Speaking of Psychology - Born bashful? Learning how to manage shyness (SOP41)

Episode Date: September 16, 2016

Have you ever felt awkward, worried or tense during social encounters, especially with people you don’t know? We’ve probably all felt shy at one time or another, but for some people the shyness is so intense it can keep them from interacting with others even when they want or need to – leading to problems in relationships and even at work. In this episode, Bernardo Carducci, PhD, gives advice and tips to shy people who want to understand and manage their reticence. APA is currently seeking proposals for APA 2020, click here to learn more https://convention.apa.org/proposals Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've all felt shy, right? One time or another, most of us have felt awkward or worried in unfamiliar social situations. You might have children who hide behind your legs during an entire birthday party rather than play with the other kids. A 2011 report in the journal Pediatrics found that approximately half of all teenagers consider themselves shy. Shyness isn't a disorder, but it can make life difficult for children and adults. In this episode, we talk with a psychologist who has been helping shy people for more than 35 years. and tells us you can't really take the shyness out of people, but you can manage it, and it might not be as hard as you think.

I'm Audrey Hamilton, and this is speaking of psychology. Bernardo J. Carducci is a professor of psychology at Indiana University Southeast, where he is the director of the Indiana University Southeast Shyness Research Institute. He is one of the leading experts on shyness and has published numerous books and guides helping children, teens, parents, and other adults understand and manage their shyness. Welcome, Dr. Curtis. Please. Call me Bertie, and thank you for having me here today. This is a real honor.

Well, Bernie, first of all, I'm curious, how did you get into researching about shyness? When people find out I know something about shyness, that's the very first question that they asked me. And I tell people that in high school, I was a very, very shy kid. I had virtually no dates in high school. And as I tell people, if you look at my high school annual, it wasn't because I was an unattractive kid. I mean, I was, I think, pretty good looking. I was athletic. I played football and had lots of friends,

went to a neighborhood school, and so I knew everybody. But I just couldn't talk to these girls. And so I read this article on shyness, and I said, my gosh, that's me. And it said some things that what you might try to do to deal with your shyness. And I started doing those things. And then when I got into college, if I had a chance to write a paper or something, and I did it on shyness, and then I started doing some research on shyness. So I tell people, I work on my shyness every day.

I call myself what I refer to as being a successfully shy person, somebody who tries to understand the nature and the dynamics of their shyness, and work on that every day. You often hear children being labeled as shy. You said you were a shy kid. Many times it's not necessarily considered a positive quality when that label is put on someone. How do you define it? And is it a negative personality trait?

First and foremost, it is not a negative personality trait. It's not a character flaw. It's not a disease. It's simply a description of the individual, how they respond, how they behave. And when I think about shyness, the way I think about shinness is that it involves the characteristic feature of shyness involves excessive self-consciousness and excessive negative critical self-evaluation. We say think about being in front of a mirror. When you look in front of a mirror, I don't care who you are. Most people don't say, oh, my God, how beautiful I am.

The first thing they do when they look into a mirror is they primp. They focus on their hair. They adjust their tie, their color. They focus on their faults because a mirror makes you self-conscious. And when you're self-conscious, you focus on your negative characteristics. So we say, think about shy people as having a mirror held in front of them all day long, particularly in social situations. So that's what shyness, that's what shyness is.

It's negative self-critical evaluation. And it's not a negative characteristic. The problem with shyness is that people, shy people don't understand the nature and the dynamics of their shyness. So their shyness holds them back from their dreams and their goals. What shy people need to do

is to understand those dynamics of their shyness so that they can control their shyness instead of their shyness controlling them. So that's the real problem with shyness is that it controls you instead of you controlling your shyness. What's the difference between shyness and introversion? You know, why do we need to acknowledge those? Sure, there's a really, really big difference.

If you think about shyness and introversion, they may look very much the same. So at a party, a social situation, you'll see a shy person and introvert standing against the wall. The big difference is that the introvert prefers to be there. They prefer to be a way slightly withdrawn from social situation, particularly the social stimulation, the loudness. Shy people are standing against that wall because they feel they have to. They don't know what else to do.

They don't want to be there. They feel they have to be there. Shy people have more in common with extroversion than they do with introversion. Shy people truly want to be social. They want to be around other people. go to parties, they'll go to clubs, they'll go to bars. The problem is they show up, they don't know what to do, they get frustrated, and they leave. A critical dynamic of shyness is what we call the slow to warm up effect. It takes shy people a little bit longer to warm up. And as a result of

that, a big mistake that shy people make. A huge mistake is that if they're going to go to a social function, they think, okay, I'll show up late, party starts at nine, I'll get there at 1030, because there'll be lots of people there. I'll be able to mingle. Nobody will notice me because I can just kind of blend in. That's the worst thing that you can do. You do that because you don't understand the real dynamic. Rather than showing up late, what you should do is you show up early.

When you show up late, the noise level is already high. So if you're anxious, that's going to make you even more anxious. Plus, if you have difficulty talking to people, if you show up late, people are already mingling together. groups have already started to form, so it's much harder to break into that group. So we say, don't show up late. You show up on time. Show up early.

