“As a child, I was very shy. Painfully, excruciatingly shy. I hid a lot in my room. I was so terrified to read out loud in school that I had to have my mother ask my reading teacher not to call on me in class.” - Kim Basinger

Many of us were shy as children, and continue to be. In more extreme versions, it may be labeled social phobia or social anxiety disorder, but maybe it is usually a personality trait, related to introversion and high sensitivity. A number of psychologists and others argue that shyness can be viewed as an ordinary variation in personality, and should not be pathologized or treated as a medical condition to be overcome.

Actor Sigourney Weaver has commented, “Sometimes because I am very shy, when I meet a director and they are shy too, we just sort of sit there. I remember when I met Ang Lee and we were left alone — we were supposed to have tea with each other… I was so shy and he was so shy neither of us said anything to each other for about 20 minutes.” [Photo: as Ellen Ripley in Alien Resurrection (1997)]

Many other actors describe themselves as shy. Chris Cooper approached getting “unblocked” with dance classes, and through acting - “Theater, as therapy,” he said.

Nicole Kidman has said she is “very shy - really shy - I even had a stutter as a kid, which I slowly got over, but I still regress into that shyness. So I don’t like walking into a crowded restaurant by myself; I don’t like going to a party by myself.”

For some people, shyness may be part of an anxiety disorder. Kim Basinger has talked about fear being “something I’ve lived with my entire life, the fear of being in public places — which led to anxiety or panic attacks.” She says she has been a lifelong victim of agoraphobia.

In her BBC News article Is being shy an illness?, Anna Buckley wrote, “Most of us are shy to some degree, but acute shyness is one of the most under-recognised mental health problems of the modern age, say some.”

Social phobia, she explains, “was first recognised as a mental health condition in 1980 and some professionals believe it’s one of the most under-recognised and under-treated mental health problems of the modern age.

“Others are uneasy about such statements, saying shyness is behaviour that falls within the normal part of human experience.”

A Northwestern University news story - How shyness and other normal human traits became sickness - noted, “What’s wrong with being shy, and just when and how did bashfulness and other ordinary human behaviors in children and adults become psychiatric disorders treatable with powerful, potentially dangerous drugs, asks a Northwestern University scholar in a new book that already is creating waves in the mental health community.

“In his book Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness, Northwestern’s Christopher Lane chronicles the ‘highly unscientific and often arbitrary way’ in which widespread revisions were made to The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), a publication known as the bible of psychiatry that is consulted daily by insurance companies, courts, prisons and schools as well as by physicians and mental health workers.

“By labeling shyness and other human traits as mental conditions with a biological cause, the doors were opened wide to a pharmaceutical industry ready to provide a pill for every alleged chemical imbalance or biological problem, the author says.

Christopher Lane adds, in his New York Times Op-Ed article Shy on Drugs, “Few children relish the start of a new school year. Most yearn for summer to continue and greet the onset of classes with groans or even dread.

“But among those who take the longest to adapt and thrive, psychiatrists say, are children trapped in a pathological condition. They are so acutely shy that they are said to suffer ’social anxiety disorder’ — an affliction of children and adolescents that, the clinicians argue, is spreading.

“It may seem baffling, even bizarre, that ordinary shyness could assume the dimension of a mental disease. But if a youngster is reserved, the odds are high that a psychiatrist will diagnose social anxiety disorder and recommend treatment.

“How much credence should we give the diagnosis? Shyness is so common among American children that 42 percent exhibit it. And, according to one major study, the trait increases with age. By the time they reach college, up to 51 percent of men and 43 percent of women describe themselves as shy or introverted. Among graduate students, half of men and 48 percent of women do.

“Psychiatrists say that at least one in eight of these people needs medical attention. But do they? Many parents recognize that shyness varies greatly by situation, and research suggests it can be a benign condition.

“A study sponsored by Britain’s Economic and Social Research Council reported that levels of the stress hormone cortisol are consistently lower in shy children than in their more extroverted peers.

“The discovery upends the common wisdom among psychiatrists that shyness causes youngsters extreme stress. Julie Turner-Cobb, the researcher at the University of Bath who led this study, told me the amounts of cortisol suggest that shyness in children ‘might not be such a bad thing.’ ”

Another aspect may be misunderstanding of shyness, introversion and other personal qualities.

In his article Mis-Diagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children, James T. Webb, Ph.D. writes that “Some of our most brightest and most creative minds are not only going unrecognized, but they are being given diagnoses that indicate pathology. For decades, psychologists and others have given great emphasis to the functioning of persons in the lower spectrum. It is time that we trained health care professionals to give correct assessments to gifted, talented, and creative children and adults.”

Shyness, social anxiety, social phobia, introversion - one of the problems in using these labels about others or ourselves is they are often too unspecific and relative: shy compared with whom? How anxious, for how long, in what situations?

