Sure. I made talking to strangers like a game -- see how long you can get someone to talk. It's easiest to get started by joining a group which looks like it's having fun and talking in a large, but loose circle. It's nerve-wracking initially, so remind yourself that you'll probably never see these people again. After a while, I built a repertoire of things to say and I enjoy when I see people enjoying my stories. It's like being a stand-up comic. Practice practice practice. Eventually you'll be able to improvise.

About being happy, to me it's a matter of considering what plausible futures might be. I get stressed a lot about little things. To relax I think past the immediate imagined disaster and what its consequences might be. Usually the consequences aren't that bad. You can always make more money and you can always meet new people. Health/safety is the only thing that's not worth risking.

A psychiatrist prescribed Zoloft to me a while back, but I found diet, exercise, and meditation (in the sense I described above, not traditional counting breaths, etc.) to be more effective.

I dislike modern psychology's labels as if there's some threshold that separates normal people from abnormal. We're all on a spectrum of various personality characteristics, with no boundaries on that spectrum.

The funny thing is, my wife now says I'm one of the least stressed people she knows. It makes me think of when the Hulk says, "the secret is I'm always angry." I appear relaxed because I'm always stressed and keeping a lid on it.