
20 Ways to Attack Shyness - terpua
http://thinksimplenow.com/happiness/20-ways-to-attack-shyness/
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jmatt
I was shy when I was young (until mid way through college). My shyness was
labeled as a problem. My family and friends said that I should enjoy going to
basketball games and meeting new friends, going to parties, being social, etc.

As I grew up I realized that I really didn't enjoy what most people in the
world enjoy. I don't enjoy going out to bars, clubs, big sports events,
dancing, etc. I don't like attending parties and networking with new people. I
really don't enjoy meeting random people while traveling. There are of course
exceptions. But in general I've accepted the fact that it's OK to put myself
in situations that I am most comfortable in.

I think a few things need to be clear to people that are shy now. First there
is nothing wrong with not enjoying excessively social environments, there are
(likely) other people out there who enjoy the same things you do. Second, it
is OK to choose your friends and surround yourself with other people that
stimulate and interest you. One really good insightful friend is worth 1000
contacts from all these social events that everyone thinks we should be
attending. Third, ditch all the negative people around you because they will
only add to any shyness. Lastly, you only live once. This has been a
surprising motivator when deciding to attend or get involved in some social
environments.

I think a blog like this is OK but it is also misleading. There are people who
tend to be introverts, and that is OK. Our society does not encourage or allow
introversion. It is considered "unhealthy" by the psychology and medical
types. I argue that this is not always the case. A person can be introverted
and private and do just about anything. For example: I know a circumstance
where an introverted private person owns and runs a medium size (1000+
employee) company. I have seen him at social events where he attends (quietly)
for whatever the least amount of time is to be polite and then he'll leave. I
know another introverted private person who is a retired Vice President at a
DOW 30 company (his division did $300+ million a year revenue). He is an
excellent communicator with his core team and in small meetings or one on one.
He, to this day, still struggles and is uncomfortable giving speeches or
attending large events. It is absolutely possible to be successful and still
be uncomfortable in large social situations.

Addressing a self esteem or self consciousness problem is important. It'll in
fact make life easier and increase the likelihood of success. But it will not
make you less shy or less introverted. It will make you better able to deal
with those feelings. It'll allow you to put yourself in a situation that you
wouldn't otherwise be in. But from my experience you will just be able to deal
with being uncomfortable better than before.

Some additional background:

In college I decided I was missing out on something. That maybe there was
something to all this socializing. So I went through similar steps to properly
socialize myself and fend off my shyness. I began to attend house parties
(even though I don't drink or smoke). I began to attend university clubs. I
went to more spectator sporting events and extra curricular sports. Eventually
I took on leadership rolls in a few different clubs. Later on I ran for senate
at my university and was a senator for two years. By the time I finished
college, my experiment complete, I decided that I would avoid uncomfortably
large social situations whenever possible. There was no huge advantage to
socializing on a large scale.

Now-a-days I'm a software developer. I lead a small group of people at a small
company. Occasionally I have to lead meetings with 6-12 people in attendance.
Rarely I'll get called on to participate at larger meetings. I'm still
uncomfortable but I just do it.

On a personal note I socialize with a handful of close friends. I avoid most
parties, clubs, bars, loud crazy restaurants, etc whenever possible. I prefer
long in depth conversations with a few people. Done are the days where I'd
meet 20 new people and talk to them about fluff. I go to dinner at places that
provide some semblance of privacy and allow conversation. Occasionally I'll
meet a new person and they end up being a close friend (which is great!). I no
longer feel any societal pressure to attend uncomfortable social situations.

I think the best words of advice when it comes to shyness are "Just do it" and
"You only live once".

------
aspirant
I had an 'anxiety disorder' in my early high school years (mid 90's). I don't
just mean around girls either. I would actually get butterflies whenever the
monotonous redialing of my modem would be broken by that glorious screeching
and scratching sound that meant I was finally connecting to the coolest local
bbs. You know... the one where I was on track to make sysop one day; where I
was clearly gaining the upper hand in a few threads of great import; where the
girl I (and everyone else) liked might have accepted my marriage proposal in
LORD.

The family doctor gave me some pills to take as needed, said they'd calm me
down. And they did. Before long I forgot all about the pills and didn't seem
to need them anymore, online or off. I got some contacts, my acne went away, I
got a skater/hacker identity and a girlfriend. About a year later I found out
they had been sugar pills. A total placebo.

So I got tricked out of my shyness.

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bkovitz
All this psychologizing about shyness: poor self-esteem, self-consciousness,
withholding oneself from others out of selfishness, etc. My own shyness, and
that of other shy people I know, has been due to something completely
different, and much more straightforward:

    
    
      Not knowing the social conventions.
    