And just because a sophisticated drug company commercial says a “condition” needs to be treated with prescription medication — it ain’t necessarily so.

Many of us avoid crowds or social contacts that are too anxiety producing, and it works. But if this kind of anxiety and protective behavior gets to be overly self-limiting, holding us back from expressing our talents, there are ways to deal with it, including psychotherapy, strategic changes in activity, self-help programs, and supplements.

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Related pages and articles:
Learning to live with social anxiety
Anxiety - stress articles
Anxiety…anxiety 2….anxiety 3
Anxiety relief products / programs
Introversion / shyness….Pg 2..Pg 3……
Introversion resources : articles sites books

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“If the dimension of presence or awareness is missing, then you are lost in the reaction. Then you become the reaction, and you don’t know who you are.” Eckhart Tolle

High sensitivity can be a deeply assaultive and distressing and disorienting experience. Probably starting when we were too young to have the cognitive ability to sort it out, many of us learned that identifying ourselves as sensitive (at least privately, not to others) helped make sense of the turmoil. But some writers such as Eckhart Tolle warn about losing our authenticity in identity labels.

In her article Every Blessing and Curse is a Choice. Choose the Blessing!, Jenna Forrest writes, “I would bet that a lot of us were fully prepared for our own funerals by about age seven, figuring that we were soon going to die from sensory overload. From the very beginning, the world was stirring me like a whisk.

“Life in general felt upside down, inside out and backwards. From my three-foot tall childhood viewpoint, my city looked littered; the music in our house was too loud; chemical cleaners and detergents smelled too strong; and cars sped too fast.

“Sensing the bad mood of every stranger walking down the street didn’t help.”

Jenna (photo at age six) is author of Help Is On Its Way: A Memoir About Growing Up Sensitive.

Elaine Aron addresses one of her newsletters to sensitive teenagers, and notes, “Persons your age may score lower than others [on the sensitivity self-test] and still be highly sensitive. This is because adolescence is the time in life when people born with this trait are often the least sensitive, especially to noise and having to do more than one thing at once.

“There are many theories about why, but I will not bother you with them. And, you may find you have your own.

“Also, there are as many baby boys born who are highly sensitive as there are girls. By your age most males score lower on the self-test. The reason is obvious. It is so difficult to be highly sensitive in this culture if you are a man. So most sensitive men and boys are trying to hide their sensitivity.”

From newsletter article by Elaine Aron: For Highly Sensitive Teenagers, Part I: Feeling Different.

Also see more articles on High sensitivity by other authors.

In his book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose writes about spiritual development and gaining awareness of our real identity and calling.

A viewer of Oprah and Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth Online Class, Tenisha asked about reactivity, first quoting Tolle from the book: “What is reactivity? Becoming addicted to reaction. The more reactive you, the more entangled you become with form. The more identified with form, the stronger the ego.”

Tenisha continued, “My question has to do with—I’ve always related being reactive to being sensitive. And being sensitive allows me to be very passionate about things, allows me to connect with other people and be emotionally available to my friends and family.

“So my question is, how can I retain sensitivity and be passionate about things and keep that, but not allow my ego to get stronger?”

Tolle responded, “Well, reaction may appear to be a sign of sensitivity, but actually reaction is not sensitive. Reaction is a conditioned way of responding to a situation… all reaction really comes from the past because it’s part of the way in which you’ve been conditioned. And because it comes from the past, it is never totally adequate to the present moment.

“So sensitivity is actually lost when you’re reactive, and true sensitivity comes when you are absolutely present in a situation and see, This is how it is, and you totally face the situation as it is.”

From article Eckhart Tolle On Sensitivity.

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Is part of your anxiety that you are “too shy” or “too sensitive,” according to others? Does your body’s alarm system go off easily when you encounter bring lights, lots of noise, or other stimuli? Do you have a keen imagination or vivid dreams?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be a Highly Sensitive Person. Most of us feel over stimulated every once in a while, but for the Highly Sensitive Person, it’s a way of life.

In the Conquer Anxiety Success Program, I had the rare opportunity to interview Dr. Elaine Aron, bestselling author of The Highly Sensitive Person.

If you’re not familiar with Dr. Elaine Aron, she turned the scientific world on its ear with her research into high sensitivity. She is a psychotherapist, workshop leader, and highly sensitive person herself. Her work has impacted millions worldwide.

Dr. Aron is one of my personal heroes. Truly, her work was life-transforming in helping me to conquer my own anxiety when I was in anxiety’s grasp.

I had the amazing opportunity to interview Dr. Aron and am so excited that we are able to share this exclusive no-holds-barred interview on CD within the Conquer Anxiety Success Program.

