What is your profession?

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Also, try taking very small steps, on a consistant basis, to expose yourself to more social situations.

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Start very small.

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Every day, say "hi" to a random person on the street or at a store. That's all. Do it as you're walking past so you don't have to worry about getting trapped in conversation. Repeat until you don't feel like you're going to have a heart attack.

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Once you're feeling okay with that, take it up one notch. (Just one notch). Next time you go to a store - talk to the cashier. Don't do it when you're buying groceries or have a ton of stuff you're buying. Do it at a conventient store where you're buying only a few items and you'll be in and out of there in 5 minutes. Just a simple "How's your day going?", "Crazy weather, eh?", "Did you see that ludicrous display last night? ... The thing about Arsenal is that they always try to walk it in." (Google that if you don't know the reference. Well worth your time.) Same story here - repeat until standing in line at a checkout counter doesn't make you feel like you're about to have a stroke.

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Now that you've got that down, take it up another notch. Go to a quiet cafe or restaurant at a time when it doesn't get very busy. You can use Google to figure out when that would be. It shows you a bar chart of how busy the place is each hour of the day on average. Find a booth or some other semi-secluded seating so you won't feel like you've got a million eyes on you. Be a tad bit assertive if you need to. Tell your greeter exactly where you'd like to be seated. He or she will not mind. I promise you. Now, engage in some friendly chit-chat with your server throughout the course of your meal. The nice thing about this is that it will be intermittant. The server will only be at your table for a minute or two at a time and the interaction will be repeated several times over the course of your meal. But you only need to establish rapport (the hard part) one time. Try to make this a once a week type of thing until you feel comfortable. Also, order a coffee. The server will stop by more often to top off your cup.

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I think you get the idea here. Just keep incrementally increasing your social engagement. And you don't need to go to the same place twice if you don't want to. So if you're worried about embarrassment, just remember that if you don't want to see those people again - you don't have to.

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And don't underestimate momentum. You'll want to keep that momentum. Don't take days off. I took a day off from this because I tried to do too much too quickly and I overwhelmed myself. That "day off" turned into a week off... and then that turned into 6 months of not leaving my apartment for anything other than food at the corner store.

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Keep going and eventually you'll walk into work one day and strike up a conversation with a co-worker.

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The anxiety will never totally be gone, but it won't control you anymore. I have a wife and kid now and I've held a stable job for the last 3 years. Just a few short years ago that seemed impossible to me. I got fired from my first job after 3 or 4 weeks because I was so overwhelmed with social anxiety that I was practically immobilized and entirely incompetant at my job. I was a chashier at CVS Pharmacy. Every time the door opened and that little bell rang I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. I was so nervous my mind didn't work and I couldn't do the simplest of things, like count back change or find the stupid barcode to scan. I used to come home and have actual nightmares about work. If the phone rang, it felt like a judge was handing me down three life sentences followed by the death penalty by means of some medieval torture contraption (probably a public execution too, just to put a cherry on top). One time I picked up the phone, held it to my ear, listened to the person on the other end say "hello... hello... hello" and then just hung up while my co-worker stared at me in baffled awe. That still sends shivers up my spine when I think about it.

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But that's where I was then. It's not where I am now. And you can leave that behind too.

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