Believe it or not, I'm not actually a shy person. Put me in front of a group of people for a planned session such as training and I have no problem talking (I spent a few years as a TAFE teacher after all). Drop me in an ad-hoc, unstructured conversation however and sometimes I get so nervous that I lose my words. I often blame this on my poor hearing and it's certainly a large part of the problem. It's not that I can't hear though, it's anxiety. I get anxious for a variety of reasons but recently I've managed to overcome at least some of it. While I'd love to be able to say it was my hard work, it really wasn't. It was a clever choice on the part of one of my work colleagues. Anxiety I've read very widely on the subjects of Asperger's syndrome and high functioning autism - and of course, I've interacted with a great many people on the spectrum over the years. Everyone is different and no amount of rules and exceptions can take