Dov, sorry, I didn't see the message you left for some reason or I
would have responded. I think it's kind of funny that this is a
pretty quiet message board compared to others, and the topic...you
know. I totally can relate to having a WAY harder time in social
than in work situations, although at work, I'm generally comfortable
with clients, of whatever the job is I have at the time, and not so
much with coworkers and certainly not with bosses. In fact, bosses
freak me out more than anyone. I read an interesting tidbit in
Newsweek the other day, in the issue on Mind-Body healing stuff, that
mentioned someone was able to use self-hypnosis to keep an image of
herself on one side of her brain, and an image of her boss on the
other side, viewing her as a productive, good worker and this helped
her not have that compulsively negative idea of her boss seeing her
as a bad worker. I just dread parties/unstructured social stuff.
For instance, I was thinking about going to a lecture at a place I
know, but when I read "Reception to Follow" at the end, I got totally
afraid - picturing hanging around a coffee pot with a bunch of people
I don't know. Today at work, I was aware of overhearing
conversations and being irritated at other people's social ease. But
I was pretty anxious today - I think it's worse if I've eaten a lot
of sugar the day before. I'm going to try to get into a semi-
meditative state and picture positive social interactions to see if
that helps. Keep up the good fight!