Skating Penguin
Don Juan
- Joined
- May 27, 2005
- Messages
- 33
- Reaction score
- 0
This topic is only for reallly shy people who just can't get over their fears. If that doesn't concern you, then you're losing your time on this topic...
If you are very shy and always avoid interfering in social situations out of fear of coming out as ridiculous, then take time to think about this...
There is one sentence that you have to read, re-read and re-read again and repeat in your head about a thousand times a day. It's a simple sentence:
What can I do for myself?
The key here is to focus on yourself. There are many people who are so shy that if they walk by a 7-11 one day and feel an irresistible urge to buy some chewing gum, they just walk right past and don't dare walk inside because they're afraid. They're afraid of others, of other's looks, and of other's view of themselves.
If you're one of those, you more than anyone need to ask yourself that...
What can I do for myself?
This has to be the only thing in your head. Your interest is all that matters. What do YOU want? Forget about others. They don't exist. The focus has to be on YOU at all times.
For some people, this is very difficult. I was so freaking shy back when I was a teenager that I had to drop out of school because I became too shy to even walk in my classroom. My shyness almost ruined my career. It took me over a year and a half of therapy to get through it... and this is the one thing that I have remembered from it that has been guiding me ever since:
What can I do for myself?
That sentence has to be printed in your brain. Most people don't have that problem, but those who do must get that concept so deep in their subconscious that they don't even have to think about it anymore. Every time you find yourself hesitating in a social context, even for a meaningless thing, repeat that sentence in your mind. Repeat it again and again until you FEEL it in you, until IT BECOMES YOUR ONLY FOCUS. You have to focus on yourself, focus on what YOU want, not on whether others agree or not. Their opinion is not worth more than yours.
If you have shyness or anxiety problems or something, there won't be a more important sentence for you than that one.
There's one thing you need to understand first. This has been modified from the advice of doctor Lee Baer, a Harvard professor. It applies mainly to obsessive compulsive disorder, but with some modifications his reasoning can apply to anyone with shyness or anxiety problems.
Let's say someone is afraid of doing something, for whatever reason. He might suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, or simply be a very shy person - it doesn't matter. Call him Bob. Bob wants to do A, but his anxiety (B) prevents him from doing it.
So, A is what he wants to do and B is his fear of doing it.
At first, it starts like this, from a scale of one to 8. The higher A is, the more often he does the behavior. The higher B is, the more anxiety he feels.
A: 0
B: 4
This is the initial situation. The anxiety is at 4, which is mildly high (in fact, much higher than what a "normal" person feels)
So, now he tries to force himself to do the behavior.
A: 1
B: 5
His anxiety increases, but he has accomplished the feared behavior. Victory, yes, but now after having done it he feels more afraid than ever. Yet, he forces himself again, and after a short while it looks like this:
A: 6
B: 8
The more he has accomplished the behavior, the higher the anxiety rises. This is a CRUCIAL moment, because it is at this point that 90% of people QUIT. It is very easy to quit at this moment because although you have performed the act that you are afraid to perform (or, in the case of OCD, ceased to perform the behavior that you feel forced to perform, such as checking locks or washing your hands), your fear actually increases. The more you perform the behavior, the higher your anxiety level rises, and that is when most people who don't have someone to help them quit because they can't see any hope.
After trying even harder, Bob's stats look like this:
A: 7
B: 8
He keeps trying, but the anxiety doesn't change. After days of trying and performing his feared behavior as often and fearlessly as he could manages, his anxiety only changes very little every time he does it. At this point, it is easy to feel that it will never change.
But have you ever tried to visit a house near a particularly loud train station? If you do, you'll notice that people who've been living there for years don't even notice it anymore. It doesn't bother them, because they've been through it so many times.
The same reasoning applies here, and if Bob continues to strive every day to keep his behavior between level 7 and 8 (which means, he performs his behavior just as often as someone without the anxiety would do it), after a few months pass there will be a significant decrease in the anxiety that accompany the behavior, and eventually it will nearly cease. For some, it takes only a few months, three or four. But it varies from people to people. In any case, the success depends on one thing - how hard you try.
