For most of his life, Bill Hudkins, 76, was terribly shy.
It was not the kind of shyness most of us can imagine–you know, the occasional awkwardness at a party or the reluctance to speak before a group of people. Hudkins, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, suffered from the kind of shyness that paralyzed him when he was around people.
“My heart would beat real fast and I would get scared,” he recalls. “I felt nobody could understand what I was saying. I was afraid to say things. If when I said something people would laugh, I thought they were laughing at me.”
Studies have shown that about 48 percent of Americans label themselves as shy, says psychologist Lynne Henderson, director of the Palo Alto Shyness Clinic in California.
Henderson defines acute shyness as “when it produces a sufficient amount of distress and emotional pain where the person feels it is interfering with their goal pursuit.”
Most people are occasionally shy.
“Not all of us are born to be the life of a party,” says psychologist Robin Tener, of Cuyahoga Falls. “Some shyness is just temperament. You see different behaviors even in infants.”
But for people like Hudkins, a retired rubber worker, the problem can be crippling.
“Extremely shy people have trouble with average human relations,” Tener says. “They have a very small life.”
Indeed, some experts consider severe shyness an anxiety disorder. Others, such as Henderson, prefer to use a “social fitness” model.
Henderson argues against pathologizing shyness because “when you medicalize something like this, people look to the outside to cure them. All of us need to learn to manage our own temperaments.”
Whatever the definition, it is clear that the results of severe shyness can be devastating.
Such people often have trouble with self-promotion–which alone can be penalizing in the aggressive, modern workplace. Or they may be unable to hold a job due to an inability to get along with others. And they often are lonely because they are unable to form close friendships and relationships.
Henderson knows of highly educated people who work as security guards because they are afraid of interacting with bosses, running meetings or making small talk at the office.
As with many anxiety disorders, there are at least two components to shyness–the physiological, which is characterized by symptoms such as elevated heart rates and sweaty palms; and the cognitive, which manifests itself in negative thinking and endless worrying.
Tener says the negative thought process is strengthened with each perceived failure or slight. “It’s a very high level of internal anxiety that is reinforced by anxious self-talk.”
Shyness is often reinforced by external events that are perceived as embarrassing.
For example, Hudkins still recalls sitting at the dinner table when he was a young boy and making an innocuous remark. Everyone laughed. “I thought something was wrong with me,” he recounts.
What happened to Hudkins after that incident is what happens to many shy people. The person associates certain social situations with feelings of dread and comes to avoid that situation.
Hudkins began to shy away from other people. “I was feeling that I was always by myself,” he says. “I never identified with other people at all.”
If he went to a party, he stayed on the sidelines. He would not make eye contact with others. “I was afraid that they could see looking at my eyes that something was wrong with me.”
Tener says very shy people often indulge in catastrophic thinking. For instance, if someone breaks eye contact with them they may immediately assume that they are boring.
Henderson agrees. “Learned helplessness goes along with shyness. They believe others are more powerful than they are. A lot of negative beliefs is what’s holding them back.”
Many shy adults were shy children. But not all shy children grow up to be shy adults. Therapists ask parents to look for signs of extreme shyness–where the child never speaks in class, has no friends and is totally withdrawn from other children.
Of course, all children are shy in some situations.
Parents should be firm in their expectations that the child be social and communicate the belief that they fully expect their children to be able to cope with challenging situations.
Hudkins finally got over his shyness about 25 years ago by joining Recovery, a self-help group for people with emotional problems. In the company of others like himself, Hudkins’ shyness eventually loosened its grip. Today, he can run meetings and often speaks before large groups.
