I thought of something else. I'm a person who tends to worry quite a fair bit, being slightly worried and or anxious about something is kinda my default state -incidentwlly, it took me years to even notice this, like, I often unconsciously plan for 'worst case scenarios' about things going awry in my daily life, like a bus being late and having to change my commute slightly to compensate, that sort of thing... It was a shock to realise, when I started dating my now husband, that other people most definitely don't worry that much and certainly don't have contingency plans at the ready all the time, lol.
But I digress... What I wanted to say is that I've always found extremely hard to talk to people in shops or on the phone and for many years I would do my best to avoid such situations. When I hit my late twenties/early thirties I finally got better at this. I still don't like either activity, but I don't get paralysed by anxiety as I used to in the past.

Quite frankly, I don't get why society makes getting older out to be such a negative thing, it seems to me that it comes with a lot of pros too. I certainly wouldn't trade my older, more confident, less conscious and anxious self for my younger one!