overcoming shyness… with SCIENCE!

Now why didn’t I think of that? An article in LiveScience talks about the roots of shyness and possible treatments.

Carducci says that despite beliefs to the contrary, shyness is not completely hardwired. This is because shyness requires a sense of self—which develops only after about 18 months of age. It involves feelings of excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation, he explained.

“Shy people operate as if thy have a mirror in front of them all the time,” he told LiveScience.

[...]People might try imagining themselves in different social situations while taking slow, deep breaths to keep calm. They can also work to slowly expand their comfort zone, Carducci said. He suggested volunteering as a good way to do this. “When you volunteer, [people] don’t really care your level of skill; they’re just after your time, so there’s no critical self-evaluation,” he explained.

Okay, so it’s not exactly a specific regimen to follow, but there are still some great tips for sky people in there. I plan to try some of them out myself…

One thought on “overcoming shyness… with SCIENCE!

  1. It involves feelings of excessive self-consciousness, negative self-evaluation and negative self-preoccupation, he explained.

    I disagree. In my specific case at least, shyness stemmed from intense introspection and a “completionist” philosophy that required me to learn everything possible about a new situation/person/system before using/talking to/working with it.

    Implying that shyness is always the result of negativity is misguided and misleading.

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