In my interview I asked Dr. Aron questions you won’t find anywhere else that dig deep to the core. I asked her the nitty-gritty of what we want to know: how does high sensitivity tie in with anxiety and what can we DO about it?

In the Conquer Anxiety Success Program interview with Dr. Aron, she has shared her expertise and vast experience to answer questions that specially affect anxiety sufferers like:

– How to know for sure if you are a Highly Sensitive Person (even if you think it doesn’t apply to you at first glance)

– What high sensitivity is and how it ties into anxiety

– Do Highly Sensitive People tend to be more anxious than other people

– The scientific evidence for high sensitivity and new brain research that changes how we think about it

– How your unique personality style ties in to high sensitivity and anxiety

– How to respond to others that say you are “too sensitive” or shouldn’t respond so intensely to things around you

– Why Highly Sensitive People tend to be more affected by childhood traumas (and thus feel more anxious) than non-highly sensitive people and what to do if your past is holding you back

– How to make a simple yet important switch in how to view your past that decreases anxiety if you are a Highly Sensitive Person

– How to cope with threats of over arousal — such as bright lights, loud noises, crowded events, and more to thrive instead of merely survive

– How to get along better with non-highly sensitive people

– Tips for mastering social situations to decrease your anxiety if you are a Highly Sensitive Person

– How to make the most of your high sensitivity and decrease your anxiety in everyday situations

– Why you are not weaker or abnormal than non-highly sensitive people.

– How to cope with the disadvantages of high sensitivity in today’s world

– How to harness the many advantages of high sensitivity to skyrocket your success

This exclusive, groundbreaking interview on high sensitivity and anxiety is not available anywhere else, only as part of the Conquer Anxiety Success Program.

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The problem was first recognised as a mental health condition in 1980 and some professionals believe it’s one of the most under-recognised and under-treated mental health problems of the modern age.

Others are uneasy about such statements, saying shyness is behaviour that falls within the normal part of human experience. So when does shyness become a mental health problem?

[Photo: the press dubbed the demure Princess Diana "Shy Di."]

Continued in article Is being shy an illness?, By Anna Buckley, BBC News.

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* Have you ever agreed to do something that you knew you would rather not do?

* Have you not given yourself enough time to do the things you do want to do, but instead used that time for someone else?

* Have you allowed another person to behave in a fashion or say things around you that you find offensive or repulsive?

* Have you not reflected outwardly what matters so much to you inwardly?

* Have you not taken time to set up your world to work for you in every way?

You are not the only one. In fact, most people do these things, but it is especially prominent among inner-directed individuals because one major way we cope is to sacrifice ourselves to accommodate others.

What is amazing is how each of us can learn to dismiss the discomfort these situations bring. You get accustomed to the degree of uneasiness you experience, so that becomes the feeling to which you associate as “normal.”

Continued in Build Better Boundaries.

Image from book Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America, by Elizabeth Wurtzel - see quotes on the page Intensity/sensitivity3.

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“Sound bites, billboards, spam, and constant advertisements surround us. Other people’s energy and emotions affect us. Too much light, noise, color, texture, or odor will quickly send us into overdrive.”

She also lists as other sources, “sugary foods, alcohol, or caffeine.. our own negative internal dialogues” and notes that even “positive excitement can be overstimulating.”

Continued in article Overcoming Overwhelm, By Jenna Avery, CLC, Life Coach for Sensitive Souls.

Photo originally from article Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, by Jeffrey Kluger, Time Magazine Nov. 17, 2002 - see excerpts on the page Intensity / sensitivity 2.

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Shyness, social anxiety, social phobia, introversion - one of the problems in using these labels about ourselves is they are often too unspecific and relative: shy compared with whom? How anxious, for how long, in what situations?

Many people avoid crowds or social contacts that are too anxiety producing. But if this kind of anxiety is overly self-limiting, holding us back from expressing our talents, there are ways to deal with it.

Many actors and other artists have pushed through fear to perform, and, like Cooper, report that it helps. And many people make use of various kinds of therapy, anxiety relief programs, or take herbal supplements.

Author Jonathan Berent writes, “Over the years, in working with thousands of people who call themselves shy,’ I have come to realize that this word is too general to be of much help in identifying a problem and solving it.

“The actual response to the stress of interaction is called social anxiety.

“Of course, just as one person might say he is ‘a little shy around women’ and another might say she is ‘extremely shy about speaking in front of a group,’ it is also true that there is a wide spectrum of social anxiety, from mild nervousness all the way to social phobia, in which interaction-related anxiety is so extreme that a person actually avoids the specific situations that cause it.”

From his book: Beyond Shyness : How to Conquer Social Anxieties.

Therapist Robin Bilazarian, LCSW uses the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) approach for a number of issues, including social anxiety.

