Seems like what you are doing wrong is refusing to accept cultural reality that small talk is a way for people to gauge you and get comfortable with you. They don't want your intense and serious stuff dumped on them until they get to know you in a safer context first. They have boundaries. It's culture. Live by it or die by it. It hurts to not know how to function in it, as I know from 40 or so years of painful experience in that regard.