Don’t Be Shy
We often hear shy people say, "As we talked, I felt uneasy. I worried about how I looked, what I said, how I said what I said, and so forth." If you have never felt this shy, chances are that you know someone who has.
Shyness vs. Social Phobia (恐惧症)
"Very shy people often believe there’s something wrong with them and tend to evaluate themselves more negatively than others do," says Lynne Henderson, director of the Shyness Clinic in Los Altos, California. John Walker, director of the Anxiety Disorder Program at St. Boniface General Hospital in Canada, describes shyness as "an exaggerated fear of embarrassment and a tendency to hold back in social situations."
Our research reveals that the shy tend to make unrealistic social comparisons. In a room full of others, their attention is usually drawn to the most socially outstanding person, against whom they compare themselves, unfavorably, of course. Typically, they compound the negative self-image by attributing their own comparatively poor performance to enduring and unchangeable internal characteristics -- "I was born shy." Such attributions only heighten self-consciousness and spoil performance.
Shyness is considered a personality trait, not a psychological condition or disorder, and it has varying degrees. But severely shy people are sometimes diagnosed by psychologists as also having social anxiety disorder, or social phobia. Shyness that becomes so severe that it interferes significantly our social activities, relationships or occupational functioning could be what experts call social anxiety disorder or "crippling shyness". Millions of people suffer symptoms of this disorder at some point in their lives. One of them, 51-year-old Earla Dunbar, was virtually house-bound for six years during the 1990s. she was terrified to go outside, even to get the mail, for fear she’d run into other people and that they would think the worst of her. In such cases, cognitive-behavioral therapy and prescription drugs are often required to overcome the problem.
Social anxiety is the third largest psychological problem in the United States today. This type of anxiety affects 15 million Americans in any given year. Unlike some other psychological problems, social anxiety is not well understood by the general public or by medical and mental health care professionals. In fact, people with social anxiety are misdiagnosed almost 90% of the time. People with social phobia come to the anxiety clinic labeled as "schizophrenic" (精神分裂), "manic- depressive" (狂郁症) , "clinically depressed", "panic disordered", and "personality disordered", among other damaging misdiagnoses.
In the Genes
Scientists used to think a child’s family environment largely dictated his/her emotional development as an . But Louis Schmidt, a Canadian psychologist who has been studying brain development in children and babies for the past 15 years, says while there’s probably no single gene for shyness, new research shows some genes appear to play a larger role in predicting whether a person will be shy.
"It appears nature has predisposed some children for shyness, "Schmidt says. This means that if your parents are shy you will be shy as well. In healthy babies just a few months old who tend to cry when exposed to new situations or people, more activity is detected in their right frontal brain, which regulates behavior and emotion, and their heart rates are higher than those of more sociable babies. Many of these kids outgrow shyness, but ten to fif percent don’t.
This kind of world we live in may also contribute to an increase in the number of shy people since today there’s less face-to-face contact required in daily life. Some experts believe the cyberspace generation are accustomed to email, computer s, bank machines and other automated services and it means modern people are at the risk of failing to develop social skills.
Can Shyness Affect Career
A 1995 survey found that about 48% of the 800 respondents considered themselves shy. While many of us consider ourselves shy, not all of those who do allow it to define us. For example, I have always considered myself to be a shy person. However, when I took a quiz, which rates level of shyness, the results showed that I was moderately shy. W-hat this means is that, though I sometimes experience feelings associated with shyness, I have not allowed these feelings to keep me from pursuing my personal and professional goals.
However, there are still some people whose shyness gets in the way of their career development. Researchers have found that such people tend to begin their careers later than non-shy people. They are also more apt to refuse promotions. They choose careers that are less interpersonal and are more undecided about which field to pursue. Once in a career, shy people have a harder time developing a career identity -- an image of themselves as competent or successful within a career track.
While most of us feel nervous before a presentation, some people are so shy that they can’t attend parties or go on a dinner date. Others can’t talk 0n the phone to strangers, voice an opinion in a work or social setting or return things to a store because it involves confronting tile customer-service person. Some can’t even make eye contact. "For them, shyness is a cocoon (蚕茧 ) ," says Walker. "It’s safe and warm and quiet, but it can also be confining, dark and lonely."
Combat Shyness
One of the solutions to shyness is a greater understanding of its internal dynamics. It is important to note that a critical feature of shyness is a slowness to warm up. Shy people simply require extra time to adjust to unfamiliar or stressful situations, including even everyday conversations and social gatherings. They also need more time to the developmental barriers of life. The good news is that shy people ually achieve everything that everyone else does -- they date, marry, have children. The bad news is, it takes them a little longer.
An unfortunate consequence of the shy being on this delayed schedule is that they lack social support through many important life experiences. When they start dating and want to talk about first-date worries, for example, their peers will be talking about weddings. As a result, the shy may need to take an especially active role in finding others who are in their situation. One way is to build social support by starting groups of like-minded people. Another is to seek out existing groups of shy people, perhaps via the Internet. While technology often works against the shy, it can also lend them an unexpected helping hand.
The Successfully Shy
Every shy person believes shyness is a problem located exclusively within the self. But experts suggest that the solution to shyness lies outside the self. To break free of the prison of shyness, you must stop dwelling on your own insecurities and become more aware of people around you.
Experts have identified a group of people called the successfully, shy. Essentially, they recognize that they are shy. They develop an understanding of the nature and dynamics of shyness, its impact on the body, on cognitive processes and on behavior. And they take action based on that self- awareness. The successfully shy overcome their social anxiety by letting go of their self- consciousness, that inward focus of attention on the things they can’t do well (like tell a joke). They accept that they aren’t great at small talk or that they get so nervous in social situations that they can’t draw on what is inside their mind. Or that they are paying so much attention to their feelings that they don’t pay full attention to the person they’re talking to. In place of self- consciousness, they substitute self-awareness. Rather than becoming anxious about their silence in a conversation, they plan ahead of time to have something to say, or rehearse asking questions. They arrive early at parties to feel comfortable in their new setting. By contrast, less successful shy people arrive late in an effort to blend in. The fact is, these are the same kinds of strategies that non-shy people employ.
The successfully shy also take steps at the transpersonal level, getting involved in the lives of others. They start small, sure their day-to-day exchanges involve contact with other people. When they pick up a newspaper, for instance, they don’t just hand over their money. They focus on the seller, thanking him or her for the service. This creates a social environment favorable to positive interactions. Once the shy are more outwardly focused on the lives of other people, shyness no longer controls them.
The successfully shy don’t change who they are. They change the way they think and the actions they make. There is nothing wrong with being shy.
Some shy people may be misdiagnosed as having social anxiety disorder.