Ever since covid started, my social skills have been on a rapid decline. I now find myself struggling to talk to people I consider to be at a higher social status and I have no idea why this is happening. Just today, I was talking to my manager for a 1:1 and I sounded incredibly inarticulate. I was getting so much brain fog during the conversation. I struggled to keep the conversation going. And I was saying a lot of words to describe things that could've been described in a fraction of the words.

In another instance today, one of my very wealthy friends (like top 99.99% percentile of wealth due to old money) reached out to me today to ask a question over Facebook messenger. They only reach out to me maybe once every two years but this time, I felt SO MUCH anxiety when she messaged me. I've never felt this way before when being messaged online. It's not even like she has an impact on my life or was threatening. She's actually super nice. But I still got super nervous over that silly text.

However, when I'm just talking to my friends, I never have this issue. In fact, I come off as VERY confident to them, and they see me as the extroverted one of the entire group (even though deep down I know this is definitely not true). This contrast really only started becoming apparent in the last 5-6 months, so much so that starting last week, I've taken measures from journaling, to listening to podcasts instead of music, exercising every 2 days, and going as far as completely cutting out porn and masturbation.  

May I ask you guys for suggestions on how I can get over this anxiety of talking to smarter people or in a higher socioeconomic status? This was never an issue for all my life and now it's destroying me...