How do I deal with social anxiety that makes me extremely quiet? Will any man want me?

[Anonymous]

At my old job several guys would gang up and try to make fun of me about anything they could think of and liked making me upset and hurting me and sexually harassing me as well. It went on and on. I am really sheltered since i have been socially anxious for a long time and also avoided people since high school... I am socially unaware and inept generally. I thought some guys who were making fun of me actually liked me. It hurt a lot to deal with the confusion.

At my current job i get treated better so far but there's a loud guy who reminds me of the sociopathic guys at my old job and i suspect it's a matter of time before he starts to toy with my mind as well.

I am childlike for a late 20s woman. I also have a babylike face so i have been told. I am skinny and tall and i know all this makes me look even weaker! Like even easier prey. I am gangly and awkward. I can barely talk or think of things to saym how i got hired for my job selling stuff to people is a bit confusing. I mean i can help customers if i have products i can talk about. But upselling and being a loud bubbly charming person is not me. I know my boss is disappointed. I don't know what he was seeing when he decided to hire me. Maybe he assumed i was more outgoing.

I know you see that I've only talked about work here. That's cause i have no friends and no family connections AT ALL. My parents were abusive and i left them. And i never got close to any extended family due to always being extremely quiet/mute and shy. So nobody cares about me and probably never have.

[SueShe]

I truly feel sorry for how people treat you and take advantage of your weakness. Working in sales and customer support when having social anxieties is probably not the best place to be because you are faced day in and day out with social pressure and the need to perform to achieve a certain quota.

Your best option would be to enlist the professional help of a specialist that can go over your anxieties together with you and build up your confidence. Being quiet is not a negative trait of character in itself.

In order to have friends or to be more at ease with your anxiety, you must be pro-active and find friends. Best is to join a club, take a hobby where you can meet people with similar interests.

If you are good at one specific occupation, then see if you can find a club or place where others meet that share that passion. The rest will just fall automatically into place. Sharing the same interests with a person is always a good start to get to know that person better because you have common grounds. You can be more relaxed and get out of your shell.

But you have to work on yourself first. That would include shyness and social anxiety.

You can train your approach, your attitude and expression in front of a mirror for example. Think of what message you want to bring across and rehearse it until you are satisfied. The next step is the most difficult one and that is the one where you have to put in practice what you learned and rehearsed.

But without you wanting and acting upon it, nothing will ever happen. You have to get out of your comfort zone for it to happen.

Finally, there are plenty of people that also have to fight social anxieties. You are not alone. Good luck.

[Anonymous]

That sounds awful, have you looked into any support groups for other people that might have been in similar situations? I don't know if any exist but it seems like that might be a place to start, to find others who can relate to what your going through, maybe make some friends.

[boobliker]

all the time you are anonymous people find it hard to open to you you need to let people in we all get down but letting other people in to your life will help