I had an 'anxiety disorder' in my early high school years (mid 90's). I don't just mean around girls either. I would actually get butterflies whenever the monotonous redialing of my modem would be broken by that glorious screeching and scratching sound that meant I was finally connecting to the coolest local bbs. You know... the one where I was on track to make sysop one day; where I was clearly gaining the upper hand in a few threads of great import; where the girl I (and everyone else) liked might have accepted my marriage proposal in LORD.
The family doctor gave me some pills to take as needed, said they'd calm me down. And they did. Before long I forgot all about the pills and didn't seem to need them anymore, online or off. I got some contacts, my acne went away, I got a skater/hacker identity and a girlfriend. About a year later I found out they had been sugar pills. A total placebo.
All this psychologizing about shyness: poor self-esteem, self-consciousness, withholding oneself from others out of selfishness, etc. My own shyness, and that of other shy people I know, has been due to something completely different, and much more straightforward:
Not knowing the social conventions.
What is it that people are doing at parties? What are they talking about? Why are they doing this? It seems incomprehensible. With someone I haven't met or barely know, it's hard to find a way to say what comes to mind in a way that a total stranger would relate to. With someone I know well, I can say what comes to mind, because there's a lot of shared context. This is the common pattern among introverts: quiet with strangers, endlessly talkative with close friends. And why is that? Because with close friends, you have the shared context and conventions needed to have the kind of conversation that makes sense to you.
(Please, no pity or advice. I've worked on my shyness and gotten good enough at connecting with strangers to occasionally even pick up women on the street--a skill every hacker entrepreneur should have. I'm just pointing out that the psychologizing is wrong. The path out of shyness, at least for a lot of us geeks, is simply to learn to play the social game, not to address some sort of self-esteem issue.)
You seem to be framing the issue as a rational rather than emotional problem -- i.e., not knowing the social conventions.
I don't buy it. Stick an extroverted people person and an introverted shy guy in an unfamiliar social situation (in a foreign country, say). The way they deal with it will differ greatly. The extrovert will plow ahead, not worry too much about making mistakes, and figure out how to play the social game pretty quickly. The introvert will probably be too scared of doing things wrong to even start.
Learning to play the social game is not hard: make eye contact, open your mouth, and start talking. Building the courage to actually do it is hard. That's crux for most shy people (as it was for me).
If you're out there talking to people and still can't find shared context, then you're not shy, you're just talking to the wrong people. Time to seek out different social gatherings.
For those that have difficulty learning from social interactions (autistic spectrum folks), things may admittedly be different. This is outside my experience so I can't speak to it.
Indeed I am framing this as a rational rather than emotional problem.
I think you made a very good point about the difference in the way extraverts and introverts enter new social situations. That really does make a huge difference: just dive in, mess up, and adjust (a lot like, say, running a start-up). That will get the learning process going. I think there's another element, though: that incomprehension of "lite" social interaction.
Regarding the courage hypothesis, here's how I've often heard it put: "Oh, don't be afraid, don't care what other people think, just say what you really want to say." To me, this misses what's happening. What's really happening is simply not having a clue how to participate. A dial tone on the brain. The reason, if I pick up a guitar, I don't play music, isn't because I'm afraid to, but because I don't know how to play guitar. I tried going to bars a bunch (I seem to have lots of social courage), but I didn't really get anywhere until some friends explained various social protocols: posture, how to make physical contact, how to pick out clothes, what to not talk about (decorators in Python, cryonics), etc.
Here's a weird piece of evidence: extraverts have exactly the same feeling of disorientation in our world. Get a strong extravert into a conversation that pursues something in depth (not so much breadth), and they get a dial tone on the brain, too. They quickly bail, the same way introverts bail out of social situations.
Hmm... mild autism. Maybe that's what I've got (and many other shy, geeky people). That's a new angle, and it might be right.
Mild autism is too harsh of a term for most shy, geeky people I think. Things like this in psychology are a bell curved spectrum. Being a little to the left or right doesn't mean you are autistic, it just means you have more characteristics that are associated with one side of the spectrum or another.
