SHYNESS: CHARACTERISTICS, CAUSES AND HOW TO OVERCOME IT - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

The shyness is a behavioral pattern characterized by communication difficulties and social inhibition. However, it is not a disease, and it can be overcome if the right skills are developed.

Shyness is a stable behavior tendency characterized by not being noticed, going unnoticed and not expressing oneself normally, which normally limits social development.

Shy people find it difficult to express their opinions, establish conversations, show their personality in public and function in a carefree way in social settings.

It is very important to mention that shyness is not a disease or a psychological disorder, it is simply a personality trait and a specific behavior pattern that many people have.

Can it have negative consequences?

Being shy can lower a person's skill level, force them to try harder to perform simple social activities, and in some cases can lead to problems with self-esteem or personal satisfaction.

This is not to say that being shy is a negative and damaging personality trait and being outgoing is a positive and beneficial personality trait. Extroversion can cause certain problems or discomfort in the same way that shyness can.

The "quit" of the question lies in how shyness is managed, how we adapt it in our way of being and behaving, and what effects it causes us on a daily basis. Poor management of shyness can lead to certain problems and dissatisfactions, and can lead to the appearance of a social phobia.

Differences with social phobia

Social phobia is a radical, extreme and maladaptive fear towards social situations, in which high levels of anxiety are experienced when they cannot be avoided.

In shyness this does not happen, so the person can function correctly despite the anxiety or nervousness that they may have in certain social situations.

However, it is very important that shy people who are not satisfied with their social functioning, learn to manage their shyness to lower their anxiety levels and acquire an optimal relational style.

Causes

There are quite a few discrepancies when deciding what the source of shyness tends to be.

There are authors who defend that they are innate personality traits that are possessed throughout life and there are authors who defend that they are styles of behavior acquired during childhood and adolescence. Most likely it is a mixture of personal traits and experiences.

However, despite the fact that shyness is an attribute of the personality, that is, shyness is part of the way of being of shy people, this does not mean that it cannot be reversed.

To overcome your shyness, you don't have to change your way of being. You don't have to start being an outgoing person and totally opposed to who you are right now.

To overcome your shyness, what you have to do is know yourself and your way of acting well, so that you are able to properly manage your withdrawal and ensure that it does not alter your social functioning.

10 steps to overcome shyness

1. Analyze your shyness

As we have said, the first step to overcome shyness is to know yourself well and to know your shyness even better.

Stop to think and analyze how your shyness works. How and when does shyness appear? What actions does it prevent you from taking? What feelings do you have in those moments? What general idea do you have about your shyness? How do you feel about that?

Take a pencil and paper and make a column with each of these questions. Later try to answer them and write as much information as possible about each one of them.

This information will help you face and delimit the problem, know how your shyness works and have greater control over it during the following steps.

2. Accept the way you are

The second step you must take is to build a positive attitude to overcome your shyness. This attitude should be based on accepting your way of being and therefore your shyness.

As we have said, being shy is not a negative attribute, it is not a pathology or a dysfunctional aspect of your personality. It is true that extreme shyness can lead you to suffer bigger problems such as a social phobia.

However, having an opposite way of being, being excessively outgoing, can also lead you to suffer from a histrionic or narcissistic personality disorder. This shows that the problem is not being shy or not being shy, but mismanaging your shyness.

This should be borne in mind since the attitude you should follow throughout the process should not be based on a desire to completely exterminate your shyness or acquire a way of being the opposite.

Shyness should not be the part of your personality that you want to eradicate but the part of your way of being that you want to learn to manage.

3. Detail the situations in which you would like to be less shy

Subsequently, you must specify which are the situations in which your shyness manifests itself and you notice that because of it you do not function as you would like.

Make a list of all the activities in which you notice that you are extremely shy, you cannot communicate adequately, it is very difficult for you to express yourself or you do not relate as you would like.

These situations will be basically social and if you analyze it well you can think of many:

When you are with friends having a drink, in work meetings, when you have to expose or explain something in public, when you meet your neighbor in the elevator, when you have to ask for the bill in a restaurant…

Try to make a list of all the situations in which you notice that your shyness has an excessive influence on the way you behave. Then order them from highest to lowest relevance according to your criteria.

4. Detect your automatic thoughts

Once you have defined all the situations, memorize them well and keep them in mind. And this next step is to detect the automatic thoughts that you have in those situations.

Automatic thoughts are those things that come to mind automatically at a certain moment, and of which we are rarely aware.

