You show me yours, I'll show you mine.

Mine, as it were, is about six inches long, pale and oddly shaped and, this week, was on show in all its questionable glory to a bunch of perfect strangers in a well-lit village hall.

My scar is part of me. Rather, it is part of camera-shy Old Paula; Paula before Commonwealth sports, Everyday Adventures and trying harder had entered this anxious introvert's lexicon.

But New Paula, while braver, calmer, and probably a little more interesting, still wears the scar of a scalding accident of 30 years ago, from chest to belly button and all the way through.

It stuck with me during a timid childhood and bullied adolescence, through a breakdown in nerves and confidence, to an acceptance that fear was just in my very nature. As I grew, from toddler to teenager and beyond, its relative size reduced and, although the metaphor was not lost on me, the effect unfortunately was.

I spent years, no decades, hiding it from view, crushing it beneath layers and embarrassment, perpetuating the myth that individualities, those things that give us character and shape, are best buried and despised.

Things have changed beyond measure in the place I call life, but somehow that scar and all the hurt it represents have travelled along with me, stowed away in the baggage of its own creation.

I always knew that for me to burn that bridge between now and then, I would need a bloody big match. And that match finally blazed on Sunday, as I stood barefoot and sick to the stomach, in the beautiful setting of Strathblane Village Club, ready to be a nude life model for the first time.

Luckily for me, and every other life drawing class in the western world, I had by chance picked the right site for my artistic debut. The tutor, Gareth Reid, instantly reassured me, without even a suggestion that I was overreacting to a situation that, for him, must have been routinely normal.

I'm a woman of very few discernible talents - I know odd from even without counting, and I can almost always name that tune in one - so when I meet someone of many, I'm unashamedly impressed. Gareth is an artist of note and, while I don't know Munch about art, his work makes my eyes happy, and that's all the narrative cohesion I need. Alongside that though, he has enormous skill in crisis prevention, knowing instinctively, it seems, when a ship is sinking and wading in helpfully with a bucket. So at that inevitable point, when stress flooded my adrenal glands and that part of my brain charged with keeping the show running decided to call in sick, Gareth directed me discreetly from the sidelines, reducing the performance anxiety to an almost bearable level.

Frankly, adopting the position in the centre of a circle of artists, waiting to capture your every crook and nanny, was nothing short of terrifying.

No amount of hot air from the carefully positioned heaters was enough to quash the chill of panic at that do-or-die moment when clinging to a thin but beloved layer of cotton was no longer an option, and the unceremonious words heralded my fate: 'Okay, let's start.'

And there I was. Naked. In a room full of people. Sometimes nightmares just don't live up to reality.

But as usual, in times of deepest despair, there was an escape ladder. Surprisingly, I suppose, the very thing that soothed my nerves was the same that had caused me such terror in the first place: the folk who witnessed my altogether.

For Poppy, my fellow nude model, I have such respect. Not only has she the confidence and strength to pull this off regularly, but also the grace to pass on her knowledge, choosing to coach me as I fell to pieces, when others would easily have left me to it.

For the artists, who I'm sure must have realised that this was, in fact, my first rodeo, I have nothing but gratitude. When my legs shook so badly that I had to abandon a particularly taxing pose, not one complaint.

When I turned clumsily and they were stuck with a view that no mortal should be forced to endure, not even a grumble. They just picked up pencil and paper and did their best to capture the scene unfolding before them, while I flailed around, muttering the mantra that was to keep me grounded in reality.

"I am but shape and form. I am but shape and form."

Twelve two-minute poses later and I could scramble back into a robe, and try desperately to conceal a dignity long since lost.

But then, what's the point in dignity if all it does is hold you back? It's the worst kind of bully; pushing you to the floor then convincing you it's better down there.

So the next time I had to bear my soul (yes, soul), there was a little less hesitation, a little more purpose. I won't pretend it was enough that anyone outside my all-too-exposed body would have noticed, but by the time the ever-supportive Poppy had joined me in the circle of doom, everyone on my inside had at least felt the change.

Maybe it was the thrill of revealing all to a captive audience, maybe it was being called a miniature Degas by one of the artists, but something about that two hours in the spotlight enlightened me.

Of course, I'm not saying that wobbling gracelessly into awkward positions, while 16 kind souls pretended that my hind-end had hidden depths, has forever removed my introversion or body confidence issues that run deeper than a ground swell.

While I appreciate naivety, I don't act on its recommendations. But I do see a difference in myself, another step towards a healthier, less encumbered me.

That scar was the last vestiges of a person I no longer recognise in the smile that greets me in the mirror or the vibrancy of the over 200 sketches that now exist of my once-loathed body. It was the secret of a self-hater, the shame of an outsider.

And now, it's the pride of an adventurer.

Thanks to Gareth Reid. Here's his website