[Vol.91] Shyness : Anxiety about Strangers

Are you afraid to be in front of people? Is it difficult to talk to people you meet for the first time or do you feel nervous when you get attention from others? These symptoms are common among shy people. “I’m so worried to meet new people in the new semester,” or “I have a club meeting today and I'm worried because I don't know anyone.” These are the kinds of words that everyone has said before, right?

I’m also shy, so I’ve ignored or avoided eye contact when meeting unfamiliar people. When becoming intimate with people, I relieve the tension before I know it, but it took a relatively long time and effort to open up my mind to the people around me and the environment. Meeting and socializing with new people may be difficult for shy people. What is shyness and how it affects us?

What is shyness?

To put it simply, shyness is a feeling of fear or discomfort when being around other people, especially in new situations or among strangers. However, if you look up the word ‘shyness’ in the dictionary, you can see that it is usually focused on young people, such as ‘the newborn’s unwillingness to treat strangers’ and ‘the infant’s anxiety or fear about someone who is not familiar with’. So how does shyness begin in infancy and then what is different from the shyness that appears then?

It is a natural developmental process that usually occurs between the ages of four months to two years old, the child acts differently to the main caregiver and strangers, and is more cautious when strangers are around. Infants around seven months of age form a safe space, experiencing an intimate and familiar environment within the context of a caring and loving, and perceiving it as safe. They may act like running to their caregiver, hanging on to their legs, and continuing to ask for a hug.

As such, attachment formation is the main cause of infants’ shyness. As a result, if attachment is stably formed, they show anxiety in unfamiliar environments or situations where they are with strangers. Although it seems contradictory, it is natural to have shyness in infants’ development, because infants around that time are in the process of developing cognitive abilities through visual and perceptual development, and at that time, they distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar people to protect themselves from strangers.

As shy babies in their infancy get older, they begin to socialize more with others and have a close attachment with their parents. So, they soon regain stability if a caregiver with an attachment is nearby, even if they are afraid of the new environment or strangers.

On the other hand, some scholars, including psychologists Richard Davidson and Nathan Fox, look for the cause of shyness in terms of innate temperament. Actually, they measured 10-month- old infants’ brain activity when their mothers left. As a result, in case of crying infants, the right frontal lobe was activated, while in case of not crying infants, the left frontal lobe was activated. Davidson has argued that the right brain is associated with negative emotions such as fear and the left brain is associated with positive emotions such as joy. In another study, he measured brain activity while feeding milk to infants, and discovered that in the case of a single baby who cried while his mother was away, the right side of the brain was activated, unlike other babies whose left side was activated. This suggests that the experience and the cause of shyness lies in temperament, which means shyness is an inborn trait according to the function of the brain.

Main causes of shyness

Then, what is the reason that shyness, which should have been resolved at about 24 months of age, continues to give us a hard time? As mentioned earlier, when it comes to the area of action of the brain, shyness is also related to the nervous system. Shy people are more easily stressed than ordinary people because they have sensitive amygdala, which is responsible for controlling fear in the brain.

In an experiment conducted by Harvard University psychiatrist Professor Carl Schwartz, in which the experimenter shows subjects the faces of strangers and close people (to each of subjects) alternately, it shows that the amygdala of the shy person was much more activated than the control group.

Another cause is ‘excessive self-consciousness’, which refers to a tendency to be preoccupied with your own appearance or actions, particularly about how you think others might perceive you. This heightened awareness of the self can contribute to distress, discomfort, and anxiety by observing, evaluating yourself and raising the standard. Being generous to other people, but restricted to myself. You may use shyness as a means to avoid discomfort because you are strict with yourself and think, ‘I have to be good.’

If you have a strong desire to be recognized and respected by yourself and others, you avoid situations more and more that are getting attention, and your growing fear in repeated situations can even cause various mental illnesses. It often leads to social anxiety disorders, including interpersonal avoidance and social phobia.

Could shyness be corrected? Don’t worry too much. Rather, we should be able to accept this kind of shyness. Not only are there surprisingly many people who think they are shy, but maybe this kind of shyness can be an advantage. Misato Takashima’s book, ‘Shyness Is a Weapon’, covers a variety of information, from basic explanations of shyness to how to read the other person’s mind and how to move the other person’s mind. Isn't it surprising that being shy, which you used to hate, can actually help you approach and understand others?

It is also important to know the amount of social battery each person has and to have time for yourself accordingly. It’s not a real battery inside your body, it’s just a term when referring to how much social interaction we can handle. It’s how much energy each of us has in order to handle socializing. Each of us has a different battery capacity. Everyone has a certain amount of social battery every week or month, and if you have to meet a lot of new people or meet people through business meetings at once, you will be under even more stress, exceeding the total amount. If you experience solitude voluntarily first, you can be in good condition instead of loneliness.

What can we do?

How can we help shy students at school or in various situations as a teacher? First, we need to give them time to prepare calmly not to be overly nervous about new situations and people. After that, if you share your experiences or introduce things that students might find interesting in the new environment, they will be able to accept the situation more comfortably.

Also, gradually expanding the number of people participating in group activities from pair work to larger ones can be even more reassuring in that there is at least one person who gets along well with the shy student. For shy college students, it is also helpful to get used to unfamiliar places first. If you arrive a little early at the classroom where the lecture will take place before meeting new people, look around, and get used to it. This also has the effect of allocating social energy, so that you can alleviate your fear when you meet people.

It seems important to try many things because you can reduce your shyness in a variety of ways, and each person has a way that suits you. Also, you need to think about whether you are limiting your possibilities by confining yourself in the frame of being shy.

(Image source(in order) : bing, pixabay, pixabay, pixabay)