Hi Liza and others.

I've been working on this shyness stuff for years. I'm 43 years old!
The good news is I can confidently report the social fitness model
does work. And in my case, works the best of any method. The bad
news is there's no end to the improvements one can make.

I must say that now I actually seek out risk in some situations. I
get a kick out of it, unlike in the past. But I must say that
I still find some "normal" situations too high-risk to tolerate,
while other "high-risk" situations seem fine. So I guess
I&#desensitizedme
densitized to some situations more than others. I'm not sure what
makes the hard ones hard.

In any event, my last name appears in the header, too. That makes me
a bit uncomfortable, but I'm going to leave it there and use it as
a desensitization exercise. After 50 posts, I won't care anymore. :-)

--Bob


--- Liza Carroll <liza@...> wrote:
> Wow, hi all. So you are here. Yeah, I was going to say, Rob, that
> if I had posted a letter and then it went dead, I'd obsess about that
> for a WHILE. Fact is, I really related to your post and it's part of
> why I wanted to scare up a response here! So thanks for writing it.
> Dove, the fear thing - I feel exactly that. And I'm quite encouraged
> by the view of social fitness as a strength we can develop. That
> gets me out of feeling overwhelmed by it all. I was so anxious today
> and had no idea why. Could hardly think straight. I'm in a new job
> and it's simply fraught with terrors for me (should I smile at that
> person, blah blah on and on). Part of it also might have had to do
> with the fact that I've decided to do something about this isolating
> life-style and so I know that I'm in for some risks. This is a risk
> for me (when it occurred to me that I'm too insecure to even make
> on-line friends I realized I was too far gone!) This is the first
> group I've tried to join. Sooo Woody Allen, right? Bob, what you
> said about changes being harder for the shy - there's no doubt. And
> on a sort of related topic, I've always rolled my eyes when I hear
> about those extreme risk-taking types who need to jump out of planes
> and whatever to feel alive, when for me, the act of brushing my teeth
> and getting out of the house to join the world can seem like way too
> much risk! But those people are apparently underaroused whereas
> we're set at too high a frequency, idle too high or something. Does
> anyone else have that hypervigilance thing where you jump three feet
> when someone startles you (like, says "hi")? I notice my last name
> appears on this thing, and also my first, not my yahoo profile name.
> I'm going to take that last name off, that's crazy. Thanks, all.
> I'll write more tomorrow. Have a peaceful day tomorrow! Liza
>


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