| Because you've been conditioned to react that way. Approach, or the potential and opportunity to approach specifically, illicits anxiety. What most people do is take the path of least resistance, which in this case, is avoiding the approach. When you avoid the approach, you get a short but strong sense of relief and safety, which reinforces the avoidance response. In future approaches then, sense you have been conditioned to react that way, reinforced by the sense of relief it provided, you don't approach, even with obvious IOIs.
In order to overcome it, you have to step out of your comfort zone, and systematicall desensitize yourself to the anxiety, a therapy developed by Dr. Joseph Wolpe to deal with phobias. For serious phobias, you would need the assitance of a mental health professional, but approach anxiety is something most people can overcome by themselves with some determination.
What Wolpe would suggest would be to essentially create a list of goals to overcome the anxiety. In this case, it would be small goals that you would have for yourself, each goal being more difficiult than the previous one. For example, goal one could be to smile with eye contact at 10 strangers. Goal two could be to say "hey" to 10 strangers. Goal three could be to say "hey" and add 1 comment about something you observe to 10 strangers. And so on and so forth.
Over time, as you reach and achieve these goals, you will slowly desensitize yourself to the approach anxiety. Don't make any goals too drastic as to not be realistic. They must be baby steps in order to be effective, and eventually, when you reach the final goal, whatever it may be, it will be much easier to achieve, rather than simply going all or none at one time.
Maybe this is more than you were asking for, but there you go. At least, this is what has worked for me, and I had the same issue you are describing. Hope it helps.
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No Fear, No Excuses
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CHAT