Judging by your post history, you might be a software engineer. As such, you might benefit from a few specific tactics I haven't seen in other comments yet:
1. Being an interviewer.
2. Being a mentor. (onboarding mentor, for example.)
3. Join your workplace's "Donut" program, if it has one. (I don't know what these are normally called, but at my job it's a thing where you get matched with a new random coworker every two weeks for a half-hour chat.)
The common thread of these tactics is you have the opportunity to meet new people in a mostly-familiar workplace context where you probably have more confidence and a greater sense of belonging. The more supportive environment lets you learn conversational skills that you can then deploy in more unfamiliar contexts like meetups or gyms.
Not only that, but for (1) and (2) you -- hopefully -- get training/shadowing opportunities before being thrown in the deep end.
Between those three things, I've had 1-1 (or 1-1-1, for interviews) conversations with 100+ different people over ~5 years. In retrospect, this has considerably reduced my social anxiety, although that had never been my explicit intent (I was just trying to help / learn / etc.)
As with all things in life, YMMV. Obviously these tactics are workplace-dependent. And if the idea of mentoring or interviewing puts you in the "panic zone" (brain shuts down), you might be advised to try some intermediate steps first.
1. Being an interviewer.
2. Being a mentor. (onboarding mentor, for example.)
3. Join your workplace's "Donut" program, if it has one. (I don't know what these are normally called, but at my job it's a thing where you get matched with a new random coworker every two weeks for a half-hour chat.)
The common thread of these tactics is you have the opportunity to meet new people in a mostly-familiar workplace context where you probably have more confidence and a greater sense of belonging. The more supportive environment lets you learn conversational skills that you can then deploy in more unfamiliar contexts like meetups or gyms.
Not only that, but for (1) and (2) you -- hopefully -- get training/shadowing opportunities before being thrown in the deep end.
Between those three things, I've had 1-1 (or 1-1-1, for interviews) conversations with 100+ different people over ~5 years. In retrospect, this has considerably reduced my social anxiety, although that had never been my explicit intent (I was just trying to help / learn / etc.)
As with all things in life, YMMV. Obviously these tactics are workplace-dependent. And if the idea of mentoring or interviewing puts you in the "panic zone" (brain shuts down), you might be advised to try some intermediate steps first.