Cara’s Blog

If I asked you to pick out the shy guy or girl in the room, you’d probably point to the quiet one in the corner looking uncomfortable. And the odds are you’d be right. But there’s probably an even shyer person at the centre of that lively bunch at the bar. And that person may be telling the jokes or stories, to entertain his friends.

Shy people who have an extrovert personality often have to develop ways to get what they want. Ways to cope with their vulnerability and fear so they can be with people.

For those who think that an extrovert is an out-going person and an introvert is a quiet person, let me give you a more accurate definition. An extrovert is a person who gets energy from being with people. An introvert gets his energy from being alone. That often means the extrovert IS out-going. He has to be out there with people, interacting with them, to charge his batteries.

The introvert, on the other hand, is quite happy to sit on the side-lines, saying little, because he’ll get his batteries charged later, when he’s at home watching TV or playing Xbox, on his own. If he’s shy, then he doesn’t have to stress himself out by getting out there and risking rejection. He may not feel good about himself for being shy, but he does OK.

On the other hand, the extrovert has to be out there with people or he feels drained and unhappy. Too much time on his own and this guy becomes stressed to the eyeballs. It’s not that he feels better about himself when he’s centre of the crowd, it’s that that’s the only place he can lift his spirits.

But there’s a Catch 22 in this for the extrovert. To be centre of attention means you risk drawing negative reactions from people. And the shy person has a very thin skin. It hurts the shy guy a lot more to suffer any sort of rejection than it does a non-shy person. Even a minor slight like someone turning away to talk to someone else, is more painful than the situation warrants.

Scientists have found that shy people have a very over-active part of the brain: the part that controls our adrenalin. So when a shy person is in a new situation they over-react to that situation. It feels more dangerous than it probably is. Shy people are also more sensitive in other areas of their life too. And they are usually more intelligent and focused than their counterparts. (There are some very big pluses in being naturally shy.)

I met a guy who was a professional comedian not so long ago. He was an absolute crack-up. People loved him. He found it easy to get women into bed. He seemed to have the perfect life. To everyone else.

In private, he confided to me that he wanted to get into a committed relationship. He was tired of the ‘one night stand’ life-style. He was lonely.
But women didn’t want more than sex from him, he said. None of them took him seriously. He ‘used to be’ shy he told me, but then he’d taken up comedy, and had learned to be a showman. He’d overcome his shyness.

But the sad fact was that he hadn’t. He was a shy extrovert who had created a great mask behind which he could hide very successfully. But his natural shyness meant that he couldn’t come out from behind the mask, especially in vulnerable situations like romance, where rejection is even more dangerous.

So he stayed behind his clown’s mask, lonely but safe. Just like his introvert brother sitting in the corner. Coping with life but not fully living it.

There are ways to come to terms with shyness. There are ways to find love and happiness. It isn’t a lost cause. Understanding what you are doing, on an unconscious level is the first step. Awareness is always the first step to a better life. Are you willing to take that first step?