The basic problem is caring what other people think of you. The basic problem is placing more value on what other people think of you instead of placing more value on what you think of yourself.
The worst thing that could happen to you, is you could learn the social conventions and learn how to be a sheep well enough to fit in. Think about it, would you even be on this site if you learnt the social conventions earlier and realized how not "cool" it is to be a geek?
You talk about shared contexts. Fundamentally we are all human beings. We all laugh. We all love. That is enough context to talk and connect with anyone for many lifetimes.
I had been shy as a teen and got over it. But since my last girlfriend left around a year ago (my first serious relationship), I've been thrown back into the breach.
I had forgotten how diabolical this torment was, actually. Inability to connect with any other person. No interest in meeting new people, despite a persistent, stinging loneliness. It's really fascinating to revisit this state as an adult. And painful.
I vividly remember that phase of my life. I would not want to live it again. It was a combination of shyness, geekiness, being a foreigner in a new land and persistent rejection arising out of the first 3. In hindsight, the big mistake I made was to try to fish in over-fished waters (typical engineering graduate school, where every female has numerous suitors). There exist overstocked ponds, demographically speaking, where you will have much better luck. School teachers, nurses and the like come to mind, but there are many other demographics. The school teacher demographic is a good one: they tend to be bright and idealistic (and many of them are pretty too!).
The good news: I eventually came out of that phase, got on with life, found a wonderful woman (my wife now), and even made decent money ... so there is light at the end of the tunnel. If I can do it, you can do it too.
I'd suggest at that stage, forget about fishing. Women are wonderful, but nonessential, and a distraction at that stage.
If you are depressed and have difficulty connecting, focus on yourself. Go play soccer, join critical mass, go climbing, do something you enjoy (keyboards forbidden, testosterone encouraged). Take on a satisfying project at work (though not so big it overwhelms your life). Find male friends, ignore women for now. The goal is to solve your problems, and women can't do that.
It may be similar to the "its easier to be an asshole online than in person" phenomenon. It's easier to talk about personal things online than in person, or so my experiences show.
I understand completely. I'm here every day, reading and posting all the time. I do this nowhere else. No facebook, no friendfeed, no twitter, just this and email.
Then I go to a cocktail party or happy hour and stand in the corner.
Absolutely, this is the first and probably the last website where I post. No facebook, twitter, orkut and etc. Even, I've hard time speaking up in meetings because most of the time I hear "Work as designed", "We've got more important things in the plate", "Cool idea, we'll come back to this later" and etc. Also, I always find a corner in social meet-ups. Don't know what's wrong :(
I had a very poignant moment when I started forwarding my Pitt email to gmail and realized it was the email address I was going to have for the rest of my life.
I don't. I go to events (usually business related) that I've been invited to. The more geeks in the room, the more comfortable I feel. The more MBAs, the less.
The more _____ in the room, the less comfortable I feel. For me, the operative word would be suits.
Suits are what make me uncomfortable. Any events that encourage wearing of clothes that require dry cleaning, formalities, pretentious things of that nature are right up there.
Thus says the MBA geek: It's actually possible to have an MBA and to still be a geek. It's not a cure-all or indication of social aptness. I don't know why some people insist upon their stereotypes about that particular degree of education.
Actually it's not the "clothes" as much as the "content" on the conversation.
One of my most interesting memories from Startup School in April...
I had 2 days where I was totally in my element talking about cool stuff with cool people the whole time. This rarely happens in my regular life. The time flew.
On the flight back, I sat next to 2 women who were reading "People" and emotionally discussing it's content. All I could think was, "Welcome back to the other 99% of the world."
Good points. I guess I just meant that some people don't tend to take seriously an MBA who doesn't dress the part, especially when business is the reason for a schoozefest.
I've actually had much better luck being taken seriously as a techie when I don't dress the part of an MBA. Probably one of the most difficult things is being taken seriously as a techie when people first get to know me for the MBA (prime example, employment interviews). It's really quite the conundrum.
