Fears and Phobias

I have a little bit of hominophobia I don't know if I really have the phobia but my heart starts pounding 1,5 times faster than normal when speaking to a person I don't know. Do you people have normal heartbeats when speaking to new people? So I can compare.

I don't know why I got this phobia, but it started at 12-14 years old when everything changed. There were people who were teasing me at school maybe it's that trauma that made my brain connections like this.

Speaking to people I know => there is no increased heartbeat. Maybe I'm a bit overprotective against new people. It's not that I am so scared that I run away or something, I can stand it, but the increased heartbeat is annoying. Every time I want to ask something I make a sentence in my mind, everyone does that, but at this time my heartbeat starts to accellerate and sometimes I wait so long that I don't even bother asking it... If it continues like this I won't be able to make new friends other than "imposed" friends like those at work, in an orchestra or at school. It's exhausting to live like this.

On National Geographic I saw that new synapse connections could be formed when confronting your phobias for a long time. I really want to try this and speak to many, many unknown people but I just can't do it, if I try I just stand there saying nothing.

My training will start here: I'll begin with asking questions without phrasing my question. If I have a question to ask I'll just go to the person without thinking and just try to formulate my question stante pede. Waiting and preparing my question would only increase the time of accelleration of my heartbeats.

The thing I just want to know is, do your hearts pound faster too when speaking to a stranger?

Jam it back in, in the dark.