What is it that people are doing at parties? What are they talking about? Why
are they doing this? It seems incomprehensible. With someone I haven't met or
barely know, it's hard to find a way to say what comes to mind in a way that a
total stranger would relate to. With someone I know well, I can say what comes
to mind, because there's a lot of shared context. This is the common pattern
among introverts: quiet with strangers, endlessly talkative with close
friends. And why is that? Because with close friends, you have the shared
context and conventions needed to have the kind of conversation that makes
sense to you.

(Please, no pity or advice. I've worked on my shyness and gotten good enough
at connecting with strangers to occasionally even pick up women on the street
--a skill every hacker entrepreneur should have. I'm just pointing out that
the psychologizing is wrong. The path out of shyness, at least for a lot of us
geeks, is simply to learn to play the social game, not to address some sort of
self-esteem issue.)

~~~
jkkramer
You seem to be framing the issue as a rational rather than emotional problem
-- i.e., not knowing the social conventions.

I don't buy it. Stick an extroverted people person and an introverted shy guy
in an unfamiliar social situation (in a foreign country, say). The way they
deal with it will differ greatly. The extrovert will plow ahead, not worry too
much about making mistakes, and figure out how to play the social game pretty
quickly. The introvert will probably be too scared of doing things wrong to
even start.

Learning to play the social game is not hard: make eye contact, open your
mouth, and start talking. Building the courage to actually do it _is_ hard.
That's crux for most shy people (as it was for me).

If you're out there talking to people and still can't find shared context,
then you're not shy, you're just talking to the wrong people. Time to seek out
different social gatherings.

For those that have difficulty learning from social interactions (autistic
spectrum folks), things may admittedly be different. This is outside my
experience so I can't speak to it.

~~~
bkovitz
Indeed I am framing this as a rational rather than emotional problem.

I think you made a very good point about the difference in the way extraverts
and introverts enter new social situations. That really does make a huge
difference: just dive in, mess up, and adjust (a lot like, say, running a
start-up). That will get the learning process going. I think there's another
element, though: that incomprehension of "lite" social interaction.

Regarding the courage hypothesis, here's how I've often heard it put: "Oh,
don't be afraid, don't care what other people think, just say what you really
want to say." To me, this misses what's happening. What's really happening is
simply not having a clue how to participate. A dial tone on the brain. The
reason, if I pick up a guitar, I don't play music, isn't because I'm afraid
to, but because I don't know how to play guitar. I tried going to bars a bunch
(I seem to have lots of social courage), but I didn't really get anywhere
until some friends explained various social protocols: posture, how to make
physical contact, how to pick out clothes, what to _not_ talk about
(decorators in Python, cryonics), etc.

Here's a weird piece of evidence: extraverts have exactly the same feeling of
disorientation in our world. Get a strong extravert into a conversation that
pursues something in depth (not so much breadth), and they get a dial tone on
the brain, too. They quickly bail, the same way introverts bail out of social
situations.

Hmm... mild autism. Maybe that's what I've got (and many other shy, geeky
people). That's a new angle, and it might be right.

Another possibility: optimal stimulation level.

~~~
rms
Mild autism is too harsh of a term for most shy, geeky people I think. Things
like this in psychology are a bell curved spectrum. Being a little to the left
or right doesn't mean you are autistic, it just means you have more
characteristics that are associated with one side of the spectrum or another.

------
jpeterson
I had been shy as a teen and got over it. But since my last girlfriend left
around a year ago (my first serious relationship), I've been thrown back into
the breach.

I had forgotten how diabolical this torment was, actually. Inability to
connect with any other person. No interest in meeting new people, despite a
persistent, stinging loneliness. It's really fascinating to revisit this state
as an adult. And painful.

~~~
xlnt
If you're so shy, how'd you manage to post personal information in a public
forum, like this?

~~~
jpeterson
Somehow I feel comfortable here. Not sure why. I wouldn't have posted this
anywhere else.

~~~
edw519
I understand completely. I'm here every day, reading and posting all the time.
I do this nowhere else. No facebook, no friendfeed, no twitter, just this and
email.

Then I go to a cocktail party or happy hour and stand in the corner.

~~~
rms
congrats on the gmail!

I had a very poignant moment when I started forwarding my Pitt email to gmail
and realized it was the email address I was going to have for the rest of my
life.

~~~
edw519
_I was going to have for the rest of my life_

I hope so. That's what I thought when I switched to yahoo mail.

But when you start missing emails because you're getting thousands of spam per
day, it's time to move on.

You'd think someone smarter than me would have fixed this scourge by now.

------
wallflower
Excellent article. Tips (#11,#12,#14,#16) are key. Especially #16 ("Practice
being in uncomfortable situations") - the idea is that what is uncomfortable
for you is very personal and very real and what you need to work on...

