As you can glean from my bio below I now spend about a third of my time presenting at conferences and doing workshops both at home and internationally.

I look forward to the experience of being able to be in front of a crowd as I feel that it actually brings the best out in me. I find it not only an enjoyable but an uplifting experience and I look forward to each opportunity to be in such a venue.

I must say however that it has not always been this way!

Let me recount a bit about my personal history and I think you'll get the message.

As a young boy I was absolutely petrified of meeting strangers as well as talking with members of my own extended family. I would dread times when my parents would expect me to accompany them to family functions e.g. parties, weddings etc. I would try to find every excuse to stay home and hide away in my room.

As I grew up and had to go to school I struggled with anxiety that often bordered on panic. I recall many times at school when I would perspire profusely at the thought of answering a question in class. I felt like I stood out and felt a great sense of shame and embarrassment at any attention I would get.

Later on in my university years I recall feeling like I was in some way abnormal and different from others. I felt like I was defective or like something was wrong with me because of my debilitating social phobia and shyness.

I was so debilitated that I was determined to overcome it. So I decided to switch career paths from a seclusive life in engineering to medicine and then psychiatry. I felt that by going this route I would force myself to have to meet and talk with people. Additionally I felt that I might learn how to heal myself as well with the many therapeutic modalities I might learn.

I recall being drawn to hypnosis and hypnotherapy early in my life and was able to actually start practicing it when I got into psychiatry. I was also interested in various meditative practices. George Gurdjieff was an early eastern mystic whose work I drawn to early on.

I did a great deal of work on myself and found my way into a comfortable psychiatric practice.

Unfortunately, I realized that this practice was one that meant secluding myself in my room and not even looking at my patients as I did psychotherapy on the traditional couch. Interestingly I had unconsciously found a way to "hide" away in the presence of another person and that I still had a great deal of social anxiety.

This all came to a head about 6 years ago after I developed a new healing modality like nothing I'd ever seen before with the powerful ability to help me release this paralyzing veil from my life once and for all. I have written about this extensively in this ezine.

I have since helped hundreds of individuals release their social phobias in a very short time, sometimes in a single session.

As I'm sure you can imagine such a monumental shift usually means that one's life choices will change dramatically.

Sometimes an individual is too afraid to have so much freedom of choice available to them and draws back into a life of hiding.

If you are the kind of person who is courageous and who does desire freedom then this story may be inspiring to you.

Dr. Nick Arrizza
http://www.telecoaching4u.com/IntroConsult.htm