How to Treat Shyness - The disease that's eating you alive
By: Stefan Anitei, Science Editor - Softpedia
You're at a party…she's looking at you. Oh, man, she's perfect! Do it right now. But, no, I need another drink. Ups, you have a pimple behind the ear... And you don’t wear the best shirt... And till you think more, that ugly toad has already picked up the chick and left the party with her.
If it’s of any comfort to you, then know that 40 % of the guys and girls are affected by this…‘issue’. And if you don’t work it out, unhappiness could be your life sentence. The good news is that shyness can be overcome by slowly engaging in new social situations, as it seems to be not very hardwired in our brains.
"I had lots of friends, but I had no dates," said Bernardo Carducci, the director of the Indiana University Southeast Shyness Research Institute, one of the world's foremost experts in shyness, recalling his own battle with shyness when he was young. "Despite beliefs to the contrary, shyness is not completely hardwired. This is because shyness requires a sense of self — which develops only after about 18 months of age. It involves feelings of excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and
negative self-preoccupation," explained Carducci.
"Shy people operate as if thy have a mirror in front of them all the time," he told LiveScience. Still, heredity interferes with this: roughly, 15 % of the individuals are born with an "inhibited temperament".
"And if one identical twin is shy, the other also is likely to be shy. This does not mean that shyness is predetermined by inheritance, or that it cannot be overcome, but simply that some people are born more susceptible to becoming shy than are others," said Jonathan Cheek, a psychologist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. "In a nutshell, shy people want to be outgoing and friendly, but can't seem to figure out how to do it," said Carducci.
Shy people are hard to "warm up" in new social situations, mainly because they are too self-conscious. "They'll go to a social function, but if they're not comfortable within 10 minutes, they'll turn and they'll run," Carducci said. These people can look deceptively social and friendly in their "limited comfort zone", but they tend to repeat over and over again the same actions inside the same limited group, avoiding exposure to new social situations. "However, that shyness is not related to self-esteem." said Carducci.
These people can be extremely confident in some aspects of their lives, like profession: they can make presentations in front of an audience of hundreds, but a small private conversation with a newly encountered person can turn them extremely anxious.
Experts come with solutions. "One is through relaxation training. People might try imagining themselves in different social situations while taking slow, deep breaths to keep calm," said Cheek. "They can also work to slowly expand their comfort zone," said Carducci.
Volunteering can be a good anti-shyness method. "When you volunteer, [people] don't really care your level of skill; they're just after your time, so there's no critical self-evaluation," he explained.
Shyness must also be controlled step-by-step. For instance, "if a shy man wants to ask a woman he sees at work out on a date, his first goal might be to have a brief conversation with her about some work-related topic. Before doing so, he should practice the conversation with a friend or a counselor. Then the second time the shy guy speaks to the woman, he could talk about something a bit more personal, until eventually, he feels comfortable asking her out on a date," said Cheek.
Shy people do not understand in most cases "they need not take all the responsibility for any failure they might encounter. Sometimes another person is unresponsive for reasons that have nothing to do with the shy person." said Cheek.
In the end, not all the boys or girls are single and available. Likely, the best aren’t.
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Topic: How to Treat Shyness? (Read 1082 times)