Problem is, if you're here, you're likely an odd duck and on the tails of many statistical distributions. You're not a prototypical sample of the general population. Stop using yourself as a prototype for explaining the behavior of others.

Yep, one of the most difficult lessons in my life.

It feels so convenient to imagine that other people are like me. There are so many people saying that people just need to be more open and they will realize how everyone is so similar. I guess that advice is most useful for the average people, who are the majority of the population; and perhaps useful to everyone in some areas of life. But whenever I start believing that everyone is "secretly just like me, they are just hiding it just like I do", it's enough to open my mouth, and I quickly get corrected. (LessWrong meetups being one of the very few exceptions, and even there it depends on who I talk with.)