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In Which I Have Posting Anxiety
Up until about 3rd grade I'm pretty sure I was incapable of being embarrassed. It's not that I was shameless, except in the literal sense; I didn't really have much concept of shame or its causes. I understood it as something connected to misbehavior, of course--I came from a Catholic family and went to Catholic school until 4th grade. There's nothing like a Catholic parent to make you feel like poor table manners will land you in hell.
The specifics of that first episode are uninteresting, but they were related to school, and this led to an association that lingers to this day; in my head, being mistaken was something to be ashamed of and to hide. It became very important to know all the answers, or at least more of them than everyone else. I don't know that I enjoyed learning back then. Mostly it was a way of controlling my environment just a little bit, of staving off that shame and embarrassment. When other kids flubbed answers in class, I cringed for the mortification they must feel. When it was clear that most of them didn't, I was bewildered. I was further bewildered when I tried to map my right answer/wrong answer thesis onto non-classroom time. On the playground or in the lunchroom, there didn't seem to be any right answers, or at least, there were exponentially more wrong ones. I got very tired of being wrong all the time. Eventually, I scaled back my interaction with most of the other kids to the bare minimum. It didn't help. Unless you're invisible there'll always be someone to call you out and tease you for being quiet and minding your business. I always reacted to it badly, and for that I got teased and called names.
By junior high I was an insomniac. I would lie in bed at night reviewing all the social missteps I'd committed that day, and construct scenarios for more potential embarrassments on the day following. As neurotic as I am now, the thirteen-year-old me was a time bomb.
This one of my theories as to how I became shy.
It's probably wrong. Like so many things, the real story is probably not what happened, but how I reacted to it. But until just a few years ago, I burned a lot of energy on that kind of self-analysis, because I believed there was something deeply wrong with me.
Clearly I was and am an introvert; groups of people, even people I love, tire me out. Put me in a room with one person I'm comfortable with and I'm perfectly content to talk deeply for hours, but people I don't know at all can be daunting to the point of paralysis. Women with whom I feel a certain level of romantic awkwardness can cause me to mumble, giggle nervously, and flee, not always in that order. (Wikipedia has an entry for something called Love-shyness, which is intriguing, depressing and suspect in equal measure. My own case isn't so severe as those described there, but some of it resonates.)
I deal with some social situations by never going near them. I avoid parties where I'm only going to know a couple of people. Invited out by people I don't know well, I make excuses. I protect myself by not stepping into situations where I'm going to feel out of control. I fear that all of this results in my seeming, at least at times, either mentally ill or snobbish or both.
All of which is problematic, but my believing it was something that needed fixing was even more so. I'd force myself into parties and other situations, visualizing a more relaxed, more confident Dave. What usually manifested was a sloppy drunk Dave. Instead of the witty and entertaining self I'd hope to conjure, I got a spectacular goof who sometimes didn't remember all of his shenanigans the next day. Now I can see this as an attempt at seizing control of otherwise overwhelming social situations. As a corollary, I also have a history of acting over-the-top weird while completely sober; while this might seem counter-intuitive for a shy person, in fact it's a quick and dirty way of setting the terms of your interactions, because everyone is forced to react to you, to give up a certain amount of space. When you're the most annoying person in the room (and even if you manage to be the most entertaining) it's unlikely that anyone's going to make a big effort to burst that intimacy bubble.
I confess that I still catch myself doing those things from time to time. Less so, though, because of something so simple it's banal. A few years ago I took the Myers-Briggs personality test online, and found myself classified as INFP. (I get that same result every time I take the test.) The "I" stands for Introverted, and in reading the description of the classification I not only recognized myself, I saw myself described independent of value judgments. Introverted and Shy were, in my mind, equivalent to Dork and Spaz, two of the many words I'd come to hate having attached to myself. Extroverted wasn't just the desirable state, it was the default state. But somehow, seeing that I was classifiable gave me permission to exist as I was. I'm not speaking to the scientific validity or usefulness of the test; I don't know a thing about that. Again, I'm talking about my reactions. In this case, my reaction was relief, and the feeling that the burden of fixing myself had fallen away. It was OK for me not to go to parties if I didn't feel like it. It was OK for me to spend the evening talking to my friends rather than stumbling over awkward introductions to people I was never going to see again.
