I was like this in my younger years. I picked up work in a bar/pub for some time and it made me realize all people are idiots no matter their background. This s

I was like this in my younger years. I picked up work in a bar/pub for some time and it made me realize all people are idiots no matter their background. This solved maybe 90% of my issues and taught me to enjoy very extroverted lifestyle in comparison to who I was before (approach a girl, go dancing, public speaking, ask a question when nobody else would ...). It was such a confidence booster because I suddenly knew it would be 100% up to me to be good in something I always thought I sucked in. The rest 10% were edge-cases rooted in very specific childhood trauma and took another decade or so solve (it also required cutting these childhood triggers out of my life because they still wielded power over me - e.g.: parents.). What worked was the number of times I exposed myself to be in these situations. I learned that the shy/awkward/insecure vibe I'm putting out made it difficult for the other party to be at ease too. I set myself up for failure simply by being the (shy) "me". What worked for me (in hindsight) is exposing myself to such situations on purpose. I took every opportunity for a (spontaneous) conversation life offered. You could try something like "rejection therapy" (I did this very late and had a lot of fun discovering the areas I still had lots of work to do): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_Therapy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rejection_Therapy Also what helped me was a few books about loving myself before expecting love from others (e.g. love is also "believing in"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Traveled https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Scott_Peck#The_Road_Less_Tr...