My son is 8 with a stutter and I also worked as a psychotherapist with kids so I've been doing my best to help him through everything. One major thing with him is that he is sort of "afraid" of people. Yes, he has/had social anxiety but he definitely has the lack of eye contact thing and often just doesn't know how to respond to people when they talk to him. The eye contact is difficult for him. It is for me too because it feels intense and like they can see into the inner me which I really like to keep private. Anyway, I assume it is the same for him. But we were working on eye contact first. He had to tell me the eye color of 5 strangers while out and about. We role played greetings and how to small talk. And with that he grew SO much more confident. Less afraid of people and his stutter improved dramatically. I'm (and I think my son is too) a lot like how you describe. It is like we pick up on things with people way more easily than other people. I can tell when I say something stupid by the way people react internally (as they try to keep it to themselves). But this almost makes me spiral into further social awkwardness and self pity. The main thing that helps me and I become much more socially competent is that when I feel that feeling I get from people when I said something - I ignore it and push it away. I think that is what most people do but they are just not aware of the signal from other people. Oblivious to it I guess and it doesn't effect them and they can keep on feeling socially competent. I'm way older than you and still say stupid things. I work on it but I work hard on ignoring that input from other people. I work on keeping eye contact with people even if it feels weird. I also feel best around other quirky people because it is much more authentic and less judgmental. I also try to appreciate those quirky people more because...really I'm the same way...just trying and sometimes failing to pretend I'm normal. It's hard at 17 because so much of your energy goes into trying to be liked and normal and accepted. But after high school there is much less pressure. I hope this helps. My son still struggles with it and he probably always will like me. But he's getting to a point where he is more comfortable with other people and it's helping a lot.