So when you show up early, the noise level is low, so you can adapt to that noise level as it gets louder. You can meet people one-on-one when they come in. So you introduce yourself, and as other people come in, you introduce these people to others as well. You become the social facility. That's much easier to do. Another tip that we recommend is engage in a quick talk. Talk to lots of different kinds of people for very brief periods of time. The big mistake that shy people make is that they think that when they get into a conversation,

they have to be brilliant, that they have to be witty, that they only get one shot at this. And if they don't have that dynamic opening line, it's over for them. Instead of having that kind of thought, make it a point to talk to lots of different kinds of people for very brief periods. of time. You can always come back to somebody, but when you talk to lots of different people for very brief periods of time, you take the pressure off of yourself. Plus, when you talk to lots of different people for very brief periods of time, you start to be perceived as the kind of person who can talk to lots of different kinds of people, and more importantly, lots of people can talk to you. So people start to notice that, and then they come to you, and you're the person.

that people are talking to now. And then when you're at a social function, be the social facilitator. Instead of focusing on yourself, focus on other people. You be the person that introduces others to other people. You become what we call the host to humanity. Minimize your consumption of alcohol.

Alcohol, people think, well, they drink, and it's gonna make them more interesting, it's gonna make them more witty. Alcohol's a depressant, so it slows things down, and it makes you think slower. It actually sort of works against you. Plus, when you drink to be social,

the problem is you begin to attribute the success to the alcohol so you feel that the only time you can be likable or the only time you can be social is when you're drinking. And so what generally tends to happen is people have to drink more and more and more. So if you know the kinds of things that you need to do, the kinds of things that we recommend, that you practice these kinds of things, and then you do them and achieve a certain success,

you get to take credit for that social success instead of attributing it to the alcohol, that gives you self-confidence. That gives you a sense of efficacy. And when you begin to start feeling that way, you'll want to be more social. Just like as you play tennis and you get better at tennis, you're going to want to play tennis.

You're going to want to play different people at different levels. The same thing is true with dealing with your shyness. Right. I'm a parent of a young girl. She's five. She's been labeled shy. many times, even when she was a baby. What sort of effect does that have on children?

How do parents deal with that? The effect can be how you respond to that. Typically what parents do, they tend to overprotect the child. So they'll intervene in social situations and kind of take over for the child. And when you do that, the child doesn't learn frustration, tolerance. They don't learn how to deal with the particular. situation that they find themselves in. So we say there are lots of things that you can do, and those are things that we've mentioned

before, is to understand the nature and the dynamics of shyness. First and foremost, we tell parents of shy children, you need to love that child for who that child is. Now how outgoing you want that child to be? Secondly, never ask that child to do anything that you wouldn't be willing to do yourself. Never tell your child, oh, just go up there and talk to that kid. Don't be afraid. Again, we ask parents, would you go up to a total stranger and talk?

And they said, well, I would never do that. And how can you ask your child to do that? When you do those kinds of things, you trivialize their feelings of shyness. So we say take that into consideration. Also, go to the child's strength. Remind them of their successes in social situations. So if they're going to go to a party, somebody, a birthday party for their first time, say, well, you know, you've been.

into birthday parties before at Uncle Ralph's house, you know, there we play games, we open presents, we ate cake. Well, you know, we're going to do this at Sally's party next week. We're going to do the same kind of, it's just a different location so you know what to do. There's going to be new kids there, but if you remember when we were on vacation last year, you didn't know kids, but at the end of the vacation, you were playing with these kids. Well, the same thing is going to happen at this party. You're going to start playing with a game. So you've done these kinds of things before so create a sense of similarity with their with their strengths give them time to warm up so if you're going to drop your child off at a at a birthday party make it a point to stay there until she feels

comfortable with the situation give her a chance to to warm up let her get used to the to the noise and the environment stay around until she can feel comfortable with the different but then walk away don't stand don't stay the whole time but again and let her know that you're going to be back and that she's going to be a fine. Another thing that you can do, too, is engage in what we call the factorial approach. So, again, changing one or two factors at a time.

So if you want your child to be more outgoing, bring a child over to your house where your child feels comfortable. So you have a new friend in a similar environment and do that until they get comfortable with that. And then you change the environment. you have this new friend and then you go to the park. So now it's a new friend and a new situation.

So they feel comfortable with that. And then what you can do is you can introduce another child into the familiar situation. So don't push things too quickly, give them time to adjust and engage in this factorial approach. That's what we do as adults as well. But again, a problem is because things are easy for us. We expect them to be easy for the child as well. well. So we get impatient. We push. We fail to consider that warm-up effect. So there's many things that that parents can do to help their child be social, deal with frustration tolerance.

We now live in the age of Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat. You know, communication is moving at lightning speed. How do you're talking about warming up, going getting into situations where they feel comfortable, but how do shy people keep up in these situations? First and foremost, what we have to remember always, and it's been this way forever, okay? First and foremost, we have to remember that it takes all kinds of people to make this world work. It takes people who are going to move really, really fast.

It's going to take people who are going to move really, really slow, and it's going to take a lot of people in between. So we say it's not necessary that everybody keep up with that same pace, so we tell shy people, find the pace that that's comfortable for you. Go to your strengths. And what's going to happen is as you begin to build on these kinds of things, as you begin to feel more comfortable, you'll pick up the pace that's comfortable for you. I mean, think about driving on the interstate.

If everybody drove really, really fast, it would be impossible. If everybody drove really slow, it would be impossible. You need all kinds of different drivers to make this work. Some fast, some slow, and a lot in between. and the same is in digital technology. So again, there's no need for everybody to do everything the same way. What we need is diversity. And shy people truly represent that.

We need shy people to make the world work. I've said that we don't need less shyness. What we need is more shyness because shy people are generally great people. Well, Dr. Carducci, Bernie, thank you so much for joining us. It's been a pleasure. Listen, I want to thank you on behalf of all the shy people. you're going to help by airing this program. Thank you.

Thanks for listening. To hear more episodes, please go to our website at speakingofpsychology.org. With the American Psychological Association, speaking of psychology, I'm Audrey Hamilton.