Shyness is considered a personality trait, not a psychological condition or disorder, and it has varying degrees. But severe shy (1)______ people are sometimes diagnosed by psychologists as also having social anxiety disorder, or social phobia. Shyness becomes so severe (2)______ 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 syndromes (3)______ of this disorder at some point in their life. One of them, 5-year-old (4)______ Earla Dunbar, was virtually house-bound for six years during the 1990s. She was terrified to go outside, even get the mail, for fear that (5)______ she’d run into other people and that they will think the worst of her. In (6)______ such cases, cognitive-behavioral therapy and prescriptive drugs are (7)______ 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 (8)______ Americans in some given year. Unlike any other psychological (9)______ problems, social anxiety is well understood by the general public or (10)______ by medical and mental health care professionals. In fact, people with social anxiety are misdiagnosed almost 90% of the time.