Shyness: small acts of heroism

I like the last paragraph of the review, presumably quoted from the conclusion of the book, which I'll look out for.

I think if shyness does not cure itself with age it can harden into "being anti-social", as with the quotes from Alfred Wainwright in this review/book. However, I disagree with the reviewer that this is necessarily a distinct condition from shyness; IME it can be a shyness that has become so resigned to avoiding social discomfort that the owner no longer recognises wanting to connect, or no longer believes that meaningful connection is a possible result of social interaction anyway so why try.

(Too personal admission: at least, to some extent I see this happening to me, and perhaps I should try to fight it, with the author's conclusion in mind)

>This is why, I think, shyness cures itself as we move through life (for many if not most people). We come to realise that a) we don't matter as much as we think to the other person, and b) sharing our thoughts and feelings helps other people connect to us.

That depends heavily on how much you think and feel like the people around you. While it's true that for most people your conclusions are correct, for others it has the opposite effect. If your thought and feelings are significantly different from those of the people around you, the result is utter rejection, not connection. This could still be a good idea if you have the means to move around until you find others that are like you, but it's a very bad road for those who don't.

At that point though, it's not shyness, but being reserved because they know society would reject them. See homosexuals in conservative societies, being conservative in some SV companies, having very different religious beliefs from those around you, and so on.

This is why I'd say that shyness is the delta between how someone thinks their openness will be perceived by the average stranger vs reality. If most people would find you essentially likable, you are shy. If instead you would be looked down upon, rejected, or feared, you are not shy: you just know you live in enemy territory.

This means why we can approach shyness with reason. My son, 7, is extremely shy: He is a good person and very good looking, so we work on getting him to realize that he just doesn't have bad interactions when he is open with strangers: His radar is just not accurate, and we just get to slowly teach him how far off his predictions are. I am not that fortunate, and yet , I realize that still, I am lucky because I can appear to be shy. There are people that are rejected for something that they can't hide, like skin color, a speech impediment, or a major physical deformity. We can't say that someone that wants to avoid an area because they would get attention by the police just by their looks is just shy.

Do you mean 'asocial' or 'anti-social'?

Great read. We've all been there at one point or another.

>The story that my anxiety was telling my head was entirely fiction. The emotion was real, but the reasons behind it were imagined. I don't yet have an answer on how to solve this.

For me, this was a conscious decision to change worrying about how I come across to assuaging other people's worries about how they come across. It's easier to be your own wingman when you know how to be someone else's.

Haven't read this yet, but I just wanted to say well done for posting this. From your comment, it clearly took some guts on your part.

Hey, I really enjoyed reading this. I hear those thoughts 24/7, and they plan most of my days. You helped me put words to some of my own behaviors that I've mostly been lying to myself about. So thanks! And it was a well written story, besides.

Wow. You've described exactly what goes in my head during parties. I've been better at faking it / being able to emit short bursts of real gregariousness, but I've never been able to completely get rid of the anxiety.

Well done for publishing this! As I'm sure you know intellectually (but probably find extremely difficult to actually believe), telling people about it has drawn them closer to you, not pushed them away. There's so much here that resonates with me, and examining my reaction to your writing, I feel more inspired to discuss my own anxiety with the people close to me.

This is pretty typical for shy poeple.

"Just calling" means that you have to receive the reaction immediately, and moreover, that you have to react on that immediately, too. This is much more intimidating than waiting for a response, reading it whenever you feel like, and having enough time to think about your answer.

Even on chat or instant messaging, it is generally accepted that it may take half a minute, or even 5 minutes, to take for a reply. So even these so-called "real-time" services are about two orders of magnitude less "real-time" than a phone call (0.5-2.0 seconds versus 30-300 seconds).

Also, with text you can get help from trusted people that help you write answers, which is not so simple on a phone call.

Id say texting is worse for me. Before 2000 I called my friends and talked, sometimes for hours. Now I never talk to friends on the phone because social norms have changed that calling might be interrupting where as texting is not. Texting is slow and annoying so the conversations are not very long or in depth. The overall effect is I'm far far more isolated than at anytime in my life.

Yes, it can be easier if you're talking about contacting a specific person, but in general I've found my shyness/introversion even more cripping online than in real life.

I've been lurking on various forums and social media sites for more than half my life, and I've always been too shy to post regularly. Consequently, I've never made any friends online, whereas I have made friends in real life (albeit not many).

There's a bit more at play than just shyness here, I think. I've sent texts a number of times just because I didn't know what the person was doing on the other side. Calling someone for a chat in the middle of the day is pretty disruptive, especially if they're at work or somewhere where they may not be able to talk loudly (library, movie theatre, open office layout). When you call, you don't just have to interrupt the person you're calling, but you could be interrupting everyone around them too. At least with texting, you can more or less assume only the person you're texting will have to pay attention to the message, and even then they can delay reading or replying until they have sufficient time.

Is being afraid of the potential consequences a good enough reason to become a hermit? Because that's what many shy people do, while desperately wishing there were some other way.

It takes repeated reminders, constant effort and, above all, an unaccustomed determination to take social risks, for shy people to push past the idea that embarrassment, or other people's anger, or some other negative consequence, is reason enough to avoid engaging. More often than not (in my experience, anyway) these fears are completely overblown. And even knowing that, and seeing the imagined disaster not coming to pass, it's still an uphill battle to take the next risk.

But even in the rare cases where some fear turns out to be justified, having someone get upset with you, or laugh at you, is not the end of the world that anxiety will try to tell you it is. It's certainly not a good enough reason to doom yourself to unwilling solitude.