I live with it every day and I’m pretty good with the balance I’ve struck. But no it’s not just social anxiety, it’s a constant pressure to be a person I’m not.
The other side of that coin is that you see other people - extroverts, people-people like managers, recruiters and marketeers, and think of them as masking, of putting on a face and an act to achieve their goals. And it's offputting, it puts my hackles and defenses up, and/or makes me put on a somewhat different mask to try and interact with them (if I have to).
But as someone else pointed out, long term it mellows out a bit; you stop caring, you surround yourself with similar people, you become confident in your abilities, and I guess the masking, where needed, becomes easier, less draining, or even becomes part of who you are.
Small side remark, ABL or ABA or whatever, is a conversion therapy aimed at autistic people (and children) that's basically forcing them to mask, forcing them to pretend to be neurotypical. Think Pavlovian punishments for stimming and the like. Don't support those.
If it's of any consolation then that pressure goes down with age. After you're 35+ and have kids then nobody expects you to be as social (it at all) anymore. It took me 40 something years to come to terms with that no, I'm not like other people and I'll never be. Now I'm confident in my social solitude, it's who I am, take it or leave it. I'm good with putting on a mask for social occasions though if I need to. But I have the freedom not to.
I also regret that in my youth it didn't occur to me to respond to "Why are you so quiet?" with "Why are you so loud?"
I'm a really quiet person. As far as I know, I'm not neurodivergent and would generally be "In normal range". But anxiety isn't really part of it. I mean, of course I get anxious, but that goes away over time.
For example: For a while, I worked in a school cafeteria. I generally helped prep, ran the cash register while talking to the children, and afterwards spent time in the dish room. Nothing special. During the summer, I went to different schools (with a group) to clean classrooms. I talked more during the summer, simply because the job duties made it fairly easy to do while working.
"I've worked with her for months, and this is the most I've heard her talk"
"Really? She's still pretty quiet!"
This wasn't anxiety, I just didn't talk much. And this has just been a theme of my life. I'm married to someone who might even have less need for social interaction than I do, and they sometimes remind me to speak up. It just is.
And I've never really felt like it was something that I should get over. Perhaps I've "Learned to live with it", but it really isn't like that because I don't really have an issue with it and it usually doesn't cause issues.
