The usual answer is to take a chance and express ourselves anyway.
That doesn’t deal with the cause of being shy. It usually trades one fear for another.
There is one thing that can be done, that will actually work. This removes the cause!
Can we talk about the real reason for shyness?
All life is driven from within! All life gets nurtured as much as is possible.
To nurture is to support life in its own development.
Support, in it’s own development!
Nurturing of our young stopped happening quite a while ago. That’s the source of all this fighting these days!
That alone put all of us on the defensive. It’s the reason for our lives of conflict! It’s the reason for hate and war.
Every form of life craves approval, without having to change itself to get it.
People, above all, need approval with every cell of our being!
We no longer get this!
That’s why we now compete to be important!
We are not supposed to have to compete.
Approval and respect for being ourselves, in glorious color, is supposed to be a natural right!
That’s nurturing!
Which brings us to our answer.
Our ability to present ourselves right out loud is directly dependent on how much of our real selves we felt comfortable expressing, in our early life.
No expression allowed, makes us shy.
Being shy expressing anything real about ourselves, now puts us right into shame!
We didn’t give up easily when we were little, and by the time our environment got us to stop expressing our real nature, we were in some pretty strong feelings. These are still there, blocking us from behaving from our real identity.
That’s just another way of saying we are shy!
We didn’t get nurtured. We became forced into obedience instead!
Now for the solution!
It’s those old feelings stopping us.
That’s because we are tryin to avoid them. We want to disown them. We want nothing to do with them!
They are us now. Like it or not, these things happened.
All we can do is disarm these feelings!
How?
We invite them into our life, and we live them. Each one carries terrible feelings. This process can be frightening and shameful.
Each one we assimilate loses its continuous power over our feelings. It becomes a simple memory. It no longer has any power over us. It can’t drive our behavior any more.
Its power only lasts as long as we were avoiding it!
As we go through this process, we become steadily more powerful inside. It becomes easier to speak up in any situation. We could as an infant, and we can have that back!
What do you think happens to people in therapy? People spill their problems. It’s the same thing! In telling the story, they assimilate and accept the experience, whether they are aware of the process or not!
I hope this helps.
Please nurture your young, instead of turning them into robots.
Thanks for listening.
Norm
I welcome considering other thoughts.