Coping with the discomfort of shyness

He ended up sitting beside me following the usual confusion on the train about which seats were reserved and which were free.

It’s a pretty clear system but you’d be surprised how many people don’t understand it.

The couple had come shyly along the carriage, looking worried and flustered. The man sat on a seat which turned out to be taken and had to leave it, so he ended up beside me. His wife perched on the edge of a seat across the way, afraid to settle in case she, too, would be moved.

They passed much of the journey in a sort of embarrassed silence. They spoke to each other now and then in a quiet mutter, as if afraid they would be put off the train if anyone noticed their presence.

It took a couple of hours for enough seats to become free to enable them to sit together.

Until then they had what I would call an uncomfortable journey due to their own uncertainty and embarrassment.

It struck me that at any moment, millions of people around the world are caught in the same uncomfortableness. They sit self-consciously in bars and cafes, on trains, at dinner tables, in offices, classrooms, in every location where people gather, as if they do not quite fit into the world they have been born into.

Their embarrassment

Sometimes you can sense that they bring their embarrassment with them into every unfamiliar situation and into some familiar ones.

But you can’t recognise them all. Some have learned to look comfortable in groups, some are even, apparently, the life and soul of the party and they get away with it because nobody knows how they are feeling inside.

Some of them even forget that, actually, they are fundamentally uncomfortable in their world.

They fool themselves until, suddenly, that sense of being tongue-tied, of not belonging, of not knowing the right thing to say or if it is right to say anything at all, comes down on them all of a sudden.

These latter ones are my type.

I can put on a pretty good act of being at home in the world, especially in a public situation in which I know what to do. But sit me down to dinner with three or four people and I might find myself struck dumb.

I’m glad I’m good at faking it because I remember what it felt like before I learned I can get away with faking it – pretty painful.

Why does this happen?

I think in some people shyness is genetic, with an oversensitivity in the brain’s defensive system.

In others I think it flows from the experience of having stood out in some way, for instance, by being the eldest in the family or, in my case, being one of the first children born into a new generation of the family: you get used to imagining that you’re under scrutiny.

Others, of course, learn to be ashamed or embarrassed because of things said or done to them as children or teenagers.

But don’t underestimate all those people who go around afraid to say boo to a goose. They may be too shy to go head-to-head with their more ebullient peers but they can be pretty good at stubbornly and quietly holding their point of view. They puzzle and impress extroverts who think their quietness means they are thinking deep thoughts.

Sometimes extroverts will even quote that, saying to them “still waters run deep” and wonder what it is they are thinking about anyway.

The extroverts don’t know, and don’t need to know, that all they’re really doing is trying to think of something to say.

As I mentioned above, I know this territory from the inside. So I felt empathy for those two people on the train. And I tried to point out seats they would be able to sit in together with little danger of being moved.

But they didn’t engage with me or my ideas. That was okay. I knew how they felt.

pomorain@yahoo.com

@PadraigOMorain

Padraig O'Morain is accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy. His latest book is Mindfulness for Worriers. His daily mindfulness reminder is free by email.