Hi everyone. I've been faced with this dilemma for quite a while now. I've never had an issue with this and always felt my self criticalness to be a strong aid to my personal growth until about two years ago, in which my self criticalness has left me empty and lost.
Like all other self critical thoughts, I saw this one as being equally insightful to my personal growth as the rest, but this one didn't bring me the results I expected, but only left me completely lost.
More specifically, I felt like I was being self centered and I should show more interest in people, and make that more of a priority in my socialization.

But I have found the thoughts to be little more than what I see psychologists call neurotic thinking.
I couldn't connect with anyone anymore, and everyone I met, it just ended in awkwardness. I lost many of my friends too. I went through quite a drastic change, in which before I was very very confident and almost spoke my mind. Now I could hardly do more than ask questions(*cough*interrogator*cough*), and the conversation never flows. I can feel a lot of my inside thoughts wanting to come out, but it gets supressed so easily. And often when I feel totally conscious of the thought, it feels too late to bring it up.

Any ideas? Thanks!