How can I stop thinking about what other people think of me while making conversation?

I find that I’m so focused on what other people are thinking of me that I find it difficult to include myself in conversations. Either I think that whatever I want to say is going to awkwardly stop the conversation and I might not be able to follow it up with anything, or the pressure of even contributing to the conversation is enough to make me completely blank out.

Maybe it’s just my social skills that are awful, but in order to even determine if that’s the case I feel like I need to stop belittling myself and actually feel like I deserve to be able to talk to people (such as coworkers).

I have a nice group of friends that I’ve had since intermediate school and high-school (I’m about to start my fourth year of university in September), and this self doubt is starting to affect my confidence in talking to them. I’d say this anxiety has always been a problem for me, but it has become the focal point of my life ever since I started work this summer. I used to work alone in a toll gate at a national park, but this year I was offered to work at a national historic site (both for Parks Canada), so I’m not working alone anymore and I’m feeling left out because of my fear of communicating with my co-workers. I keep telling myself that I’ll be able to talk to them, but as soon as I get to work I just lose all of my confidence.

I had a really rough day today because two of my coworkers who ended up behind the desk today with my were talking with eachother a lot and seemed to be getting along really well, even though they don’t even know eachother, have two completely different personalities, and have never really talked together before. This just really upset me and I can really only blame myself, as I feel like my lack of talking to people has made my coworkers think that I have absolutely no interest communicating with them, which is far from the truth. I really feel like I’m running out of options because I’ve been telling myself for the last 2 months that I’d work up to courage to try to get to know my co-workers, but so far very little progress has been made. I probably just come off to my co-workers as bland and uninteresting, and it genuinely makes me feel awful when I work with them because I feel like I have some sort of obligation to talk to them so they are not bored out of their minds all day. It honestly never seems like they are bored when working with anyone else.

I’m really at a crossroads right now, I really am, because I don’t feel like there is anyone that I can turn to. I am too embarrassed to confront my family and friends, and I’m not confident that any sort of therapy could help me (I don’t want to waste money on something that I don’t think will work, but maybe I’ll change my mind about this). I don’t really want to live the rest of my life this way, but I’ve been telling myself this since gradeschool and so far I haven’t come close to a solution.

Thank you for reading