Daily practice makes shyness diminish. As someone who has been aware of his
shyness all his life, I think it really simmers down to: selfishness (they're
thinking about me [no they're not]), perfectionism (what do I say? if I clam
up say nothing, I won't be hurt [umm?]), and most importantly, expectations, I
hope they like me [twisted logic: if they don't like me, then I'll be hurt. So
I won't talk to them, and I'll be in my shell and protected]

Great quote from one of the commenters:

“The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you
forget to be afraid” \- Claudia Lady Bird Johnson

~~~
kirubakaran
Your tips like these are awesome.

I should have thanked you earlier as well. edw519 and I followed
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119006> in SS'08 and got great results.
Thanks a lot.

~~~
wallflower
You're welcome.

------
Xlp-Thlplylp
The good news is that you'll never get over it. In my youth I developed
severe, disfiguring calcifications of the scalp, which required surgery. The
result was suboptimal, I still have numerous lesions left, and I face a scalp
resection to get rid of all of them. I also had a jaw deformity--I didn't feel
free to smile in public, until I was in my mid thirties. I was shy 30 years
ago, and today I am proud to announce that despite the setbacks, despite never
getting married and having a family, and despite the opportunity and economic
costs, which have been considerable, and despite the lost time, which cannot
be recovered, I am slightly less withdrawn today than I was then. My attitude
did undergo a subtle but significant improvement.

------
davidw
I had a great time with Salsa dancing. In the right place, you dance with lots
of different girls all evening long. Since you can take classes, you can get
reasonably good at it so as to make a good impression. Lots of girls will
dance, some won't, but because each song only lasts so long, you can meet lots
of people. Furthermore, it's fun in its own right, nice music, doesn't cost
much, and you can learn a surprising amount about someone from 2 or 3 minutes
of dancing with them.

~~~
jkkramer
I was going to post the same thing. Another plus is that the salsa community
is filled with classy and smart people (it takes a surprising amount of
brainpower to dance well -- many of the best leaders are techies).

------
spydez
One of my biggest problems is with #18. I don't know any social places that
are 'comfortable' to me (heck, I get nervous when I go to new IRC chat
rooms...), so I don't really have a place to practice any of the other things
they talk about.

~~~
jmatt
you are comfortable on these forums. Or at least comfortable enough to post
comments.

~~~
spydez
Yes. After a year(ish) of lurking with no account, and 130 days of having an
account here, I have finally settled down to a state where I type out at least
1/10 the comments I think of, post at least 1/5 those I type out, and leave
the majority of those undeleted!

And after working with my current co-workers for a few months, I finally have
courage to say something once in a while.

But attrition doesn't work in most social settings... It's a difficult way to
make friends (though the friends you do eventually make are good) - I made one
friend in 4.5 years of college. And it's downright horrid for getting
girlfriends...

~~~
jmatt
I have many of the same feelings and the only difference is I've learned to
deal with it.

I think part of what wasn't communicated in the article was that those
tendencies don't necessarily go away. People just learn to cope with them
better. Or at least that is how it is for me.

------
raffi
Throughout most of my life I was an extrovert except I was frustrated that I
didn't know how to bring new people into my life. And I also dealt with that
nervousness of being a stranger in a room (bar, party, whatever)--then I
discovered a few things that helped:

1) ask open ended questions

2) speak in the 'I' perspective... none of the "you know how it is when you do
this"... "when I did this..."

3) take an interest in the other person; I made a goal to find out something
special about the person in every conversation with someone new; taking an
interest in the other person completely ignoring myself really made a
difference.

------
sebg
This is related to this thread. I followed the advice given as well as my own
advice. -> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=169295>

------
gruseom
"Attack Shyness"? Shyness seems unlikely to respond well to being attacked.
I'd rather say something like "address shyness".

The point may seem minor, but wording affects how you frame a problem, which
in turn has a big effect on the solution. In my experience, when working with
parts of oneself, it's better not to frame things oppositionally.

------
tstegart
Read "The Game" and then "The Mystery Method." Seriously. And I think its not
too much to say that there are side benefits besides becoming less shy after
reading them.

------
jamesjyu
Point #15 is important. I've found that just going out and being as social as
possible with many different people is essential in honing your own social
skills.

Don't sit at home on the couch (or chair, just coding). You need to get out
there in order to succeed.

------
mooneater
My wife calls shyness a form of selfishness, as we decide not to share of
ourselves with others.

~~~
olavk
It is probably not a good strategy to blame yourself of being selfish if you
are already shy, since that will just hurt your self-evaluation and make you
more shy.

Better to realize that other (including non-shy) people are just as self-
absorbed as you are, and therefore wont bother to judge you - they are far to
busy judging themselves and wondering how other people will judge them! :)

------
babul
Finding the advice also good as I learn to fail more often.

------
syntaxfree
I've been slashing the recent trend of "shyness coaching" articles on
news.ycombinator, but the article is actually kinda good, as far as pop
psychology goes.

------
quellhorst
My 3 rules

* Be your true self

* Practice socializing everywhere you are

* Don't care what other people think