Not that I'm always convinced there isn't something just wrong with me, even still. I've taken Paxil, partly for panic attacks but also for social anxiety and depression. It helped with all of those things, and sometimes I wonder if I should be on something like that all the time. (It's not an option right now, just to forestall those suggestions.) Maybe my shyness is more severe than some; maybe it's not.
The shitty paradox of being shy is that it doesn't mean I don't need social interaction. It's just that I need it in a different way, and it can be difficult to ask for it, or explain it. Especially to extroverts. Y'all outnumber us by quite a bit, and sometimes you can be a bit impatient with us. It's not easy for me to explain myself to someone who gets a charge out of going out and meet new people, to say that few prospects are more daunting to me. I have plenty of friends who are extroverts, and I love them dearly. Some of them get this stuff, or at least some of it, but I don't think it comes easily. And then some extroverts (not my friends) get it all too well. They treat shy people as prey; they give them the attention they need but cannot ask for, and then take advantage of them in various ways. I suspect that most shy folks have found themselves in this sort of situation at least once--a new friend or romantic partner, with all the qualities that you feel that you yourself lack, and yet who recognizes your specialness. At least until they get what they want from you, and leave you feeling foolish and worthless because you didn't see it coming. It's a hard lesson that only reinforces the introvert's tendency to withdraw and avoid.
It's difficult, too, to say something to an extrovert like "I'm lonely," because, aside from the vulnerability of a statement like that, it's something that invites prescription. "You should go out more!" "Call my friend who lives near you!" Those suggestions may be well-meant, but they come across as frustration, as suggestions that the person is lonely because they're doing something wrong. Sometimes, granted, the problem is in the phrasing of it. But sometimes I wish I could say something like that without feeling like I'm going to be perceived as whining. "I've been feeling a little bit lonely, but I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that my loneliness is your problem, or something for which I am seeking a plan of attack. I'm simply stating this fact. You may go about your business."
Honestly, though, the vast majority of the time I do not envy extroverts. That way of interacting with people wears me out just thinking about it; I'm simply not wired for it, and if I was I'd be a different person. I feel like, too, spending time with myself is one really important way of giving myself headspace to write and create. I'm usually too tired and jumbled up after lots of socializing to be very productive.
There's something related to that, too, which seems odd to me: I'm not usually shy about my writing. I'm pretty comfortable giving readings, for instance, or talking to people about it. I'm guessing that this is because I've already set the terms for interaction, in a way, by putting the words together. Maybe this is similar to acting like a goofball in a crowded room, and I'm unconsciously using words to create distance; or maybe it's the opposite, that in the back of my mind I feel that fiction creates familiarity. I do still consider sharing my stories to be a somewhat intimate act, although clearly the hope is that many more folks than I actually know will read it. But of course writing, too, is tied up in issues of control for me; stories are the one part of my life where I have total control. And yet, unlike that 9-year-old me, I don't really want to know all the answers about my stories. I'm more interested in asking questions, nowadays.
I'm still dealing with all of this, but most of the time my life is good. I love my friends, and WisCon, the most social weekend of my year, is also my favorite. I have occasional exclamation points of socialization, and I spend a lot of the rest of my time alone, which is good. (I'm not saying there isn't space for someone else in at least some of that alone time, but the need isn't desperate.) I'm bad at letting people know when I need them, but I'm working on it.
Oh, and I no longer think that poor table manners will land me in hell.
But it's funny--even posting this makes me feel awkward. Note my retreat into formal language for most of this post. I'm not trying to speak for other shy people, or even to claim that I understand my own shyness. This is not a lament or a cry for help. But it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately, about being an introvert in an extroverted world, and how good I was (and still am) at echoing the negativity about introversion I got from that world, and even generating my own. I'd like to quit doing that.
