Is Your Shyness a Problem? (Shining a little CBT light on the subject…)

Do you shake with nerves or blush when the attention is on you? Most people experience some form of shyness, but others are so immobilised by the fear of being judged negatively that they can barely function.

Shyness can be crippling. Always worrying what others are thinking of you, never being sure how you come across (Am I blushing? Have they noticed? Oh God why did I say that, it sounded stupid? Oh why is my tongue tied now? Oh this person is not even listening to me! etc), and then afterwards analyzing every painstaking minute detail. Not to mention the anticipatory anxiety that accompanies events where you imagine you will be the centre of attention (I’ll be so nervous! I’ll make a holy show of myself! People will be sniggering at me! I’m dull! Nobody really likes me!…), worrying days, weeks, or even months in advance of a situation you fear. All the while thinking things about yourself like: ‘I’m not normal’, or ‘I’m unattractive’ and so on…

You might find it very hard to relax and interact with people as you are constantly watching out for, and misinterpreting, other people’s reactions to you – often perceiving criticism where none was intended. Life becomes problematic and overwhelming when it is ruled by our worry of what people think of us… Throw in ‘demand thinking’ of ‘musts and shoulds and oughts’ and we’re in big trouble (I must be funny like them, I should look great, I ought to be interesting and clever, … and so on).

A shy person suffers from a neverending maze of worry and fear – misperceiving situations and events as a hazard or danger – instead of a chance for human interaction and fun. When you are in social situations you may constantly be evaluating yourself and others perception of you, and reaction to you – always with a negative bias, discounting the positive… not able to fully engage with others as you are either busy analysing reactions, or preparing what you will say and how you will say it when it’s your turn to speak. Always over analysing and misinterpreting what is going on – focussing on all the little pauses, someone looking over your shoulder, little awkward moments… and so on.

Extreme and disabling shyness is similar to the diagnosis of social anxiety, which is the third most common mental illness after depression and substance abuse. This condition includes emotional and physiological discomfort, avoidant behaviour, and excessive self-focussed attention. It is a condition that can be helped very effectively with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).

CBT is a form of psychotherapy that emphasises the important role of thinking (cognitive) in how we feel and what we do (behavioural), using practical methods and techniques – the basic philosophy being that our thoughts and beliefs, (rather than events and situations), are the cause of many of our emotional disturbances and resulting behaviours – and that we can learn to examine and challenge and change unhealthy dysfunctional thinking, which will in turn change our emotional and physical responses and behaviours to healthy appropriate ones that enhance our lives.

Controlled and measured scientific studies have shown great results in teaching sufferers of anxiety new ‘coping skills’ using CBT – helping them to lower their anxiety to manageable levels that allow for a fuller and more comfortable life. Unfortunately most sufferers never seek treatment – they might feel ashamed and embarrassed, and believe they should be able to handle it themselves, or think that it’s ‘just the way they are’ and nothing can be done about it. But you can do something about it – you can learn to be less anxious with people and more comfortable interacting with people, you can learn new healthy thinking and behaviours that could be life changing.

CBT skills will help you deal with the problem by changing your thinking about feared events so that you approach them in a more rational way, which will ease your anxiety and your bodies reaction to the stress. CBT helps replace dysfunctional unhealthy thinking with healthy thinking – replacing negative thought patterns with more realistic ones, based on EVIDENCE – rather than, say, typical cognitive distortions like:

• fortune telling (where you negatively predict the future of events that haven’t happened yet)
• and mind reading (where you are convinced you know what other people are thinking about you)
• and ‘catastrophising’ (making mountains out of molehills)

– all of which (among others) go hand in hand with anxiety disorders.

The physiology of fear Our bodies have a natural primal ‘fight or flight’ system that causes us to pump ourselves up to fight or run away when we perceive a hazard or danger. This dates back to early evolution, when a hunter-gatherer might be confronted by a predator (let’s say a tiger) – to survive he had to launch an immediate attack or turn and run like mad! It was also very important that we ‘fit in and stay in’ with our tribe, as rejection meant death by lone exposure to the elements or the tiger… so when we perceive every social interaction is putting us in danger of absolute rejection, our bodies automatically rev up into fight or flight, pumping up the heart and lungs, fuelling the bloodstream with sugar –reacting to the situation as if it were as dangerous as the metaphorical tiger coming to tear us apart!

Fight or flight was designed to help us, but it is desperately uncomfortable when it is triggered because a false perception has occurred and you’re just sitting on a chair in a non-hazardous situation, so your body cannot exert itself for extreme action as it has prepared to do  – and the bigger the fear and anxiety, the more extreme the physiological reaction – often resulting in blushing/sweating, and even panic attacks where you cannot breath, or shake uncontrollably, or feel you will collapse…

A common result of fight or flight responses with extremely shy people is that sufferers will often say their problem is actually the response of blushing or sweating – and will often end up more afraid of the symptoms of their anxiety than the original ‘danger’ that brought them on… and the fear of it happening is enough to actually trigger it! It’s a vicious circle.

