How Awkward People Can Start Non-Awkward Conversations  You're
not going to die if you talk to a new person. (Really, you
won't.) Especially if you follow these rules.  "Remember that
most people in the room at any given networking event feel the
same way you do," Anna Runyan writes for the Daily Muse. "Scared
to death."  Why? Because new people are frightening and if you
talk to them you could sound weird and what would you talk about
anyway and why does a silly thing like a conference table make
us feel so weirdly vulnerable?  What are we to do?
Desensitization therapy? Sounds scary. It's not.  If you took a
major fear to a psychologist, they might recommend that you
experience desensitization therapy. This is where you experience
the thing that scares the crap out of you in small to
increasingly larger doses, so that one day it only scares a fart
out of you, and one day nary a bowel movement. An example could
be if you were afraid of flying, you'd first play a flight-
simulating video game, then go to an a