[mrdoops]

Lift some weights. It might seem unrelated, but it's very crucial to improving your ability to deal with anxiety of all kinds. If you don't have experience around weight training equipment, then pay for small group training. Not only will you get a low-stakes opportunity to practice socializing, but the weight training will improve your testosterone production and your ability to regulate anxiety.

I should've done small group training years ago. Such a good investment.

[WhompingWindows]

How does lifting weights teach OP about office politics? Seems tangentially related at best...

[creep]

Going to the gym is daunting for a person with social anxiety and/or autism.

It's often loud, crowded, and besides that it's filled with complicated machines you have to learn about before using.

When I walk into a gym my brainstem screams: "fucking RUN".

Pushing yourself to exercise in front of people who seem more powerful and more confident than you is a good way to gtfo of your comfort zone-- and it's a low-risk way to do so. Because while it seems like a big deal to potentially make a fool out of yourself at the gym, it's not and nobody actually cares about the skinny guy in the corner fumbling around with the leg press, and most of those people you will never see again. The people you do see again have an essential but implicit bond to you: you're all trying to improve your physicality. Everyone there was once a beginner. Zero risk.

You can translate any confidence gained at the gym to the workplace. It shows up in the way you walk and the way you carry yourself in general, and you become less fearful of situations that look, at first, to be very high risk.