Common Traits of a Shy Person
Passive Vs. Active.
If you are letting a situation happen to you, then you are passive. If you are interacting in the situation, you are active. That simple. It’s that cut and dry. Do you want your life to change, then you have to be the one to change it. Will this book change it? No. Will any other book change it? No. Will watching videos online about how to deal with shyness change your life? No. It’s the information you glenn from these books and media that you put into use that will actually change it. If I watch a video on how to change a tire, i may know the actually mechanics of it, but it is not until you put it into practice that you will know how to do it. It isn’t until you actually go out there and do it, that you can fully understand it. The point of this book is to actually have you get out there. Get out of your head. If you want some feel good book that promises to be a magical pill, than this book isn’t for you.
Split Focus
When I was speaking to someone, I found I was in one of three places: 1)Trying to think what the other person or people were thinking about me 2)Trying to think about how I come across to other people 3)Anticipating what I was going to say.
All of these options took me right out of the moment. At some point you have to give up a little control and realize there are things in life you cannot control. You can never control what other people think, so why try?
Living in Your Head
If you’re shy, you probably spend most of your time in your head. Most of the time you’re dealing with you own thoughts. You're so wrapped up in your own thoughts that you don’t notice the people around you.
Easily Overstimulated
If you’re shy, then you are probably overstimulated easily. In a crown. In a busy area.
Exercise: Observe Your Thoughts
This is something I found helps me. Your feelings are completely internal. You feel something because you allow yourself to feel it. Most of your thoughts are automatic. (See ANTs). You don’t control them. You can however control whether or not you follow them. Don’t follow them. Imagine you walk by graffiti on a wall. It says “You’re stupid” Would you think to yourself “wow. That wall is right”. No, you would notice it and move on. You may even think, Why would someone do that? Why spend all that effort on something like that? It’s the same thing with following your thoughts. They aren’t part of you. Your thoughts lead to emotions. All your emotions are internal.
ANTS
ANT’s or Automatic Negative Thoughts. We’ve all experienced them at some point. They’re the negative thoughts that come out of nowhere. You don’t ask for them, they just appear. Hence the “automatic” part of the name. The thing is, you don’t have to believe them. THey arise in your brain and it is your choice to follow them. It is your choice to not follow them. The first step to not following them is to be aware of them. Be aware that this negative though serves no purpose. And doesn’t need to be followed any further. You need to label these thoughts. Now I know labels are kind of frowned upon in life, but in this case it’s perfectly acceptable. In fact, encouraged. Labels help to take the bite out of these negative thoughts. They make them easy to Identify and a lot less intimidating.
Overthinking
If you’re anything like me, you like to overthink everything. You take the most minor interaction and blow it up into something it is not. You see a coworker while you’re out running errands, You say hello, but they don’t respond. Most likely they didn’t hear you. But what I would do was assume they were mad at me. Then I’d assume they were going to go into work and tell everyone how much they didn’t like me. Now everyone at work is going to agree with them and I’d be an outcast. A pariah.
Catastrophizing
If you’re anything like me, you think in black & white. More specifically, you lean to the negative side. You see someone you slightly know at the grocery store. It may be a friend of a friend or someone you recognize from work. You see them, but they don’t say anything. Now I’m going to tell you my previous train of thought that would have occured before. Buckle up. They hate me That is why they didn’t talk to me. Why would they? I’m kind of a loser. They go back to our mutual friends or coworkers and they’ll tell them what a loser I am. Then they’ll all think I’m a loser. That’s a typical interaction with me. I’d never consider the fact that the person maybe just didn’t see me. It also didn’t occur to me that I didn’t even say anything to get their attention. Instead of walking over and talking to them, I waited for them to come to me. In this case, I was being selfish. This was the perfect storm of shyness. Waiting for someone else to make the first move. Trying to predict what others were thinking. Thinking of myself and not others. Thinking in black & white terms.
Negative Self Talk
If someone talked to you the way you talked to yourself, would you still be friends with them? Shy and socially anxious people tend to have a very negative inner monologue. As long as you are aware of this, then you can change it.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt describes the emotional side as the “Elephant” and the logical side as the “Rider”. If you look at a rider on an elephant, it looks as though the rider is in charge. Is he really though. If that elephant decided to do something, do you really think the little man on top of the elephant could stop him? No. Let’s be real. That elephant is going to do what he wants. Then how does that work? How does the rider control the elephant? He doesn’t. He can only point it in the right direction. This metaphor is like your emotions. Can you stop your emotions? No. Can you stop your inner monologue? No. Can you point your emotions and thoughts in a more productive direction? Absolutely. And that’s what I hope to help you do with the below exercises.
Attributing Thoughts
One thing that always tripped me up was trying to imagine what other people were thinking of me
Exercise: Squishing ANTS
Automatic Negative Thoughts or ANTS. There those little pests that pop up and tell you that you’re not good enough or you can do something. Who hasn’t woken up in the morning and thought to yourself “Why did I agree to do this” or “What if this person doesn’t like me”?
This exercise entails “squishing” these ANT’s. Everytime one of these negative thoughts pops up, just ask yourself, is this true? Does this person really hate me forever because I made a joke that they didn’t find funny?
Looking for Permission
This falls under the category of being permissive. How many times have you been in a conversation and you waited around until someone to talk to you. I did the same. I’d always wait passively by until someone actually talked to me. It wasn’t until years later that I realized I should be contributing and not just waiting by.
Expecting Perfection
Analysis Paralysis. This is when you over analyze a situation so much, that you are essentially paralyzed because of the amount of information you've taken in. You're buried by information. You have to realize that there is no such thing as perfect. Sometimes you will tell a joke and it won’t land. People won't laugh? Will you die of embarrassment? No. Life goes on. It happens to everyone.