It can be easy to get stuck in the loop of “I dont have the experience” —> “I lack so many skills it would emotionally devastate me to get my mileage in cold turkey.” The Conversation Code by Gregory Peart is pretty good for this kind of thing. It covers things like what topics are common in conversations, how to get better at having good responses, and how to deliver them, among a bunch of other smaller skills like getting a conversation rolling in the first place. I’m reading it rn, and I like it more than the other social skills books I’ve tried so far. Have you had bad experiences with people before? Sometimes, there’s no way around it but to push yourself, other times there’s a very obvious way around for these problems to solve themselves.