If you haven’t met anyone like that from the US, it might be because they are shy and stayed home instead of meeting you! You have only dealt with a self-selected sample.
I think talking to other people just gets easier with practice, as you become more comfortable. You can also watch outgoing people and try to understand their moves. Finally, if your anxiety is due to hangups about specific things, it can help to talk to other people about those things in order to process the hangups and ease the anxiety.
I remember in university, there was this girl who I had seen around but hadn’t talked to. I don’t remember whether I knew her name already. One day she said to me “my name is [so-and-so]” and waited for me to say something back. I told her my own name and we had a good chat. I remember thinking “you can do that?”. I.e. she just told me her name in order to open a conversation, instead of asking any immediate question or looking for a lame pretext to talk to me. I expect that all non-shy people know how to do that, but to me it was news. I started doing the same thing when I met someone new, and it worked surprisingly well. There’s lots of other things like that, which you can observe and try. That’s what skills amount to.
That said, I’m not an extravert myself and have never been, and I don’t know many of those techniques. I just feel more ok about that now.
themeatbridge@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Where would you meet a shy or socially awkward American? Are you exploring the basements of random homes?
growing_search@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Fair point