How does anxiety hamper your ability to connect with others?

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I feel like I could make friends and establish meaningful relationships if I wasn't so anxious about talking to people. Even people I've known for a long time give me bad anxiety sometimes. Sometimes my chest tightens up just thinking about talking to people. (especially girls. ) As a result I have almost no friends. Does anybody else have this issue.

I also find that anxiety stops me from developing social skills. I feel very self-conscious and awkward around everyone. I'm so focused on my own stress and anxiety that I don't pay enough attention to other people or I misinterpret their expressions and behaviour. I'm afraid I have no advice how to handle this but I do understand and sympathise.

I'd say yes, it's pretty much is all encompassing and prevents me from normally socializing with others or enjoying it when I do try. No advice either, sucks.

I hate my anxiety
Someone from here offered to meet me and suggested today but instead I just wanted to think of reasons not to fearing the worst and decided we should probably try to get to know each other via private messaging first.

But private messaging is too hard with someone you don't know anything about and I fear I already came across as uninteresting and over shared my struggles which aren't even as bad as they come across.
it's just the ******* anxiety taking over.
Should have just met but now I probably lost the chance to make a new friend who can understand what it's like for people like us

It's not someone who's active on here so I won't get a second chance

I've been reading non-stop about being an Aspie in the past 5 months, My interest grew on the subject because I became self-aware on the account that I started working in the medical field. To say the least, it has been like trying to write a master's thesis, while looking at the paper in the mirror by candlelight...

The answer is quite simple: when I manage to actually make eye contact I look into 36% of people's faces, I see that ridiculous social mechanism move its gears. Its downright INFURIATING.. I even hear their words in their own voices.... Its downright difficult and totally embarrassing telling a total stranger that I am a high functioning. Especially if they are just superficial and impatient...

Ultimately, I see no point in sharing because according I just don't trust most people. There are many previous instances that I've been manipulated because of me being clumsy and at times naive... why would I present that vulnerability to some stranger that by 50/50 chance will genuinely want to know me/misuse my trust?

There is no grey for me. Just white or black...You are my friend or you are my enemy.

I don't have social anxiety. Maybe a little bit, in unknown situations but I deal with it easily: "Just go there and do it, if you get in trouble you can always ask for clarification and if you make a mistake you can say you are sorry. It's not a big deal".

Yet I still can't connect to others for some reason.
I just don't know what to do and what to say way too often. I know how to interact with people at school but I fail to imagine what we could do outside of school, I suck in chit-chat and I often don't know what to answer when someone shares something personal. For example when a classmate told me his mother is in hospital and all I managed to say was "uh-hu" because hearing about it was too painful(I could imagine how I would feel if my mom was in hospital so I supposed my classmate must feel the same) and I didn't want to dig the topic any further by asking what happened which was the only reaction I found logical.
I was not afraid. I simply didn't want to empathize any further because just hearing about the situation was causing me emotional pain.

However I cant say anxiety doesn't hamper my ability to socialize at all. It isn't social anxiety, just regular anxiety related to new situations and some rules I had to follow as a child. For example when someone in the Internet asks me out or asks me for a photo I always refuse because "you shouldn't met with or share photos with strangers met through Internet, they might rape you or use your photos in the wrong way".

BTW. Getting interested in Asperger actually made me less anxious socially (I was anxious before). It's easier to accept mistakes when I know they are not fully my fault. I allow myself to make mistakes now.

My anxiety is my worst enemy, I have been told in the past I'm a fun and interesting guy but I just have so much anxiety that even someone with the best patience would have problems dealing with and I feel this is true.

I've just had so much bad luck and hardship in my life and family abuse I just have a hard time seeing things any differently. I often feel I'm so defective people instinctually hate me and don't want anything to do with me. So I end up walking on egg shells around anyone who treats me half way decent out of fear I'm going to do something to just mess it up. This leads into probably the biggest problem with anxiety.

It stops you from being yourself and that I think is the real poison, I think when your obviously not being yourself people can tell and just automatically assume the worst, that your being false, or worse manipulative and don't understand it's just crippling anxiety.

Yes, I can never believe that people really like me. I just think that they tolerate me and feel like the have to be around me because they pity me.

The anxiety has killed any chance I have of a love life as well because if I meet a man I like I think that there is no way someone that nice would like me, so I don't flirt with him because I think I would just come over like a total idiot and he would just laugh at me for thinking someone normal like him would like a loser like me.

I am automatically anxious to a degree around people I don't know. This makes it very difficult to talk to them. Especially if I observe them saying or do things that I really don't like - then I quickly lose respect for them and do not want to interact at all.

Sometimes I can find myself in situations where there is someone with a very outgoing, warm personality that can engage me and then I can feel comfortable and will open up and have conversation. But someone else always has to make the first move.

This is life long with me and I really don't have an answer for it. I have never had more than one or two friends at any given time, and I have been taken advantage of in the past by some of these people who I thought were my friends.

I am just posting this to say you are not alone.