After struggling with social anxiety for many years and finding a way out, I created this website to share the best and most useful information I gathered over time, in order to help others find ways of overcoming social anxiety, building lasting confidence, and developing social skills.
Here’s a little bit about me:
I'm Barbara, and I currently live in a beautiful tiny country in southern Central Europe, called Slovenia.
I’m enjoying the beauty of life with a loving partner, awesome friends and a caring family. I’ve travelled to many countries (several times alone, making new friends on the way), worked as a beach photographer in France where I had to approach people lying on the beach and offer them my photo services (trust me, it’s much harder than it seems until you actually try it, even when you don’t have the social anxiety disorder!) and explored the Mediterranean coast and islands on a sailing boat for 5 months.
Today, I love life. While I still need and love my time alone, I also truly enjoy socializing and making new connections.
I believe you can achieve anything you set out to achieve as long as you’re willing to get out of the comfort zone and work for it. Life has unlimited possibilities.
But I didn't always feel that way.
I used to struggle with social anxiety, general anxiety, depression and low self-esteem for years.
My social life used to be a nightmare; not because there were times when I had no friends, but because I was so nervous in social situations that I couldn’t even normally interact with people.
A simple talk to a friend, teacher, or acquaintance would flood my whole body with adrenaline and make my heart race like crazy, my voice and arms tremble, and make me feel dizzy.
Every time I passed by a place where I could meet someone I knew, I was anxious in advance, and “What if’s” took over my mind.
I let people treat me badly because deep down, I felt I deserved it.
I kept escaping from life by taking drugs and getting drunk.
I was feeling unworthy of love and appreciation - unworthy of life itself.
I felt so bad inside of my skin that I wished I could just hide in the ground and disappear forever.
Like most people with social anxiety, I knew my fears were irrational but didn’t know what to do about it. I sought professional help, but sessions with a psychotherapist left me feeling even worse.
I felt alone and looked for solutions in psychology and self-help books, as well as in talks with a handful of precious people in my life.
I discovered very powerful techniques that helped me not only to overcome social anxiety, but to also grow as a person in general and start to love meeting new people and connecting with them.
I would now like to share what I’ve learned with you.
Here you will find the finest, highest quality material: helpful and interesting articles, links of websites, as well as products and services I personally recommend. This website is a constant work in progress.
Since overcoming social anxiety is a complex subject that deserves an in-depth and followable step-by-step system, I wrote a comprehensive guide on how to overcome social anxiety. If you are truly committed to get rid of your social phobia, I highly recommend you check it out. You have nothing to loose and it might save you years of frustration!
I would also love to hear from you.
Do you have a success story to share?
It doesn’t have to be about overcoming social anxiety completely.
Tell me about a particular technique that has helped you, or how you came to a specific realization that accelerated your progress.
What has helped you most to ease your social anxiety?
I’m working on a special section of the website where I will share your stories and tips with others (always only with your permission!) so that everyone can benefit from it. Even if you don’t want me to share your message, I’d still love to hear from you as it helps me get to know you and serve you better.
Let me know what kind of content you would like to see and any other suggestions you might have concerning the website or products.
You can contact me via email [email protected].
I am adding new material regularly, so come back often or subscribe to my mailing list on top of the page to receive updates, best tips, and other helpful information!
If you'd like me to publish an article you wrote or if you have a blog related to social anxiety and would like to collaborate, I'd love to hear from you.
When contacting me for a collaboration, please consider the following:
In order to serve my readers best, I'm only interested in guest posts and collaborations which are related specifically to social anxiety. I'd like to keep this blog focused on social anxiety, so I will not publish posts focused mainly on general anxiety or on mental health in general.
If you'd like me to publish your guest post, include the following in your first email: the article you'd like me to publish (just a title is not enough - I have to read the article in order to evaluate if it would be helpful to my readers) and tell me which website/link(s) you would like me to include in your post and/or what you'd like in return.
Article should be unique and not previously published on another website. You can publish your article on another website one year after it's been published on https://freefromsocialanxiety.com.
Contact email: [email protected].
Due to the amount of emails I receive, I might not reply if you don't follow the guidelines above.
Please note that although I may earn a small commission when you buy products and services on my website, I will only recommend ones that I have examined carefully or tested myself and believe to be among the best out there!
The commission helps reduce my costs to keep providing you with helpful content. There's a 100% satisfaction guarantee on all products, so if you are not happy with the content and results, you can ask for a full refund!