I have more thoughts on shyness than I anticipated
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This week a reader DMed me on Twitter to ask if I’d ever written about shyness. I don’t believe I have, but it’s an interesting thing to think about in the context of loneliness, which I’ve been writing a lot about recently.
It’s hard to say for sure, but there was probably a time in my life when I would have described myself as shy. But then I started learning about social anxiety. I was like, “It me!” I’d have to listen to someone else’s experience to know whether shyness and social anxiety are different. But I guess I assume shyness is just a milder version of social anxiety.
I feel like I’m extremely socially anxious, but I don’t really know because I don’t know what the other ends of the spectrum feel like. I’m not to the point of agoraphobia.
It’s more like I feel anxiety when I think about socializing in the future, when I am socializing, and when I recall socializing in the past. Anxiety for me feels like rapid-fire half thoughts, worst-case scenarios playing out in my head, stomach problems, and probably other things I’d notice better if I were more embodied.
Even with many years of pretty successful social engagements under my belt, I think a part of me is still a little kid who can’t figure out how to connect with strangers. Between not knowing many people here, the few I know being homebodies, not having much money, and not having a car, I haven’t gotten out much since moving to Alabama. So when I have had plans to go to things where I’m going to talk to strangers, I’ve felt anxious. But at least there’s the excuse of being out of practice. I get anxious thinking about spending time with old, dear friends too.
A lot of this fear is, I don’t know if the word is subconscious. If I think about it, I think the overarching fear is that I’m worried I’ll be bad company. I’ll be low-energy or in a bad mood or say the wrong thing.
When I am socializing, I will often get caught up in a meta-analysis. Instead of being present with what’s happening in the moment I’ll be worrying about whether my facial expressions, tone of voice, speaking volume, etc. are appropriate. I’ll worry about whether I’m saying the right things. I’ll worry I’m missing social cues. The irony of course is that this background noise pulls me out of the moment and makes it more likely that I’m going to act disengaged or upset or whatever it is I’m worried about doing.
I think this is a lot of what I was talking about when I wrote about finding people who make you feel like you don’t have to mask as much around them. For some reason I feel so much more self-conscious around some people than others.
And then of course I’ve spent untold hours replaying social interactions in my head after the fact just mortified at something I said or did. Sometimes I’ll be going along, minding my own business, happy as a clam and boom, some memory of me fucking up royally will belly-flop into my brain and cause me to literally scowl and audibly groan. The worst is when I’m trying to sleep.
You want advice? From me? Well, I’m an anxious fuck who’s managed to create a really awesome social life (at least in several large US cities) so I guess I can try.
The first bit of advice is from the fount of wisdom known to me as my mother. “No one cares.” Or, “Don’t worry about people who wouldn’t piss on you if your eyebrows were on fire.” The vast, vast majority of your social gaffes are of extremely little importance to anyone but you. Most people are simply not paying much attention at all to anything you say or do. They’re caught up in their own dramas, their own foibles, what they’re going to eat next, what they want to say next in the conversation, etc. Also, as I’ve written before, focus on the successes because doing so will breed more of them.
The second bit is to try to only talk to people you actually like.
Again:
People remember how you make them feel
People are really good at discerning how you actually feel even if you’re trying to hide it
This is a tiny bit of an exaggeration but generally speaking you can be dumb as a rock and boring as hell but if you make the other person feel smart and interesting they will walk away thinking you’re smart and interesting. People will talk 90% of the time to someone who seems like they’re enjoying listening and walk away saying it was a fascinating conversation.
It’s much, much easier to make someone feel smart and interesting if you actually think they’re smart and interesting. If the goal is to make friends, which is probably the best goal you can have, your time is much better spent finding the people you actually enjoy versus learning to pretend to enjoy people you don’t.
Finding people you genuinely enjoy isn’t always easy. Even today, I’d prefer being alone at my computer over being with the vast majority of people on this planet if I’m real. But at some point in the past I realized that I had an unproductive habit of rejecting people before they rejected me. Instead of going into a conversation looking for something to like about someone, I looked for reasons it would be a feather if my cap if they didn’t like me. They’re basic or they’re not very smart or whatever whatever. I was overweighting past failure and trying to protect my fragile ego. I expected to be rejected and needed a way to make sure I could believe that it didn’t reflect poorly on me.
At some point I put conscious effort into doing the opposite. I started to try to find something I liked about whoever I was talking to as quickly as possible.
After I made this change, but still a million years ago, I read Mark Manson give dating advice about what to do if everyone rejects you and what to do if you reject everyone. I really liked how it stands to reason that two different problems would need two different solutions. I may be butchering this. I’m a stoner and it’s been years. But what I took away from it is that if everyone is rejecting you, you’re not protecting your ego enough. If you’re rejecting everyone you’re protecting your ego too much.
I’ve never had a problem with liking everyone too much, heh. But I have spent most of my life being probably more desperate for a romantic relationship than would be ideal. I think the best advice for liking too many people too much is to pay attention to how individual people make you feel. Does this person make me feel anxious for their approval? Do they make me feel judged? Do they make me feel confident, calm, and secure? If you really like everyone you meet, start trying to walk away the moment someone elicits a feeling of insecurity, anxiety, or desperation in you.
I think another aspect of shyness is being afraid to be yourself. Afraid to say what’s on your mind. Afraid to get excited about the things that excite you. Afraid to disagree (not traditionally my problem).
I think my solution for this has been that time is so precious. My time and their time. If I put someone off by being myself right away, what a tremendous gift to us both. I’m not gonna lie here. If anything I take this too far, and alienate people who could have been useful to me. But if I’m going to err, it’s going to be in that direction. I may only truly enjoy .1% of the global population. But that’s so many people that I in all likelihood won’t have enough time on earth to connect with all of them. Why waste time with people who don’t appreciate my weird, wonderful self? Don’t be needlessly alienating, obviously. But don’t take pains to hide who you are from people who are never going to appreciate the real you. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
I’m not shy, I don’t think. So I don’t want to cast aspersions on something I don’t fully understand. But I do understand social anxiety. And here’s what I think about it: People are by and large by default way, way too risk-averse. The worst case scenario of socializing is that I do something that keeps me up at night for years. Not ideal, by any stretch. But survivable, as I well know. But the worst case scenario of not taking the risk is missing out on connection. I’m coming to believe that there’s literally nothing worse than that outcome. Besides which, everything else you’d want in life — health, money, happiness, etc. — you’ll get more of faster through close social bonds and community.
So if you’re shy and/or socially anxious my biggest piece of advice is this: Be obnoxious. Force yourself to fail. Take an improv class. Join toastmasters. Go up to a random stranger and tell them a story you think is only mildly amusing. You’ll find the cost of failure is actually pretty low. And the rewards of success are immeasurably great.