Overcome shyness

| Shyness is not necessarily a problem, it will depend on the degree of it. It is convenient to face situations, encounters slowly and gradually

A shy person tends to feel insecurity, helplessness or shame in novel social situations, when taking action before others or showing conversation or communication skills with others. It usually entails high nervousness and fear of not being up to the task, of being incompetent or inadequate, and of being rejected, criticized or disqualified by others.

But shyness is not necessarily a problem, since it depends on, among other things, the degree of it, the interference in the daily dynamics and the way in which the person solves each situation.

High shyness can significantly impoverish social life, opportunities for leisure and professional advancement and lead the person who suffers from it to high feelings of frustration, discouragement or irritability.

For this reason, many people with a certain degree of shyness want to overcome it to feel more comfortable and have a better time when they are surrounded by other people.

Practical tips to overcome shyness

• Bear in mind that through adequate and progressive coping with feared social situations, social skills can be gradually acquired, experience is accumulated and self-confidence is generated.
• On the contrary, by avoiding or postponing these exposures the risk is lower but, at the same time, it means getting stuck, not evolving or even increasing the feeling of incapacity and inadequacy.
• Carry out a slow and gradual coping, starting by encouraging encounters with well-known and more trusted people, and gradually moving on to encounters with less well-known people. With this, we will leave our “comfort zone” and we will obtain security about our abilities.
• Practice certain behaviors such as eye contact in conversations with others, or body language that denotes security.
• Dare to start conversations, introduce yourself to others, make compliments or ask questions and invitations; And all this, being oneself, doing and saying what fits with one's own style and daring to show oneself to others as one is.
• Faced with certain avoided or feared situations, such as a certain phone call or conversation, you should rehearse in advance what you are going to say. It is important to make a script and practice reading it aloud in front of a mirror or someone you trust before putting it into practice in the real situation. Also, one must visualize oneself performing that action successfully. Once all these steps have been carried out, you do not have to worry about the result, but rather you have to focus on the satisfaction of having done it without further ado. With practice and various experiences, the result usually improves.
• Find activities of interest and in which one can interact with other people, taking time to get to know them and gradually feel comfortable.
• Observe if one is being too self-critical and, in that case, consider what would be said to a good friend in the same situation. Surely, the level of criticism and demand will be reduced.
• Develop certain social skills such as and learn to properly accommodate the criticism received.
• Reaffirm yourself, focusing on successes. It is important to list your own qualities, love yourself and talk about yourself with love and respect, avoiding recriminations and insults.
• Learn to express your own thoughts and points of view to others and to defend your own needs, desires and emotions.
• If oneself, by their own means or through the support of those close to them, cannot overcome shyness and this makes a satisfactory daily dynamic impossible, it would be advisable to seek the professional help of a psychologist.

• This personality trait can hinder or even block personal and social relationships.
• It is not always a problem because it depends on the degree and what interferes in daily life and how the person deals with each situation.
• It is convenient to face situations, encounters ... slowly and gradually, to get out of the "comfort zone" and obtain more security.

Elena Killed

Specialist in Clinical Psychology