Shy

My Shyness Project

By John Taylor; 2007 August 10

There is a spectrum of human personality running between extroverts and introverts, and my daughter from her earliest days leaned towards the latter. It is congenital, since her mother is like that too. Grampa, seeing this leaning tried to counterbalance it by getting her interested in public speaking and the theatre. He succeeded in this, and now though she will not say boo to strangers personally, she will gladly read or act in front of a large crowd. I tell her that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death, and that she should consider her fearlessness a gift from God. Anyway, in school she proved extremely sensitive to the apparently mild teasing she got from other kids. At lunch hour she gave up interacting with her peers and walks around the perimeter of the schoolyard in silent reverie about her current favorite fantasy novel series, Silverwing or Guardians of Ga'hoole.

The principal in particular was concerned, having a "painfully shy" child herself, and recommended a professional in Oakville who specializes in shyness and who had helped them. Silvie's family practitioner, however, recommended one Noam Soreni, of the Child and Family Center at Chedoke Hospital. I was less than impressed with the two interviews we had with this fellow. For one thing, although a shrink he evinced many of the symptoms of paranoia himself; it was the old "doctor heal thyself" problem. For example, although inquisitive about us, he was reluctant to reciprocate, for example by telling us his specialty, what the clinic he works for does, his ethnicity (his sounded like an Iranian accent) or even his name. After repeated inquiries from his secretary, she finally explained that he had worked there a year but had never had a calling card made up, unlike the other psychiatrists and social workers there. I said to her,

"Come on, if you go into McDonalds or Walmart and their minimum wage `associates' carry business cards. You are surely not going to tell me that this medical specialist does not bother with the first mark of professionalism?"

At last she gave in and wrote his name on a piece of paper for me. At least I had a name. If there are any hackers reading this, feel free to offer this blog any more data on this fellow that you may uncover. Anyway, in our first interview, Marie sat in the chair next to him. I spoke too quietly as I too often do, and often had to repeat myself. So I thought I would sit closer to him in the next interview. This time, he insisted with some vehemence that the chair next to him should remain empty. Asked why, he refused to divulge, saying only, "I have very good reasons for insisting on that." Having seen the movie "Harvey," I had a good idea what his secret reason must be. I wanted to ask asked the name and species of his imaginary friend, but refrained for the sake of my daughter.

At the very end he explained that we live outside his clinic's "catchment area." Marie asked what catchment means, and I explained that it is a term used by water treatment specialists [catchments, not catchment, my spell checker informs me] referring to the area served by a sewer network and that although I normally do not approve of jargon, in this case it seems entirely descriptive and appropriate. Having interviewed her extensively, he did all he could do for us, he gave her a label, "social phobia." I went straight home and found that even this was incorrect, or at least old fashioned. Current political correctness demands that you call it "social anxiety disorder." There was a spate of complaints about how big pharma is cashing in on this so-called "mental illness." They not only bribe the doctors, they even support the patient support groups. My only question about that is, why don't they just cut out the middleman and just let the public deal directly with their sales personnel? Why is the guy on the street always the last one to get a bribe?

I could not believe that a label was all this guy could offer us. But that was all he was prepared to say. Not a word of advice.

"Surely you can suggest something we can do while we wait for the next catchment professional. What about meditation, does that help?"

"We neither recommend nor not recommend practices like that."

"That seems kind of funny to me. You are calling it a phobia and you cannot recommend or not recommend something to help with fear, like meditation? Surely such techniques have been tried and proven over thousands of years, in fact long before there were catchment experts like yourself catching our catchment."

"If she tried something general to alleviate anxiety she would still choke when she came up against the specific stimulus of social contact."

Yeah, and, besides, meditation and other conditioning techniques have not funded psychiatric conferences nor offered any other perks in living memory, so why should you recommend or not recommend them?

"Is there any advice at all you can offer? If it is a phobia as you say, you must appreciate that there is human suffering involved and any advice at all that you can offer right now might be of some help."

"I am sorry, but I cannot do that."

Again, Noam Soreni failed to live up to the high standard offered by a Walmart associate. I have found that if you press a minimum wage sales clerk you can easily persuade them to reveal their candid opinion, even to the point of recommending a competitor who can better serve your interests. But not with Sereni. His concern is with his imaginary friends, be it his giant rabbit in the next seat, or the richer ones at Big Pharma. Whoever is buttering his bread it is not his clients.

So for the time being it is up to the parents to help our shy charge out. Marie has been spending more time interacting with Silvie socially, on a friendship basis. This is supposed to help. I have been reading a youth novel daily with her, followed by as much self-help advice as I dare squeeze in. I am also researching the problem of shyness on my own, and how to approach it. Here is some of what I have found so far.

