I hear you puzzle bug! I've sorta gone the way of dominating conversations sometimes, because I'll get nervous about hearing whatever they might say to me. Then walk away and go "OMG I WAS SO RUDE!!!!!".

I've worked on asking questions that are well, based around whatever's been talked about it. So if I babble, I end up relating it back to them somehow (yeah, I do babble... sometimes I'm dead quiet other times I don't shut up... never can manage to meet the expectation!)

I don't know if this will help at all... but try to remind yourself that we ALL do say and do stupid things (honestly, being a teacher has made me fact that fact... I once added 4+4 wrong as I divided it on the board instead....). Think about all the idiotic celebrity/government statements that get floated around the internet... if they can survive that, then we can survive whatever it is we think we might have done! (Oh so easy to say that and yet soooo hard to remember...)