Download this chart and print it:
http://www.geocities.com/lezzo.geo/chart.JPG
Keep it wherever you go and look at it as often as you can, because the secret is THERE. It is only by getting used to what you are afraid of that you can get over it. If at the middle of the process you STOP and HIDE IN THE COMFORT ZONE, then all the effort will have been vain AND YOU WILL HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, AND THIS TIME IT WILL BE EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. The key is that you have to keep going, no matter how hard it seems.
Through it all, once again, never forget the key sentence: "What can I do for myself?" - it has to be carved in your brain so deeply that it becomes part of yourself. In every single situation you find yourself in - waiting for the bus, buying a newspaper, eating in a cafeteria, etc. - you have to keep your focus on yourself. If you want something, get it. Never cheat yourself out of something you want from fear of the reaction of others, because this makes you take one step back and the situation will become WORSE.
If you're sitting in the cafeteria and realize that you forgot to take the ketchup, go and ask for some or get it in one of the machines.
Of course, the same principles apply with meeting girls. Engaging a conversation with a girl and asking for her phone number is no different than any other situation which many shy or anxious people are afraid of, and the chart above applies to that situation just as well as it applies to someone who, for example, is terrified of wearing the same clothes inside his house than outside (yes, it happens. Worse - there have been cases of people burning all their clothes after being convinced that they had been contaminated by a disease because they walked near a funny-looking stranger. The human mind is a mysterious thing.)
The key is yourself. The enemy does not exist outside of you, in fact the enemy is your fear which you have yourself created and continually fed by avoiding situations that you were afraid of. By focusing on outside factors (such as "what would this person thing of me if I do this?" or "will those people laugh at me or think badly of me if they see me wearing such an old sweater?") you are actually feeding your fear and allowing it to grow. By focusing on YOURSELF and what YOU want, you are standing right in the face of the problem and you are attacking its weak point with all your might. Yet, if you lose your focus and feed it again (by focusing on other people for approval, for example), then you are helping it get back on its feet, which CANCELS all the good you have achieved by being able to actually fight it correctly for once.
Peace out.
If you are very shy and always avoid interfering in social situations out of fear of coming out as ridiculous, then take time to think about this...
There is one sentence that you have to read, re-read and re-read again and repeat in your head about a thousand times a day. It's a simple sentence:
What can I do for myself?
The key here is to focus on yourself. There are many people who are so shy that if they walk by a 7-11 one day and feel an irresistible urge to buy some chewing gum, they just walk right past and don't dare walk inside because they're afraid. They're afraid of others, of other's looks, and of other's view of themselves.
If you're one of those, you more than anyone need to ask yourself that...
What can I do for myself?
This has to be the only thing in your head. Your interest is all that matters. What do YOU want? Forget about others. They don't exist. The focus has to be on YOU at all times.
For some people, this is very difficult. I was so freaking shy back when I was a teenager that I had to drop out of school because I became too shy to even walk in my classroom. My shyness almost ruined my career. It took me over a year and a half of therapy to get through it... and this is the one thing that I have remembered from it that has been guiding me ever since:
What can I do for myself?
That sentence has to be printed in your brain. Most people don't have that problem, but those who do must get that concept so deep in their subconscious that they don't even have to think about it anymore. Every time you find yourself hesitating in a social context, even for a meaningless thing, repeat that sentence in your mind. Repeat it again and again until you FEEL it in you, until IT BECOMES YOUR ONLY FOCUS. You have to focus on yourself, focus on what YOU want, not on whether others agree or not. Their opinion is not worth more than yours.
If you have shyness or anxiety problems or something, there won't be a more important sentence for you than that one.
There's one thing you need to understand first. This has been modified from the advice of doctor Lee Baer, a Harvard professor. It applies mainly to obsessive compulsive disorder, but with some modifications his reasoning can apply to anyone with shyness or anxiety problems.
Let's say someone is afraid of doing something, for whatever reason. He might suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder, or simply be a very shy person - it doesn't matter. Call him Bob. Bob wants to do A, but his anxiety (B) prevents him from doing it.
