40 year old me, looks back to my 20ish self with complete lack of self confidence, and what I can say is, don’t worry, you’ll eventually get over it. We all fear rejection, don’t matter how old we are, but at least after some nos we get more resilient to it.

Think about it dialectically, we all start being afraid of even starting a conversation. Then we negate that part and get into the next step, which is actually talking to people and being rejected. It hurts a lot, but eventually you get over it. Then after being rejected many times and feeling miserable after every time we start receiving yes. But then we get afraid of commiting (at least I got into this phase), thinking that once people knew me they would find me boring and ridicule. Then I finally took the courage to say yes back, I endured and got over all the jealously and insecurity phase afterwards, and finally got into a long term relationship, which I’m still in today. Going through each step sucks, and every person handle each phase differently. What you can do is talk to a (good and trustworthy) friend or maybe a professional. I benefited a lot from therapy to overcome my social anxiety.