Being shy isn’t so cute when it can wreck your life.
Poets may praise shyness — “The flower of sweetest smell is shy and lowly,” opined William Wordsworth — but shyness stinks. I should know: I’m a former shy girl myself.
I wasn’t born shy. I was rowdy and always seeking the spotlight until an unexpected move from my hometown of St. George, Ont. (population 1,000), to another small town (population 1,500) four hours away in my last year of high school took its toll. I sank like a stone in unfamiliar waters. I kept my head down in class and hid in the bathroom during the lunch hour, waiting until I got home to storm the fridge.
Moving to Toronto for university only made things worse. Too shy to raise my hand in class and too inhibited to make friends, I spent most of my time in the library, living vicariously through the novels and poems I was assigned to read. Even ordinary conversations would trigger a bizarre physical reaction: My voice would shake, and my T-shirts would be soaked in perspiration. I can still remember the look of alarm on one guy’s face — yes, he was cute — when I challenged myself to talk and make eye contact with him. Rivulets of sweat coursed down the sides of my face like watery sideburns as I struggled for composure. It was our first and last exchange.
It has been nearly a decade since that encounter and I still long for a do-over. It took years of practising yoga and forcing myself out of my shell, but the shaky voice and cold sweats are now things of the past. I’ve graduated to being a relatively-at-ease social performer.
If I had done a little research into shyness, I might not have felt so alone. According to the 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey: Mental Health and Well-being, more than two million Canadians aged 15 and older claim to suffer from “crippling shyness,” or social anxiety disorder, which includes fear of speaking in public, meeting new people, talking to authority figures or entering a roomful of people. According to the Encyclopedia of Mental Health, symptoms of shyness include dry mouth, an accelerated heart rate, an inability to make eye contact, feelings of loneliness and a negative self-image. Controversy abounds as to where shyness ends and social anxiety disorder begins, but one thing is clear: The consequences of social anxiety disorder are more severe and can often result in complete isolation.
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