I'd be curious to hear from other shy folks (and everyone else), whether any of this maps onto your own experiences, or not.
The specifics of that first episode are uninteresting, but they were related to school, and this led to an association that lingers to this day; in my head, being mistaken was something to be ashamed of and to hide. It became very important to know all the answers, or at least more of them than everyone else. I don't know that I enjoyed learning back then. Mostly it was a way of controlling my environment just a little bit, of staving off that shame and embarrassment. When other kids flubbed answers in class, I cringed for the mortification they must feel. When it was clear that most of them didn't, I was bewildered. I was further bewildered when I tried to map my right answer/wrong answer thesis onto non-classroom time. On the playground or in the lunchroom, there didn't seem to be any right answers, or at least, there were exponentially more wrong ones. I got very tired of being wrong all the time. Eventually, I scaled back my interaction with most of the other kids to the bare minimum. It didn't help. Unless you're invisible there'll always be someone to call you out and tease you for being quiet and minding your business. I always reacted to it badly, and for that I got teased and called names.
By junior high I was an insomniac. I would lie in bed at night reviewing all the social missteps I'd committed that day, and construct scenarios for more potential embarrassments on the day following. As neurotic as I am now, the thirteen-year-old me was a time bomb.
This one of my theories as to how I became shy.
It's probably wrong. Like so many things, the real story is probably not what happened, but how I reacted to it. But until just a few years ago, I burned a lot of energy on that kind of self-analysis, because I believed there was something deeply wrong with me.
Clearly I was and am an introvert; groups of people, even people I love, tire me out. Put me in a room with one person I'm comfortable with and I'm perfectly content to talk deeply for hours, but people I don't know at all can be daunting to the point of paralysis. Women with whom I feel a certain level of romantic awkwardness can cause me to mumble, giggle nervously, and flee, not always in that order. (Wikipedia has an entry for something called Love-shyness, which is intriguing, depressing and suspect in equal measure. My own case isn't so severe as those described there, but some of it resonates.)
I deal with some social situations by never going near them. I avoid parties where I'm only going to know a couple of people. Invited out by people I don't know well, I make excuses. I protect myself by not stepping into situations where I'm going to feel out of control. I fear that all of this results in my seeming, at least at times, either mentally ill or snobbish or both.
All of which is problematic, but my believing it was something that needed fixing was even more so. I'd force myself into parties and other situations, visualizing a more relaxed, more confident Dave. What usually manifested was a sloppy drunk Dave. Instead of the witty and entertaining self I'd hope to conjure, I got a spectacular goof who sometimes didn't remember all of his shenanigans the next day. Now I can see this as an attempt at seizing control of otherwise overwhelming social situations. As a corollary, I also have a history of acting over-the-top weird while completely sober; while this might seem counter-intuitive for a shy person, in fact it's a quick and dirty way of setting the terms of your interactions, because everyone is forced to react to you, to give up a certain amount of space. When you're the most annoying person in the room (and even if you manage to be the most entertaining) it's unlikely that anyone's going to make a big effort to burst that intimacy bubble.
I confess that I still catch myself doing those things from time to time. Less so, though, because of something so simple it's banal. A few years ago I took the Myers-Briggs personality test online, and found myself classified as INFP. (I get that same result every time I take the test.) The "I" stands for Introverted, and in reading the description of the classification I not only recognized myself, I saw myself described independent of value judgments. Introverted and Shy were, in my mind, equivalent to Dork and Spaz, two of the many words I'd come to hate having attached to myself. Extroverted wasn't just the desirable state, it was the default state. But somehow, seeing that I was classifiable gave me permission to exist as I was. I'm not speaking to the scientific validity or usefulness of the test; I don't know a thing about that. Again, I'm talking about my reactions. In this case, my reaction was relief, and the feeling that the burden of fixing myself had fallen away. It was OK for me not to go to parties if I didn't feel like it. It was OK for me to spend the evening talking to my friends rather than stumbling over awkward introductions to people I was never going to see again.
