Just tried it. I'd recommend it to everyone. i remember I called into it a few times over the past 4-5 years. I think I was motivated less then...felt lazy, felt like this shi* wouldn't work etc... so i didn't give it enough time or listen in for long enough. I think a lot of us don't want to even start help/therapy because we kinda know that it's a long process to change ourselves. With our negative mindset we feel that if it fails then we fail, and may never get better...or it's not worth wasting our time. Also we feel defeated, because we are also often depressed and feel helpless...this call group is a GREAT first step towards a getting better and more a lifetime process of being more social.
So I'm not saying this is some magic pill that will take you to freedom from social anxiety, BUT it's a first step (or tenth or 100th step) in a long and steep trail to social freedom.
This time I listed in for the whole time, and even participated in the discussion
First you should go here:
http://www.spalibrary.info/
read as much as you can and familiarize yourself with their ebook. All the blue links are the articles they go over, which are very much like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, positive thinking/ crushing negative automatic thoguhts etc. During the discussion the organizer refers to this a lot and members read different exerpts.
I think you have to be motivated and just do it (whether it's going to therapy, listening weekly to these calls, or reading books, or slowly pushing yourself to do small exposures...then work your way up to more scary stuff)
How the call went...
For the first few minutes I heard a lot of sounds and was a little confused. Just keep your phone on speaker and you'll be fine. Then the organizer comes out and describes it a little bit. That you can choose to share your story, or read from
http://www.spalibrary.info/ or just listen in. Then after about 30-40 min of reading the articles he opens it up to open discussion, where you can just talk about your day, your experience with SA, etc. This lasted another 30 minutes. Then at the end youre free to just talk with other group members. I talked to a guy at the end for about 20 minutes about his experience with SA and shared some of my thoughts as well. It makes you feel good just to hear others voices and experiences with SA, and is definitely a step in the road to recovery.
I found it very beneficial and uplifting. The advice is pretty solid, but you have to be persistent for it to be ingrained in your psyche. I'd recommend calling it because it's FREE it's a non profit 12 step program. I think I'm going to try to call in regularly.
http://www.healsocialanxiety.com/ this is the website with the number to call
it's Wednesday 6 PM Pacific Time
Saturday 10 AM Pacific Time
Sunday 6 PM Pacific Time
The members are very patient, open and friendly. Did I mention this is FREEEEEE!!!

It's worth it to try