Thank you for the feedback, again. Much appreciated. I'm not actually fearful, per se, so exposure doesn't really help. I will work on examining my interactions with people more, though, to see what I could do differently. I do that a lot already, but I also tend to get impatient with myself for not learning these things faster. Perfectionist too, lol!

Also, I love your point that it took time for me to learn to not be assertive. That's quite true. I can actually be quite opinionated, but have learned not to express those opinions much. That's really helpful to think about it from that perspective.