The first aid I came across was one of several "Wiki hows" on shyness. This Wiki how is devoted to the positive aspects of the condition, which is, after all, a tendency of human nature, not usually an illness, much as the drug lobby may wish to portray it as such. The "how" is called, "How to Accept Being Shy." The first was news to me,

"Remember that attitudes toward quietness are cultural. In Asian countries, the most popular children are the most reserved and sensitive, while in North America, the most assertive, loud children are the most popular. (This has been studied and documented.) In other parts of the world, your personality would be envied." <http://www.wikihow.com/Accept-Being-Shy>

I also came across a very good article in a Web archived back issue of Psychology Today by Bernardo Carducci, called, "Shyness, the New Solution."

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-20000101-000032&page=3

This article is by a researcher who for over forty years has specialized in shyness. His studies documented a forty percent increase in the prevalence of social anxiety. So, this is not entirely a figment of Big Pharma's imagination. The situation really is worsening. Carducci points out that the reasons are not difficult to uncover. Our society has gone from a highly interactive entity to what he calls a "hyperculture." A hyperculture interposes technical media between people. With chat groups and cell phones, we seem to be communicating more than ever, but at the same time we are physically separated more than ever.

Shy people, being slower in responding to social cues, are cut off by the hypercultural cacophony; they are not seeing the cues that earlier generations were forced to respond to. They are cut adrift. This, I now realize, is the case with us. Marie in her youth was just as shy as Silvie but in Communist Czechoslovakia there was limited exposure even to television. Now, the media are crowding around poor Silvie, panting to offer alternatives to direct conversation with flesh and blood human beings. You could pump her up with drugs until they come out of her ears and it would not help one bit. What she needs is practice, hands on training and daily use of social skills. Maybe we should pioneer to Kazakhstan because that is the only way I can see to make a clean escape from the siren call of the data whores.

Anyway, I will close with some passages from that article which I think are of general interest to Baha'is -- it has a lot to say to anybody trying to apply the Ruhi methods to their friends -- as well as the other readers of this blog:

"The New Cultural Climate
"It is no secret that certain technological advances the Internet, e-mail, cell phones -- are changing the conditions of the culture we live in, speeding it up and intensifying its complexity. This phenomenon, dubbed hyperculture, has trickled down to alter the nature of day-to-day interactions, with negative consequences for the shy. In this cultural climate, we lose patience quickly because we've grown accustomed to things happening faster and faster. We lose tolerance for those who need time to warm up. Those who are not quick and intense get passed by. The shy are bellwethers of this change: They are the first to feel its effects. And so it's not surprising that hyperculture is actually exacerbating shyness, in both incidence and degree.
"We are also undergoing `interpersonal disenfranchisement.' Simply put, we are disconnecting from one another. Increasingly, we deal with the hyperculture cacophony by cocooning -- commuting home with headphones on while working on our laptops. We go from our cubicle to the car to our gated community, maintaining contact with only a small circle of friends and family. As other people become just e-mail addresses or faceless voices at the other end of electronic transactions, it becomes easier and easier to mistreat and disrespect them. The cost of such disconnection is a day-to-day loss of civility and an increase in rudeness. And, again, the shy pay. They are the first to be excluded, bullied or treated in a hostile manner.
"As we approach the limits of our ability to deal with the complexities of our lives, we begin to experience a state of anxiety. We either approach or avoid. And, indeed, we are seeing both phenomena -- a polarization of behavior in which we see increases in both aggression, marked by a general loss of manners that has been widely observed, and in withdrawal, one form of which is shyness. Surveys we have conducted reliably show that over the last decade and a half, the incidence of shyness has risen from 40% to 48%.
"So it is no accident that the pharmaceutical industry has chosen this cultural moment to introduce the antidepressant Paxil as a treatment for social phobia. Paxil is touted as a cure for being `allergic to people.' One of the effects of hyperculture is to make people impatient for anything but a pill that instantly reduces their anxiety level. The use of Paxil, however, operates against self-awareness. It makes shyness into a medical or psychiatric problem, which it has never been. It essentially labels as pathology what is a personality trait. I think it is a mistake for doctors to hand out a physiological remedy when we know that there are cognitive elements operating within individuals, communication difficulties existing between individuals, and major forces residing outside of individuals that are making it difficult for people to interact.
"It is much easier for the shy to take a pill, doctors figure, than for them to take the time to adjust to their cautious tendencies, modify faulty social comparisons or learn to be more civil to others. The promise of Paxil does not include teaching the shy to develop the small talk skills they so desperately need.