We are not aware because when they appear automatically we do not stop to think about them, therefore it comes to our head, we ignore them and we continue with our lives. These thoughts can be such as:

"If I call the waiter, maybe he won't hear me, the people at the next table will and they'll think I'm ridiculous." This thought that appears in your mind makes it difficult for you to ask for the bill in a restaurant.

"If I say something to my neighbor in the elevator, she will think that the topic I have raised is absurd." This thought can make you choose to keep quiet.

"If I intervene in the conversation of my friends they will think that my comment is uninteresting and they will not listen to me." This thinking can lead you to not participate in conversations.

So, what you will have to do is be very attentive in those situations in which your shyness is manifested, to be able to realize these thoughts and later write them down.

5. Work to change them

Once we have the automatic thoughts registered, the goal is for you to be able to change them. The first step for you to do so is to realize that the thoughts that come to your head have no certainty of being true.

That is, you have no evidence that if you say something in the elevator your neighbor thinks you are ridiculous, or that your friends do it, or the people at the next table when you ask for the bill.

All these automatic thoughts do is increase your shyness and prevent you from relating properly. If everyone had these kinds of thoughts, no one would relate properly.

Once you see clearly that these thoughts do not have to be true, change them for more appropriate ones. For example:

"If I ask for the bill and the waiter does not hear me and the people at the next table do, they will think that the waiter has a lot of work and is not serving his customers well."

Write down an alternative thought for each of the automatic thoughts you recorded in point 4.

6. Use alternative thoughts

Once you have an alternative thought for each automatic thought, read them several times to clearly remember the association between the two.

In this way, from now on, every time you are in any of the situations that you have described in point 3 and you detect one of the automatic thoughts that you have registered in point 4, you should immediately think about its alternative thought described in point 5.

So every time you are in a situation where your first reaction is shyness, your automatic thought that manifests your shyness will no longer be irrefutable and you will have to deal with an alternative thought.

This fact will make you have a greater capacity in each situation to properly assess what could happen if you express yourself and therefore the chances that you will do so will increase.

7. Expose yourself to the simplest situations

To put your training in thoughts into practice, it is convenient that you first expose yourself to those situations that give you less cut.

In this way, if you do the exercise of modifying automatic thinking in simple situations, you will most likely dare to express yourself and be able to overcome shyness.

8. Change your beliefs

Once you are able to modify your automatic thoughts, you should focus on modifying your more general beliefs.

You must detect all your beliefs such as the following: "I am shy and that is why I do not relate", "If I express myself too much they will think that I am ridiculous", "If I show excessively how I am, people will not like me", etc. Once you have detected them all, verify their accuracy.

Why do they have to be true if I have already managed to relate properly in various situations? Why would these beliefs be appropriate if no one has ever told me that I am ridiculous?

Look for the reason why you hold these beliefs and you will see that you have really already started to leave your shyness behind.

9. Relax

Although the exercises we have done so far will help you lose your shyness in many situations, you will surely continue to experience anxiety and nervousness in many of them.

Therefore, if you notice that sometimes you continue to get too nervous, it is convenient that you learn to relax. You can do the following exercise for about 10 minutes when anxiety takes over.

1. Breathe deeply with your diaphragm, noticing how the air moves in and out of your belly.
2. In each deep breath, repeat a word or phrase that transmits calm such as “everything is fine” or “I'm calm”, and imagine a

   calm landscape.

3. If the situation allows you, you can play a relaxation song in the background with the volume low.

10. Expose yourself gradually

Finally, through all the strategies discussed in the previous points, gradually expose yourself to different situations.

Obviously, if you start with the situation that causes you the most anxiety, it will cost you much more than if you start with the easiest ones and, as you work well in them, you continue with the most difficult ones.

For this you can use the list you made in point 3 and intentionally expose yourself to all situations progressively.

And how have you done it to overcome your shyness? Share it to help readers. Thank you very much!

References

1. Carnwath T. Miller D. Cognitive Therapies. In: Carnwath T. Miller D. Behavioral Psychotherapy in Primary Care: A Practical Manual. 1st Edition. Martínez Roca. Barcelona, ​​1989.
2. Elisardo Becoña et al. Treatment guides and guidelines for clinical psychological practice: A view from the clinic. Roles of the Psychologist. Madrid, 2004.
3. Espada, JP, Olivares, J. and Mendez, FX (2005). Psychological therapy. Practical cases. Madrid: Pyramid.
4. Pérez Álvarez, M., Fernández Hermida, JR, Fernández Rodríguez, C. and Amigó Vazquez, I. (2003). Guide to effective psychological treatments. Vol I, II and III. Madrid: Pyramid.