She describes how much impact anxiety can have: “They fear being scrutinized and judged harshly, seeing others as a social threat. They do not trust their bodies to be calm in these events. It limits casual, spontaneous interactions and prohibits them from attending social gatherings. They fear any performance situation. Even riding the bus, eating in a restaurant or attending a movie can be feared.

“The anxiety can be specific as in public speaking or pervasive — severely limiting most social interaction. They approach benign social interaction with the same trepidation as facing a firing squad. Limited social interactions have a cumulative effect that they do not develop competent social skills, are keenly aware of this and thus feel even more vulnerable and defenseless.”

She writes about working with clients using EFT: “Initially, I explore their first or worst memory of when they felt this early in their life. I remember working with a delightful young woman who was too shy to date and did not see herself for the beauty she was. Said with many tears, she had accepted she would always be alone.

“She remembered being rejected by a boy she liked in middle school. After quickly discussing how a young boy may not be the most stable person to obtain a lifetime opinion of one’s self, we used EFT to defuse this. Her laughing demeanor after EFT highlighted a definite and liberating shift had occurred.”

Bilazarian also helped four “petrified brides” by using EFT “to clear and calm every aspect of their wedding, i.e. walking down the aisle with EVERYONE staring at them, saying their vows aloud, the father-daughter dance, etc. They had wonderful times at their weddings and continue to use EFT in their lives.”

From article: Using EFT for Social Anxiety Disorder.

[Painting by De Es Schwertberger - related book: Heavy Light.]

Related Talent Development Resources pages:
Anxiety articles
Anxiety relief products / programs

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Actor Sigourney Weaver continued in an interview, “I remember when I met Ang Lee and we were left alone — we were supposed to have tea with each other.. I was so shy and he was so shy neither of us said anything to each other for about 20 minutes.” [From the page Introversion / shyness]

One of the reasons I first posted that quote [years ago] was because thinking of Weaver as shy seemed so discordant with her iconic role of E.T. monster slayer Ellen Ripley in Aliens (1986).

How do labels like shy - or introverted, highly sensitive etc - that we may be called, or call ourselves, impact how we view ourselves, and affect how we operate in the social world?

In his article The Highly Sensitive Person: An Introduction, Denmarkguy notes, “The immediate thing that comes to mind when people hear the term ’sensitive’ is that someone gets their feelings hurt really easily. Whereas this kind of emotional sensitivity can certainly be a part of being an HSP, it is by no means what ‘defines’ the trait.

Sarah Dolliver, Founder of InnerVantage, is pioneering the behavioral term “inner-directed” that unites “those who focus inward to restore.”

She explains, “Why it matters that you know whether you are (or someone you know is) inner-directed is because it impacts how you deal with the world and the choices you make each day.

“You don’t need psychological or social labels to define you, especially when they stop you from naturally being who you are.

“Labels, like introvert, sensitive, quiet, shy or withdrawn, attempt to describe how others experience you. They do not relate to who you are.

“They can limit you because the tendency is to live to the limits of the label and only go that far. In addition, there is the stigma that can accompany any label, which causes you to feel shame. Any way you look at it, labels confine all you truly are.

“What is important to realize is that there is so much more to you than any label can include. Inner-directed individuals are different and that is good.”

Continued in her article Are You Inner-Directed? And Why It Matters To Know.

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“It’s a real balancing act. And sometimes, despite your best intentions, your energy gets drained and you feel out of balance.

“The key, then, is to know how to quickly and easily recharge your energy.

“Some of why this situation happens is that highly sensitive people are more susceptible to overstimulation than less sensitive types.”

Continued in her article Recharge Your Energy.

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We may have thoughts that are based on irrational beliefs about how life is, or how we “should be” - and those thoughts can become habitual responses, and be too broad or inaccurate to serve our personal growth.

For example, you may think at times, “I’m too sensitive.” Well, what does that really mean? Too sensitive for what? Maybe it’s just there are situations that cause you more discomfort than you want to put up with.

Actor Amy Brenneman’s comment is a much more concrete and specific, and therefore real, statement than simply “I’m too sensitive.”

One way to evaluate self-critical or self-limiting statements is to ask yourself, If you made this kind of comment - e.g. “You’re too sensitive” - to your friend or child, would it be helpful to them? Would it encourage and support them?

Some critical thinking, when it isn’t extreme, compulsive, unreal or distorted, can be encouraging, stimulating of achievement and growth.

Actor Will Smith once commented, “I keep going because I doubt myself. It drives me to be better… It makes me excel.”

And Geena Davis thinks “you could scratch the surface of most actors and find insecurity played a big part in their drive to become successful.”

Many actors, writers and other artists identify themselves as being sensitive. It can be a very real asset.

Also see my article Being Creative and Self-critical.

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