Dealing with anxiety and nerves with respect to your dating is a problem that is usually experienced by people who have never been in that specific situation before.
This problem has probably affected you before, but for different reasons.
Have you ever been nervous before taking an examination at school, or taking a driving test? The same forces are at work.
There are ways that you can successfully deal with these problems, but you need experience.
The way to reduce your levels of nervousness and anxiety is to actually do the dating.
I know, that's not very helpful.
I want you to know that I speak from my own experience here.
I have been in this situation.
I resolved it by doing what I needed to do, but it took several years.
For my first long-term relationship, I lucked in; essentially that was started by communicating with somebody over a computer network, so I got to know that person online before having to meet them.
This made things a lot easier.
As is the way of things, eventually I broke up with that person, but the relationship did last five years.
It was about another three years before I started seriously dating again.
I tried online dating for a long time, but that didn't really move me out of my comfort zone.
I was never successful with online dating.
I decided to try speed dating, and for me, this was huge.
I had read about it in a newspaper, and I decided that that had some potential for me and that I would do it.
It was very scary, and I did procrastinate about it for some time before I actually booked a speed dating session some time in the future.
I paid for it in advance.
When the date came, I was either going to attend the session, or lose my money.
So I went speed dating.
Of course, I was very nervous to start with, but I did have twenty dates to run through.
I was not entirely comfortable even at the end of the night when I had spoken to those twenty women, but things were quite a bit better.
I did speed dating two more times, each time gaining confidence, until I realized that it wasn't likely to work for me.
I don't consider myself an introvert, but I am certainly one of those people to whom it takes a long time to "warm up;" certainly longer than three minutes! So I ended up not pursuing speed dating any more.
I eventually found love while attending a dating class, and I am now happily married with a beautiful daughter.
To build up to try speed dating, I visualized myself talking to lots of women, and being good at smalltalk.
That certainly helped, but I recommend combining this approach with hypnotherapy.
I suggest that you find a hypnotherapist in your area, who will almost certainly be able to help you.
I know somebody who suffers from panic attacks who saw a medical doctor about them.
Unfortunately, the doctor was not really able to help.
But when I convinced her to see a hypnotherapist, there was a considerable, noticeable reduction in the severity and quantity of panic attacks.
Hypnotherapy is nothing like stage hypnosis.
You will relax like you never have before, and you will imagine situations in which you successfully deal with people of the opposite sex.
It is your subconscious that causes you the anxiety and nervousness, and, through the hypnotherapist, you will communicate directly with that fear.
It will probably still be present when you go dating, but it will be much less severe than it ever has been before.
This will enable you to gain confidence that, actually, you will survive the attempt, and nothing bad will happen to you.
You can get hypnotherapy tapes, CDs and MP3s.
These may be helpful, but to maximize the effectiveness of hypnotherapy, I recommend seeing a hypnotherapist directly, if you can afford to do so.
The hypnotherapist will be able to personalize your therapy far better than any audio CD would.
You just need some initial confidence to get started, and once you have begun, you will soon overcome the nerves and anxiety you feel when dealing with first dates.