It will always be hard and mentally tasking, but I have something that did work for me (aside from proper professional help in the form of meds, therapy and hard work)

I listen to the “Mark narrations” podcast/yt channel, which is a reddit reading channel (mostly AITA and relationshipadvice) Basically hundreds of hours of socially awkward/complicated/ambiguous situations with a mostly representative(of reddit people, not every society ofc) comments dissecting the situation and giving advice or opinions on its moral and social aspects.

I basically listen to it to pass the time (driving, washing dishes, etc) and as the story is narrated I dissect it and form my own opinion on it. When the story is done and the comments are narrated I compare my own views to the ones from the comments and from Mark and anytime my understanding or views differ from the comments I go over why and how and learn from it (honestly it can sometimes be that the lesson is “people are crazy and I’m the one who is right”)

I can 100% say that doing this has improved my social abilities like crazy, it took a lot of time but it was fun so I wouldn’t say that it took a lot of effort.

Basically my idea was that if I don’t naturally understand how and why people act the way they do, I can learn it logically just like any other topic.

While a lot of things have improved my social abilities and I do have high functioning AuDHD which makes it not as complicated as other might have it. I can say that after 1 year of doing it basically any time I needed something to keep my mind busy, it made a huge difference in how new people perceive me (used to be “weird”, “awkward”, “uncomfortable”, “rude”) and how well I handle social situations, and they are much less mentally draining.