So, A is what he wants to do and B is his fear of doing it.
At first, it starts like this, from a scale of one to 8. The higher A is, the more often he does the behavior. The higher B is, the more anxiety he feels.
A: 0
B: 4
This is the initial situation. The anxiety is at 4, which is mildly high (in fact, much higher than what a "normal" person feels)
So, now he tries to force himself to do the behavior.
A: 1
B: 5
His anxiety increases, but he has accomplished the feared behavior. Victory, yes, but now after having done it he feels more afraid than ever. Yet, he forces himself again, and after a short while it looks like this:
A: 6
B: 8
The more he has accomplished the behavior, the higher the anxiety rises. This is a CRUCIAL moment, because it is at this point that 90% of people QUIT. It is very easy to quit at this moment because although you have performed the act that you are afraid to perform (or, in the case of OCD, ceased to perform the behavior that you feel forced to perform, such as checking locks or washing your hands), your fear actually increases. The more you perform the behavior, the higher your anxiety level rises, and that is when most people who don't have someone to help them quit because they can't see any hope.
After trying even harder, Bob's stats look like this:
A: 7
B: 8
He keeps trying, but the anxiety doesn't change. After days of trying and performing his feared behavior as often and fearlessly as he could manages, his anxiety only changes very little every time he does it. At this point, it is easy to feel that it will never change.
But have you ever tried to visit a house near a particularly loud train station? If you do, you'll notice that people who've been living there for years don't even notice it anymore. It doesn't bother them, because they've been through it so many times.
The same reasoning applies here, and if Bob continues to strive every day to keep his behavior between level 7 and 8 (which means, he performs his behavior just as often as someone without the anxiety would do it), after a few months pass there will be a significant decrease in the anxiety that accompany the behavior, and eventually it will nearly cease. For some, it takes only a few months, three or four. But it varies from people to people. In any case, the success depends on one thing - how hard you try.
Download this chart and print it:
http://www.geocities.com/lezzo.geo/chart.JPG
Keep it wherever you go and look at it as often as you can, because the secret is THERE. It is only by getting used to what you are afraid of that you can get over it. If at the middle of the process you STOP and HIDE IN THE COMFORT ZONE, then all the effort will have been vain AND YOU WILL HAVE TO START ALL OVER AGAIN, AND THIS TIME IT WILL BE EVEN MORE DIFFICULT. The key is that you have to keep going, no matter how hard it seems.
Through it all, once again, never forget the key sentence: "What can I do for myself?" - it has to be carved in your brain so deeply that it becomes part of yourself. In every single situation you find yourself in - waiting for the bus, buying a newspaper, eating in a cafeteria, etc. - you have to keep your focus on yourself. If you want something, get it. Never cheat yourself out of something you want from fear of the reaction of others, because this makes you take one step back and the situation will become WORSE.
If you're sitting in the cafeteria and realize that you forgot to take the ketchup, go and ask for some or get it in one of the machines.
Of course, the same principles apply with meeting girls. Engaging a conversation with a girl and asking for her phone number is no different than any other situation which many shy or anxious people are afraid of, and the chart above applies to that situation just as well as it applies to someone who, for example, is terrified of wearing the same clothes inside his house than outside (yes, it happens. Worse - there have been cases of people burning all their clothes after being convinced that they had been contaminated by a disease because they walked near a funny-looking stranger. The human mind is a mysterious thing.)
The key is yourself. The enemy does not exist outside of you, in fact the enemy is your fear which you have yourself created and continually fed by avoiding situations that you were afraid of. By focusing on outside factors (such as "what would this person thing of me if I do this?" or "will those people laugh at me or think badly of me if they see me wearing such an old sweater?") you are actually feeding your fear and allowing it to grow. By focusing on YOURSELF and what YOU want, you are standing right in the face of the problem and you are attacking its weak point with all your might. Yet, if you lose your focus and feed it again (by focusing on other people for approval, for example), then you are helping it get back on its feet, which CANCELS all the good you have achieved by being able to actually fight it correctly for once.
Peace out.