Social Anxiety vs. Life

I really have no better title for this post because I think that about summarizes what my difficulties are right now. I have a rather... well... enormous bit of social anxiety and it is making a fairly huge impact on the rest of my life right now. I've been trying to run a business on-line but that's not going as well as I thought it would initially. I tried out the whole reading at something of a party where I essentially had a captive audience. I didn't do exactly well.

I'm not saying that I didn't get any business. I did, but I didn't do well in my comfort levels here. I spent a large chunk of time desperately trying to stay out of everybody's way and not saying much for fear of being verbally attacked. The whole experience kinda slapped me in the face with the fact that I am generally terrified of interacting with other people I don't know, specifically women and I'm not exactly sure of what to do about or with it.

When I interact with people on the internet and to a lesser extent over the phone, it's easier. I suppose it is because it's easy to trick my brain into thinking that they're not 'real' people so I'm not at risk. I have times where I desperately want to go out an interact with people but I just can't bring myself to do it. I try, I really do try, to go out and make friends. I just can't bring myself to do so very much because I'm terrified of being hurt.

I don't really know how to handle this. I need to interact with people to build my business, it's just a part of it. But I'm afraid to do so. When I'm doing a reading, it doesn't generally get screwed up by my anxiety. I hit a certain point and it feels like I'm just reading out loud. Sometimes, I get uncomfortable because the information that I'm reading doesn't make any sense to me or the details given are such that I question if I really should know them. For example, I don't generally want to know about my client's sex life. That's private and if anyone tells me, it should be them.

On the rare occasion that I may have some sort of a question, it's usually if this person is safe. Aside from that, I don't want to know or care. If everything that happens is consensual and done responsibly, I could care less. I get embarrassed when I have information about how their lover performs because I feel that I'm being shown something that I really have no place knowing. As such, I try to make sure that the information is phrased delicately and as factually as possible. Unfortunately, when I'm shown things like this (and it happens more often then I'd like to admit), I find myself becoming even more anxious.

I just don't know what to do about it.