Excellent article. Tips (#11,#12,#14,#16) are key. Especially #16 ("Practice being in uncomfortable situations") - the idea is that what is uncomfortable for you is very personal and very real and what you need to work on...
Daily practice makes shyness diminish. As someone who has been aware of his shyness all his life, I think it really simmers down to: selfishness (they're thinking about me [no they're not]), perfectionism (what do I say? if I clam up say nothing, I won't be hurt [umm?]), and most importantly, expectations, I hope they like me [twisted logic: if they don't like me, then I'll be hurt. So I won't talk to them, and I'll be in my shell and protected]
Great quote from one of the commenters:
“The way you overcome shyness is to become so wrapped up in something that you forget to be afraid”
- Claudia Lady Bird Johnson
The good news is that you'll never get over it. In my youth I developed severe, disfiguring calcifications of the scalp, which required surgery. The result was suboptimal, I still have numerous lesions left, and I face a scalp resection to get rid of all of them. I also had a jaw deformity--I didn't feel free to smile in public, until I was in my mid thirties. I was shy 30 years ago, and today I am proud to announce that despite the setbacks, despite never getting married and having a family, and despite the opportunity and economic costs, which have been considerable, and despite the lost time, which cannot be recovered, I am slightly less withdrawn today than I was then. My attitude did undergo a subtle but significant improvement.
I had a great time with Salsa dancing. In the right place, you dance with lots of different girls all evening long. Since you can take classes, you can get reasonably good at it so as to make a good impression. Lots of girls will dance, some won't, but because each song only lasts so long, you can meet lots of people. Furthermore, it's fun in its own right, nice music, doesn't cost much, and you can learn a surprising amount about someone from 2 or 3 minutes of dancing with them.
I was going to post the same thing. Another plus is that the salsa community is filled with classy and smart people (it takes a surprising amount of brainpower to dance well -- many of the best leaders are techies).
One of my biggest problems is with #18. I don't know any social places that are 'comfortable' to me (heck, I get nervous when I go to new IRC chat rooms...), so I don't really have a place to practice any of the other things they talk about.
Yes. After a year(ish) of lurking with no account, and 130 days of having an account here, I have finally settled down to a state where I type out at least 1/10 the comments I think of, post at least 1/5 those I type out, and leave the majority of those undeleted!
And after working with my current co-workers for a few months, I finally have courage to say something once in a while.
But attrition doesn't work in most social settings... It's a difficult way to make friends (though the friends you do eventually make are good) - I made one friend in 4.5 years of college. And it's downright horrid for getting girlfriends...
I have many of the same feelings and the only difference is I've learned to deal with it.
I think part of what wasn't communicated in the article was that those tendencies don't necessarily go away. People just learn to cope with them better. Or at least that is how it is for me.
Throughout most of my life I was an extrovert except I was frustrated that I didn't know how to bring new people into my life. And I also dealt with that nervousness of being a stranger in a room (bar, party, whatever)--then I discovered a few things that helped:
1) ask open ended questions
2) speak in the 'I' perspective... none of the "you know how it is when you do this"... "when I did this..."
3) take an interest in the other person; I made a goal to find out something special about the person in every conversation with someone new; taking an interest in the other person completely ignoring myself really made a difference.
"Attack Shyness"? Shyness seems unlikely to respond well to being attacked. I'd rather say something like "address shyness".
The point may seem minor, but wording affects how you frame a problem, which in turn has a big effect on the solution. In my experience, when working with parts of oneself, it's better not to frame things oppositionally.
I was shy when I was young (until mid way through college). My shyness was labeled as a problem. My family and friends said that I should enjoy going to basketball games and meeting new friends, going to parties, being social, etc.
As I grew up I realized that I really didn't enjoy what most people in the world enjoy. I don't enjoy going out to bars, clubs, big sports events, dancing, etc. I don't like attending parties and networking with new people. I really don't enjoy meeting random people while traveling. There are of course exceptions. But in general I've accepted the fact that it's OK to put myself in situations that I am most comfortable in.
