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 adult. 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 fifteen 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
games, 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 making 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 master the developmental barriers of life. The good news
is that shy people eventually 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, making 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. It is advisable for the shy to turn to the Internet for like-minded people and ______