A large part of the problem with social anxiety disorder is that you spend much of your time avoiding social interaction, that you rarely get the chance to practice it. Then when you either need or want to socialise, you find yourself panicking.
But not all hope is lost! It is absolutely possible to gradually learn valuable conversation skills. Here we've provided some basic conversation tips that will hopefully get you on your way to having stress-free daily interactions.
Active Listening
Although most people think that being a great conversationalist is all about talking, perhaps the most important thing is to be a great listener. Actively paying attention to the conversation forces you to notice things like verbal queues and more subtle non-verbal queues. It also means that you're absorbing everything the other person is saying, making it easier for you to actually contribute something of your own to the conversation.
Focussing on nothing but the conversation can also help stop your mind from racing and thinking all of those anxious thoughts.
And don't be afraid to let people know you're listening. This doesn't necessarily mean doing anything major, just a nod of the head, or a simple 'mmhmm' at appropriate points will let someone know that you're paying attention to them. Remember, people want to talk to you, not at you. If people know that you're actually a receptive, enthusiastic audience, they'll love talking to you and it will make the whole conversation that much more relaxed and easier for the both of you.
Reactive Questioning
While the other person is talking, your mind is racing trying to come up with something to say next. But if you apply the previous step of listening, you might notice that the person you're talking to is already giving you ideas on what to say next. Almost everything someone says to you begs a question. Just yesterday I attended a software development seminar. After the seminar, there was a bit of a meet and greet, where I spoke to a person, Tim, who I'd met only once before. While talking about the seminar Tim said the following sentence.
"We had a lot of seminars like this back when I worked in finance, but they were never about security".
Now, take a look at that sentence. Can you see where you might be able to take this conversation? Just in this one single sentence there's multiple possibilities. "What were the other seminars about?", "You used to work in finance, where do you work now?", "What made you leave finance?". Three different potential tangents for conversation, all coming from just one sentence.
In this example, I chose to ask Tim why he no longer worked in finance. It turns out he left due to poor management, which led us to having a conversation about former managers - a subject I know well and as such, the conversation went without a hitch.
When you can't think of what to say
Sometimes you will find yourself in situation where you can't think of anything to say, regardless of how much you have listened to the conversation. Fortunately, not all hope is lost. Using this technique, you don't need to think at all about what to say next and yet you will still appear as an interested listener and great conversationalist.
All you need to do is simply repeat the last thing they said as a question. Picture this conversation, where you have asked the popular question of "what do you do for work" and they respond.
"I'm not working, I've been trying to figure out what I want to do ever since I got back"
"Since you got back?"
"Yeah, I was travelling across Europe for a few months and now I'm seeing if I want to go back to my old job"
From here you've really opened up the conversation, with two possible paths to take the conversation - their European holiday, or their chosen profession. And all it takes is to repeat their own words back at them!
Hopefully this article has given you some inspiration to deal with future social interactions. 
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