can just choose a person to talk whilst you are walking along and it's easy.

However they have social events like meals at a restaurant. I want to go but I am too afraid of being shy and looking stupid and awkward because that's what usually happens.

The reason is when you are sat around a table everybody talks as a group and I don't know what to say or when the right time to say something is.

I want to go to these things but I am just too afraid.

How can I overcome this?

Thank you

Paul,

From my own experience in similar situations, most of the time you find you are sitting at long tables and only have a person each side of you to talk with. So what looks like a large crowd is actually a cosy gathing of four /five around a small part of the table.

People talk with each other before in small groups of two or three before sitting down. As to conversation, talk about the walk...

I find that my idea of what's going to happen is always worse than the actual event. i just need to be brave enough to get myself there in the first place. Is there someone in the walking group that you could arrange to meet first for a quick drink? I find this helps me because i get 'warmed up' socially with one person. I also find it more difficult to back out of meeting one person than a group so although it's easy for me to sit at home and say oh no one will miss me at the group dinner, if i've arranged to meet x first then I can't not go.