[Duff]

I felt just like the OP did when I was a child. I was teased and picked on pretty mercilessly growing up, and then we moved to a completely new and different area (ie NYC to a town of 3,000).

In the new town, I wasn't picked on, but was kind of ignored. I had a thick NYC accent and people had no idea what I was saying. I felt insecure and was always afraid to speak up... I'm terrible with remembering names, so that made it worse. Then in 7th grade, I literally woke up one morning and said to myself "This needs to stop." So I made it a point to engage with people, do things that were funny (of course as a 7th grader, "funny" is questionable in most cases!)

The whole point is not to actually be funny, it's to get some confidence. You "practice" on low-risk people like cashiers. if you get the girl at the gas station to smile, you brightened someone's day. If you sound like an idiot, you try again another time.

Later in high school, I took a drama elective where I learned to be comfortable speaking in a public setting. In college, I ended up in a retail commissioned sales job where I had to speak to a few hundred people a day.

I guess my theory is that you have to act. Don't deliberate in your head. Talk. The worst thing that can happen is you get rejected.