Post by anticrank on Nov 24, 2011 13:14:01 GMT -5
The elements of shyness I think are as follows. I just want to spew forth what I think causes shyness and I hope for some of you, this helps you to understand what areas you may have difficulty with.
1. Self-conscious feelings, i.e. fear that if I act like x,y,z the other person will think I'm unfriendly, boring or whatever (which a lot of conventional advice can actually WORSEN). It's those annoying pressurizing thoughts.
2. Bad conditioning; This arises from bad experience and can also be supplemented by bad advice and lack of evidence to the contrary. For instance, if a guy has only dealt with attractive girls that are stuck-up and unapproachable, and/or has never seen any evidence to the contrary, he may get a pre-concieved idea that ALL girls he finds attractive are like that. Or a young woman who's only ever had dealings with guys that just want to get in with her may believe that ALL young men are like that. The solution here is to find BELIEVABLE evidence and encouraging news from the contrary. The most ideal way round this of course would be to find people that shatter those pre-concieved ideas. Other common pre-concieved ideas that may develop are;
Most people my age (teen young adult) are hard to talk to
Women don't like shy guys
Most people my age are not interested in what I'm into
3. Various insecurities; these can take the form of feeling ashamed about any aspect of your self, lifestyle or interests or other things, feelings of being different; for e.g. if you're in a group where you don't feel you fit in or can be yourself. I think the trick here is to see ways in which you can be accepted. The ultimate solution here is to have people around you who accept you for who you are and to be in situations and doing things that foster a sense of wellbeing. If it's not possible I think the second best solution is to reframe those aspects of your life or yourself that you are worried about, ideally with the help of a kind, trusting person you can talk to. Forget about the idea that you need to become something to please others. We all have little worries about what new people would think about those aspects of ourselves, we all have worries about how 'normal' we are. Learning to accept our own behaviours, personality traits and interests is key to real self-esteem, in my view anyway. Everybody has insecurities. There is no 'minimum required standard' of security you have to achieve before people will like you, forget about the idea of having to 'qualify'. It's one of those things that gets easier. I think it needs to be elaborated on this when I have the time.
4. Social skills; such as not being sure of how to start a conversation, how to go from starting conversation to finding things in common and that load of jazz. I think that the more you know how to do each of these things, the easier it'll become. I'll try to elaborate my thoughts on this at a later date when I have the time. I think that this, in conjunction with feelings of self-consciousness are the biggest obstacles many shy people face. This is what people mean by confidence, how sure you are on how to do things. Confidence is not the ability to show off and impress, or prove your worth, it's how sure you are in your ability to carry out a skill. For example, an apprentice electrician may not feel confident enough to wire a switchboard because he's not quite yet certain how to go about it. Confidence is that feeling of knowing what to say and how to deal with a variety of social situations. Again, I will elaborate later.
5. Comfort zone; If you are not comfortable in certain situations, it does take a while to get used to them. Take for-instance a guy who has hardly any social life and is very isolated, put him in a highly intensive party and see what happens. I'm sure he won't quite feel himself, his anxiety level may be bit higher than normal, he may have difficulty being himself. That's NOT because he's bad socially, that's because he's simply not used to it, it's far outside his comfort zone, even if he isn't feeling self-conscious about what people think of him and is confident in starting conversations and getting to know people. Take a child riding a bike in traffic, or learning to drive for the first time, see what I mean? So do bear in mind that nervousness happens naturally when we're outside of our comfort zone.
That's my take on the elements that contribute to shyness. I hope that it all helps to clarify things.
1. Self-conscious feelings, i.e. fear that if I act like x,y,z the other person will think I'm unfriendly, boring or whatever (which a lot of conventional advice can actually WORSEN). It's those annoying pressurizing thoughts.
2. Bad conditioning; This arises from bad experience and can also be supplemented by bad advice and lack of evidence to the contrary. For instance, if a guy has only dealt with attractive girls that are stuck-up and unapproachable, and/or has never seen any evidence to the contrary, he may get a pre-concieved idea that ALL girls he finds attractive are like that. Or a young woman who's only ever had dealings with guys that just want to get in with her may believe that ALL young men are like that. The solution here is to find BELIEVABLE evidence and encouraging news from the contrary. The most ideal way round this of course would be to find people that shatter those pre-concieved ideas. Other common pre-concieved ideas that may develop are;
Most people my age (teen young adult) are hard to talk to
Women don't like shy guys
Most people my age are not interested in what I'm into
3. Various insecurities; these can take the form of feeling ashamed about any aspect of your self, lifestyle or interests or other things, feelings of being different; for e.g. if you're in a group where you don't feel you fit in or can be yourself. I think the trick here is to see ways in which you can be accepted. The ultimate solution here is to have people around you who accept you for who you are and to be in situations and doing things that foster a sense of wellbeing. If it's not possible I think the second best solution is to reframe those aspects of your life or yourself that you are worried about, ideally with the help of a kind, trusting person you can talk to. Forget about the idea that you need to become something to please others. We all have little worries about what new people would think about those aspects of ourselves, we all have worries about how 'normal' we are. Learning to accept our own behaviours, personality traits and interests is key to real self-esteem, in my view anyway. Everybody has insecurities. There is no 'minimum required standard' of security you have to achieve before people will like you, forget about the idea of having to 'qualify'. It's one of those things that gets easier. I think it needs to be elaborated on this when I have the time.
4. Social skills; such as not being sure of how to start a conversation, how to go from starting conversation to finding things in common and that load of jazz. I think that the more you know how to do each of these things, the easier it'll become. I'll try to elaborate my thoughts on this at a later date when I have the time. I think that this, in conjunction with feelings of self-consciousness are the biggest obstacles many shy people face. This is what people mean by confidence, how sure you are on how to do things. Confidence is not the ability to show off and impress, or prove your worth, it's how sure you are in your ability to carry out a skill. For example, an apprentice electrician may not feel confident enough to wire a switchboard because he's not quite yet certain how to go about it. Confidence is that feeling of knowing what to say and how to deal with a variety of social situations. Again, I will elaborate later.
5. Comfort zone; If you are not comfortable in certain situations, it does take a while to get used to them. Take for-instance a guy who has hardly any social life and is very isolated, put him in a highly intensive party and see what happens. I'm sure he won't quite feel himself, his anxiety level may be bit higher than normal, he may have difficulty being himself. That's NOT because he's bad socially, that's because he's simply not used to it, it's far outside his comfort zone, even if he isn't feeling self-conscious about what people think of him and is confident in starting conversations and getting to know people. Take a child riding a bike in traffic, or learning to drive for the first time, see what I mean? So do bear in mind that nervousness happens naturally when we're outside of our comfort zone.
That's my take on the elements that contribute to shyness. I hope that it all helps to clarify things.