Extreme fear of talking?

I have a bad fear of talking and I finally decided to do something about it so I searched it on google and found this other question a href="http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081031100153AA8jTO3"http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?…/a I have the same problem as this guy so I figured if you could read this then I wouldn't need to retype it. It kinda started in second grade I used to talk before then but then there was girl that was all critical because I tried to be the class clown and honestly looking back, I wasn't funny, but I took the critiscisms pretty hard and I guess in my subconscious mind I decided that it was better to not talk at all and so I developed a subconscious fear of talking. It really interferes in groupwork in school and discussion assesments that we have because every time i try to say something nothing comes out. The main thing is that now I've decided to get over it, I might lose my rep as the cool silent kid. Like no one really cares about me. Ya know I make few friends but have no enemies except for the people who view me as weak. But I played football with some of the "cool kids" on a team so they know I'm pretty manly and stuff. So I really have no enemies. So I'm kinda thinking that I can't start being all outgoing now that I have that reputation and people will be like what the heck happened to him. Theres this girl i like at my church and shes always says in a nice way how come you never talk and she always tries to talk to me and i cant say anything cuz im afraid to speak to anyone but also I think she sorta likes me being quiet because whenever I try to answer her questions she ignores me like I never even said anything. I'm going into highschool next year so that'd be a good time to start because it's mostly new people. I can also talk to strangers very well. Its just that fear of being critiscised by the people I know. So how do I get over this? Sorry for the long question. Can anyone help?