Not that I'm always convinced there isn't something just wrong with me, even still. I've taken Paxil, partly for panic attacks but also for social anxiety and depression. It helped with all of those things, and sometimes I wonder if I should be on something like that all the time. (It's not an option right now, just to forestall those suggestions.) Maybe my shyness is more severe than some; maybe it's not.
The shitty paradox of being shy is that it doesn't mean I don't need social interaction. It's just that I need it in a different way, and it can be difficult to ask for it, or explain it. Especially to extroverts. Y'all outnumber us by quite a bit, and sometimes you can be a bit impatient with us. It's not easy for me to explain myself to someone who gets a charge out of going out and meet new people, to say that few prospects are more daunting to me. I have plenty of friends who are extroverts, and I love them dearly. Some of them get this stuff, or at least some of it, but I don't think it comes easily. And then some extroverts (not my friends) get it all too well. They treat shy people as prey; they give them the attention they need but cannot ask for, and then take advantage of them in various ways. I suspect that most shy folks have found themselves in this sort of situation at least once--a new friend or romantic partner, with all the qualities that you feel that you yourself lack, and yet who recognizes your specialness. At least until they get what they want from you, and leave you feeling foolish and worthless because you didn't see it coming. It's a hard lesson that only reinforces the introvert's tendency to withdraw and avoid.
It's difficult, too, to say something to an extrovert like "I'm lonely," because, aside from the vulnerability of a statement like that, it's something that invites prescription. "You should go out more!" "Call my friend who lives near you!" Those suggestions may be well-meant, but they come across as frustration, as suggestions that the person is lonely because they're doing something wrong. Sometimes, granted, the problem is in the phrasing of it. But sometimes I wish I could say something like that without feeling like I'm going to be perceived as whining. "I've been feeling a little bit lonely, but I want to make it clear that I am not suggesting that my loneliness is your problem, or something for which I am seeking a plan of attack. I'm simply stating this fact. You may go about your business."
Honestly, though, the vast majority of the time I do not envy extroverts. That way of interacting with people wears me out just thinking about it; I'm simply not wired for it, and if I was I'd be a different person. I feel like, too, spending time with myself is one really important way of giving myself headspace to write and create. I'm usually too tired and jumbled up after lots of socializing to be very productive.
There's something related to that, too, which seems odd to me: I'm not usually shy about my writing. I'm pretty comfortable giving readings, for instance, or talking to people about it. I'm guessing that this is because I've already set the terms for interaction, in a way, by putting the words together. Maybe this is similar to acting like a goofball in a crowded room, and I'm unconsciously using words to create distance; or maybe it's the opposite, that in the back of my mind I feel that fiction creates familiarity. I do still consider sharing my stories to be a somewhat intimate act, although clearly the hope is that many more folks than I actually know will read it. But of course writing, too, is tied up in issues of control for me; stories are the one part of my life where I have total control. And yet, unlike that 9-year-old me, I don't really want to know all the answers about my stories. I'm more interested in asking questions, nowadays.
I'm still dealing with all of this, but most of the time my life is good. I love my friends, and WisCon, the most social weekend of my year, is also my favorite. I have occasional exclamation points of socialization, and I spend a lot of the rest of my time alone, which is good. (I'm not saying there isn't space for someone else in at least some of that alone time, but the need isn't desperate.) I'm bad at letting people know when I need them, but I'm working on it.
Oh, and I no longer think that poor table manners will land me in hell.
But it's funny--even posting this makes me feel awkward. Note my retreat into formal language for most of this post. I'm not trying to speak for other shy people, or even to claim that I understand my own shyness. This is not a lament or a cry for help. But it's something that's been on my mind a lot lately, about being an introvert in an extroverted world, and how good I was (and still am) at echoing the negativity about introversion I got from that world, and even generating my own. I'd like to quit doing that.
I'd be curious to hear from other shy folks (and everyone else), whether any of this maps onto your own experiences, or not.
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