What do I do about my social anxiety?
I have social anxiety I didn't really notice it until high school because I was never out of my comfort zone in primary school but my anxiety started getting bad when I was in year 11 probably due to exam stress etc. Anyway I got upset one lesson as I was really nervous about an upcoming trip and my teacher asked me what was wrong but my social anxiety always stops me from being able to talk so I just stayed silent she eventually found out that I was scared for the trip talked to me and I left I was kind of annoyed that I didn't tell her about my anxiety but I felt I trusted her so I started to write notes to her when I get anxious and I sometimes speak to her now. We both agreed it would be helpful if I got a school counsellor but it's going to take ages for that to happen and so I keep going to my teacher cause I know I can trust her but I feel like I'm becoming annoying and she's getting irritated by me and I feel bad but I just don't know who else I can talk to as I'm not confident enough. Has anyone got any advice on what I should do? Thanks
My advice is to find a time alone, preferably when nobody else is in the home, and practise speaking. It's a weird thing to do, but if you can find that time alone where nobody is likely to overhear, and start speaking out loud, try reading something from a book or something, you start to train your brain to be able to speak out loud more confidently, so this will carry over and help you out when you're in school and have to actually speak in front of others. In general you also need to just have more faith in yourself and learn to 'trust' in your unconscious ability to respond to people in the moment. Much social anxiety associated with speech comes from a fear of saying the wrong things and being over-careful with what you say, because you feel that you have to be highly conscious and deliberate in what you're saying - rather than simply relying on your ability to respond in the moment. Learn that you CAN respond in the moment, even if it takes a few seconds to click, your brain will do the work for you in most cases.
There's a lot of material online for helping with social anxiety in general, a decent series is 'Overcoming Social Anxiety Step by Step', which you can listen to here - https://archive.org/details/Dr.ThomasA.RichardsOvercomingSocialAnxietyStepByStep . Try searching on Youtube, too. There might be unique features to your social anxiety that make you more responsive to certain approaches, so explore around and find something that you think will be most likelyto help.
Also go get a notebook, or create a file on your computer, to start logging your succeses at socialising - call this your 'self esteem log' or something, basically any time you manage to speak, even if you're nervous or sound a bit timid or whatever, write it down and log in, so that in future you can look back and see how it's possible to be confident at times. If you have a bad incident, take the time to go home, get into a safe spot, have a cup of tea and some fruit or something so you're relaxed and at ease - and then look back on the incident and mentally evaluate it from a safe spot. Try to ask yourself things like "was it really my fault?" "Maybe the awkwardness wasn't entirely my fault and others were being awkward too", "How could I respond better in future?", this will slowly give you more confidence that you're able to meet these challenges, even when things don't go according to plan - that you can still learn from the experiences and gain confidence steadily.
Good luck.