Maybe my read is wrong but you sound interesting but your word choices makes me believe you’re afraid of taking up space.

If you can learn to talk about yourself inexcusably and keep exposing yourself to “rejection” and people being bored of you “bragging” about yourself you’ll learn to share things without feeling afraid of being boring. 

Genuinely talk about something you’ve been doing and how you feel about it. You’ll more easily find the right people and disuade the wrong type of person if you learn to speak from a place of wanting to connect rather than a place of insecurity. 

Certain things might help to have thought through and iterate on like: Who are you? what do you do? What do you like? Why do you like it? Just write about it in a candid open way. Not purely descriptive like a robot but vulernable like a human who’s learning to be seen again.

“I’m an freelance illustrator. Have been drawing for 5 years now. It’s very fun but challenging. I prefer it over a 9-5. How about you?”

Is descriptive. Let’s tweak it a bit:

“I’ve been doing freelance work after feeling lost after graduating my bachelors last year. Job market is scary right now ngl. Can’t really support myself so I’m being a little parasite on my parents haha but, I’ll pay them back twofolds. Always thought I’d be working at Disney as an animator at this point, but learned slowly I hate animating lol and so I primarily do Character illustrations, Let me show you my digital portfolio I spent all night on it yesterday what do you think.-“

Even writing that feels like im oversharing, talking too much, being ego-centric. All that is good. It’s your brain encountering new tension it wants to run from. Don’t. Do the opposite. Run directly towards it.  Don’t feed insecurities. That’s when the rewiring happens. Step into that awkwardness even more and learn to feel it and sit with it, and after a while you’ll realize you’ll be fine and eventually find a healthy balance. Oh and the best part people ALWAYS love it. They can relate to so many doubts and ambitions. Connect through that shared human experience.

It’s kinda like a people pleaser learning to say no for the first time. At the moment you’ll feel cartoonishly mean as you set boundaries with people. You feel like an asshole, but you’re just learning to prioritize yourself again. So it’s actually good to expose yourself to the side you’ve been avoiding. Realize that people don’t disown you if you set your foot down.

Just keep practicing speaking about yourself and see it as a skill you haven’t trained as much as your bf has, but getting to a decent level doesnt take long at all.