Nothing is as irritating to a shy man as a confident girl.
Well, we never expected this!" they all say. "No one liked her. They all said she was pretentious, awkward, difficult to approach, prickly, too fond of her tales, haughty, prone to versifying, disdainful, cantankerous, and scornful. But when you meet her, she is strangely meek, a completely different person altogether!"How embarrassing! Do they really look upon me as a dull thing, I wonder? But I am what I am.
Alcohol is one of the quickest vehicles with which we escape shyness, our problems, and self-consciousness, for a few hours.
There's a difference between disclosing that which is only your business and hiding away from the world and not seeing, shining and sharing your magic.
Leah looked at her parents, lost in their own fantasies, and decided that the three of them were a pretty pathetic family - but she wasn't sure who was more pathetic: the dateless girl spending the night of the big dance by herself in her bedroom, or the parents who foolishly believed a boy would arrive on their doorstep with flowers, a limo, and a promise to rescue their daughter from her solitude.
I realised I really was shy. And once I was in it, I couldn't escape. I'd go to talk and find my face was made of cement. Nothing would come out. On winter days, I'd feel myself turning grey at the edges and fading into the walls.Was this defensive strategy? It was paralysing. And it went on for years.
She loved sinking into her bed on evenings like this, but apparently she shouldn't, because it worried her aunts, who thought she ought to be out dancing. It worried her a little bit, too, because what if they were right, and because sometimes a great loneliness welled up in her and threatened all the dams she built to hold it back. You couldn't cure loneliness by wallowing in it, up above the world, on an island removed from everything. She knew that. But she had such a hard time with all the cures. They seemed rough and brusque and brutal, as if they abused her skin with a pot scrubber . . . forcing herself into a mass of people, a stranger among strangers. . . . But it was much more tempting to curl up with a book under her thick white comforter.Still, sometimes after she curled up, she regretted her lack of courage and felt bleakly l
The comedy in our lives was those first few weeks we lived together in Paris: Our bodies desired one another, our souls opened for one another. We experienced all of the happiness and anguish of first love. Those first few weeks in Paris, we barely touched lips; yet the few times we did, it had the force of a collision of stars.
The idea that you are not good enough and that people will not like you is something that has been ingrained into your mind over many years. You have hundreds of experiences that you can call up as evidence of the fact that people will not like you -- and that things will not turn out well. These ideas are incredibly convincing. They compel us to hesitate, to shy away, and to avoid the situations -- and people -- that we find frightening. This sets up a reinforcing cycle, where we avoid reaching out, don't get good responses from others as a result, and then gain further evidence that we are not worthy. In order to truly overcome your social anxiety at a deep, gut level, you must repeatedly take bold action. It is only through trying something new, and with a different perspective, that you learn to see the world and the people around you in a different light.
Introverts may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.
There were other things,too, to ask him. Always she tries to be less forward. Always she tried to find the right thing to say and didn't trust the etiquette pendulum swinging in her head, so she simply said nothing, which was perceived either as painful shyness of haughtiness. Dasha never had that problem. She just said the first thing that came into her head. Tatiana knew she needed to rust her inner voice more. It was certainly loud enough
My days of torment were over, but the damage was done. I conflated the bullies and my bathroom accidents with an inchoate sense that something was wrong with me. I broadcast my sense of otherness through my slumped posture, downcast expression, and extreme timidity. Kids at school called weird so often that after a while I believed them. I hid myself behind a curtain of tangled hair.
It was a relief to inhabit someone else's life for a while, to get her personal issues for a brief respite. In a play, she knew exactly how all her character's problems would be resolved. No matter how the cast performed, the end turned out the same. No questions, no worries, no unknowns.
For a moment, I tried to see myself through the eyes of the girl with the black hair, or even the boy in the cowboy hat, studying my features for a vibration under the skin. The effort was visible in my face, and I felt ashamed. No wonder the boy had seemed disgusted: He must have seen the longing in me. Seen how my face was blatant with need, like an orphan's empty dish. And that was the difference between me and the black-haired girl- her face answered all it's own questions.
[Schulz] came to see that the better part of his shyness was really vanity, or self-centeredness. "Shyness is an illusion," he would say, late in life. "If you get out and do something and talk to people, you don't have to be shy. Shyness is the overtly self-conscious thinking that you are the only person in the world; that how you look and what you do is of any importance.