I think a few things need to be clear to people that are shy now. First there is nothing wrong with not enjoying excessively social environments, there are (likely) other people out there who enjoy the same things you do. Second, it is OK to choose your friends and surround yourself with other people that stimulate and interest you. One really good insightful friend is worth 1000 contacts from all these social events that everyone thinks we should be attending. Third, ditch all the negative people around you because they will only add to any shyness. Lastly, you only live once. This has been a surprising motivator when deciding to attend or get involved in some social environments.
I think a blog like this is OK but it is also misleading. There are people who tend to be introverts, and that is OK. Our society does not encourage or allow introversion. It is considered "unhealthy" by the psychology and medical types. I argue that this is not always the case. A person can be introverted and private and do just about anything. For example: I know a circumstance where an introverted private person owns and runs a medium size (1000+ employee) company. I have seen him at social events where he attends (quietly) for whatever the least amount of time is to be polite and then he'll leave. I know another introverted private person who is a retired Vice President at a DOW 30 company (his division did $300+ million a year revenue). He is an excellent communicator with his core team and in small meetings or one on one. He, to this day, still struggles and is uncomfortable giving speeches or attending large events. It is absolutely possible to be successful and still be uncomfortable in large social situations.
Addressing a self esteem or self consciousness problem is important. It'll in fact make life easier and increase the likelihood of success. But it will not make you less shy or less introverted. It will make you better able to deal with those feelings. It'll allow you to put yourself in a situation that you wouldn't otherwise be in. But from my experience you will just be able to deal with being uncomfortable better than before.
Some additional background:
In college I decided I was missing out on something. That maybe there was something to all this socializing. So I went through similar steps to properly socialize myself and fend off my shyness. I began to attend house parties (even though I don't drink or smoke). I began to attend university clubs. I went to more spectator sporting events and extra curricular sports. Eventually I took on leadership rolls in a few different clubs. Later on I ran for senate at my university and was a senator for two years. By the time I finished college, my experiment complete, I decided that I would avoid uncomfortably large social situations whenever possible. There was no huge advantage to socializing on a large scale.
Now-a-days I'm a software developer. I lead a small group of people at a small company. Occasionally I have to lead meetings with 6-12 people in attendance. Rarely I'll get called on to participate at larger meetings. I'm still uncomfortable but I just do it.
On a personal note I socialize with a handful of close friends. I avoid most parties, clubs, bars, loud crazy restaurants, etc whenever possible. I prefer long in depth conversations with a few people. Done are the days where I'd meet 20 new people and talk to them about fluff. I go to dinner at places that provide some semblance of privacy and allow conversation. Occasionally I'll meet a new person and they end up being a close friend (which is great!). I no longer feel any societal pressure to attend uncomfortable social situations.
I think the best words of advice when it comes to shyness are "Just do it" and "You only live once".
Read "The Game" and then "The Mystery Method." Seriously. And I think its not too much to say that there are side benefits besides becoming less shy after reading them.
It is probably not a good strategy to blame yourself of being selfish if you are already shy, since that will just hurt your self-evaluation and make you more shy.
Better to realize that other (including non-shy) people are just as self-absorbed as you are, and therefore wont bother to judge you - they are far to busy judging themselves and wondering how other people will judge them! :)
Personally, I disagree. It's more of a form of self defense to prevent ourselves from getting hurt. I feel like a lot of shyness comes from being afraid showing people our true selves and being ridiculed or criticized for it.
Point #15 is important. I've found that just going out and being as social as possible with many different people is essential in honing your own social skills.
Don't sit at home on the couch (or chair, just coding). You need to get out there in order to succeed.
I've been slashing the recent trend of "shyness coaching" articles on news.ycombinator, but the article is actually kinda good, as far as pop psychology goes.
The family doctor gave me some pills to take as needed, said they'd calm me down. And they did. Before long I forgot all about the pills and didn't seem to need them anymore, online or off. I got some contacts, my acne went away, I got a skater/hacker identity and a girlfriend. About a year later I found out they had been sugar pills. A total placebo.
So I got tricked out of my shyness.