Anecdotally, I’ve found that having a social group behind you is actually really helpful.
My church actually had us go to a sex shop and purchase safe sex supplies, so that we’d learn to overcome our social anxiety around it. Given I was asexual and probably around 14, it was a pretty embarrassing thing to do. Knowing that all of my youth group peers would make fun of me for failing outweighed that social anxiety, though.
Going through that really did seem to help disarm a lot of the anxiety, if only by having an actual positive interaction I could point to and say “See? Nothing bad happened!”
Anecdotally, I’ve found that having a social group behind you is actually really helpful.
My church actually had us go to a sex shop and purchase safe sex supplies, so that we’d learn to overcome our social anxiety around it. Given I was asexual and probably around 14, it was a pretty embarrassing thing to do. Knowing that all of my youth group peers would make fun of me for failing outweighed that social anxiety, though.
Going through that really did seem to help disarm a lot of the anxiety, if only by having an actual positive interaction I could point to and say “See? Nothing bad happened!”