Long gone are the days when I suffered really badly from shyness myself (thank goodness!) but I do recall being very anxious around the opposite sex, and absolutely terrified of speaking in front of more than a couple of people at the same time. Now I feel I can relax and talk to anyone, but I do remember how awful it felt to suffer real shyness, which is why a) I can truly sympathise with shyness and b) I know you really can go from being very shy to very socially confident. Time, life events and regular self hypnosis finally wore out my shyness – and also paved the way for a public speaking career.
Helping to lift shyness
Our Overcome shyness and social anxiety download is, I’m pleased to say, really popular amongst the hypnosisdownloads.com customers. Shyness is such a universal problem (1) (although, of course, when it’s you that is suffering, you tend to feel it is just you) that we’re really pleased about the positive feedback we’ve had over the years from people who’ve overcome shyness helped by this download session.
Shy people and focus of attention
Shy people tend to focus on themselves (and their fear response) when they are in social situations and therefore they have less ‘spare capacity’ to focus on other people. It’s been found that shy people have less recall of the details of a social event than their more relaxed social gatherers (not surprisingly). Shyness is just a type of fear that is activated by being in certain, many, or (for some) all social events. If you are so shy that you feel terrified then, of course, you are not going to notice details about the social event it self.
As if being shy was not enough of a burden in itself, shyness can be compounded because the shy and socially anxious person, in their fear, can come across to others as aloof, rude, or inconsiderate – which is generally very far from the case. One shy man I helped lamented the fact that he could never recall people’s names or other details about them because his shyness always seemed to paralyse him with fear so that he couldn’t take in this information. Sadly, other people just thought he ‘couldn’t be bothered’ to remember them. He was able to transform his life with the help of hypnosis.
Shyness, stress and poor health
With the world population at 6.6. billion and rising, it’s hard to avoid other people if you are shy. Shyness activates the ‘fight or flight’ response each time social anxiety kicks in. Stress hormones flood the body and raise blood pressure. Being chronically shy is bad for health in the long term. One long term study found that shy men are 50% more likely to die from heart disease. The research (2) took other factors (smoking, high cholesterol, etc) into account. Shyness doesn’t just corrode physical well being, it also means shy people miss out on business, dating and friendship opportunities. Shyness can blight whole lives.
Shyness as an identity
The socially anxious sometimes feel that their shyness is just something they have to live with: ‘I’m just shy, and that’s all there is to it!’ But I have seen countless shy people overcome their shyness and learn to be comfortable with other people. Shyness is something you ‘do’, not something you ‘are’. Once this distinction is made, progress out of shyness can be rapid.
Lifting shyness with hypnosis
Hypnosis used well is a wonderful fast track treatment for shyness as it deals with the instinctive anxiety response. Like all the hypnosisdownload.com sessions, Overcome shyness and social anxiety is relaxing and comfortable, but has the power to life people out of shyness and place them on the path to social confidence. I actually wish I’d been able to listen to it 25 years ago.
Mark
Notes
1. How widespread is the condition of shyness? Interesting stats come from research conducted by Carducci and two other leading American psychologists, Dr Philip Zimbardo and Dr Lynne Henderson. The number of Americans who classified themselves as ‘chronically shy’ rose from about 40 per cent in the 1970s to about 50 per cent by 2000. Another 40 per cent said that they had been shy once but were no longer; 15 per cent suffered from situational shyness (shy only in certain settings, such as when meeting new people). Only 5 per cent reported never having experienced shyness in their lives.
2. The researchers, at Chicago’s Northwestern University, tracked the health of over 2,000 men over three decades. At the start of the study, the men, who were aged between 40 and 55, filled in questionnaires designed to set their levels of sociability and shyness. By the end of the study, 60 per cent had died and the analysts went to work. Comparing the questionnaire results with death certificate details revealed a clear link between shyness and heart disease. The shyest men were 50 per cent more likely to have died of a heart attack or stroke than the most outgoing men. This was true even when factors more commonly linked to heart disease such as smoking, high levels of cholesterol, and obesity were taken into account. There was, however, no link between sociability and other ailments.
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