So… people start to think the blushing or sweating is to blame for their ‘bad social performance’, and think if only they could fix that physical defect life would be wonderful. Even going so far as googling for surgeries that promise to eliminate these awful life limiting ‘disabilities’. But in fact, these happenings are brought on by our thinking and misperceptions – for instance you will have facial blushing because your body is reacting to a perceived terrible danger with the fight or flight response, (getting ready to run from or kill the tiger), and during this the adrenaline release causes your blood vessels to dilate in order to improve blood flow and oxygen delivery.. as a result, the veins in your face dilate, allowing more blood to flow through them than usual, so reddening and heating the face – voila, blushing! And sweating is simply the bodies way of regulating it’s temperature as it heats up during fight or flight – of course, the more anxious you are, the more you are likely to sweat.

We can address the cause of inappropriate fight or flight by learning to challenge our distorted perception of events with new ways of thinking – since it only occurs when we perceive danger and an inability to cope, it can be avoided or minimised if we can accept that there is actually nothing to fear and that we can in fact cope. Rational evidence based thinking helps us stop seeing hazards and dangers everywhere -– thus physical responses will become manageable and occur less often and with less ferocity.

With CBT we also learn how to unconditionally accept ourselves (blushing and all!). Some people think shyness and blushing is charming you know! Though of course the problem is it can be accompanied by all the other nasty fight or flight responses that cause discomfort and agitation – which brings us back to the smartest fix being to tackle the irrational thoughts and beliefs that cause the inappropriate response – replacing them (over and over and over and over) with rational evidence based disputes… until that becomes the way that you think.

Brain Plasticity: Neuroscientific evidence tells us that our automatic auto pilot ‘thinking’ has, quite literally, burned neural pathways in our brain – but that the brain is not ‘hardwired with fixed circuits’ and that it can and does hardwire new neural pathways over old ones as the brain is ‘plastic’ and can be reshaped and reformed through ‘learning and doing and reward’ – which suggests that that, with work, it is possible to ‘re-hardwire’, to change our old ‘negative automatic thinking’ into calm and considered evidence based automatic thinking instead … no matter what age you are or what variant of shyness or anxiety you have. But note, you really do need to put in the work (there is written work in the form of journals and worksheets, as well as mental tasks) – you must be capable of self critique, and willing to challenge everything you think you know. This includes addressing those ego defence mechanisms and avoidant behaviours that seem to have been developed to help you, but actually limit and sabotage you and stop you living the life you dream of.

CBT teaches sufferers to understand that their ‘thinking’, their mental filtering and processing of events, is distorted – causing them to see irrational danger alerts and hazards everywhere, and how and why their body is reacting to that. With CBT they are taught to identify their thoughts around particular events and situations – and then to challenge those thoughts with rational evidence and new realistic alternative thinking. An example of distorted thoughts that need to be challenged:

• People are watching & judging me all of the time
• People are criticising me
• Nobody likes me
• People think I’m dull
• People think I’m different to them
• I am ugly
• I am an oddball
• It’s hopeless, I’ll never be happy ….

Common cognitive distortions we all indulge in occasionally are stronger and more frequent for those with anxiety… examples:

• Fortune telling
• Catastrophising
• Mind reading
• Emotional reasoning
• Black and white thinking
• Low Frustration tolerance
• Personalising

Typical behaviours that disable and inhibit anxiety sufferers:

• avoiding situations you find threatening (busy places, parties, staff canteen etc)
• avoid talking on the phone
• avoid stopping for ‘small talk’ when bumping into people
• drink too much (alleviates anxiety, seems easier to interact)
• repeatedly calling in sick to work
• isolating yourself from friends and family
• sleeping too much (or too little)
• eating too much (or too little)
• spending money recklessly or compulsively… etc

Unfortunately, the more you indulge in these behaviours, the less confidence you will have – and you will never learn that you might actually not only survive the feared situation, but actually manage it comfortably, and even enjoy it as others do (yes, really!). These kind of  behaviours are obviously self limiting and self sabotaging – for instance many extremely shy people cannot live to their full potential as they take unchallenging jobs that do not cause them discomfort by drawing any attention to them, that do not require actions from them they have convinced themselves  they cannot do…

USE CBT AND HELP YOURSELF TO CONQUER SELF-DEFEATING AND SELF-SABOTAGING BEHAVIOURS!

CBT: explains why and what is happening around your particular anxiety – and gives you practical methods and techniques to change your thinking and behaviours… it will give you a mental toolbox to effectively become your own therapist.

CBT and Feeling Good will train you how to use CBT to develop new smart coping skills to deal with life stress and anxiety. Our fun and interesting sessions will help you improve your overall emotional health & wellbeing.

How You Benefit

* Change how you think & what you do

* Decrease/manage incidences of stress/anxiety

* Decrease self-limiting/sabotaging behaviours

* Understand/manage the physiology of stress

* Improve self-image & confidence

* Improve social skills & interactions…

NEWS! March 2010 – CBT & Feeling Good approved Training Programmes and Trainers have been placed on the FAS and Enterprise Ireland National Register of Trainers. (Registration # 903680.) In full compliance with the Qualifications (Education and Training) Act 1999. Fully accredited and insured.

Contact information:

MD: Veronica Walsh SAC Dip

W: www.CBTandFeelingGood.com

A: 93 St Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

T: 01 4433021

M: 086 8113031

E: veronica@CBTandFeelingGood.com

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