Need help to help self... does self-help help?

In My Humble Opinion
21

Sorry if I’m missing something here, but, as I see it, this thread has been hijiacked into an amatuer self-help thread. Great advice and all, but the question is, does self-help help.

I’m not trying to diss the advice and I applaud the intent.

The issue is whether self-help can be helpful. Speaking as someone with the same type of (shyness) issues, I’d have to say, IMHO (IANA Doctor, a therapist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, a smart or clever human being, someone who did well in school, a co-worker who is often approached for advice, a good friend to talk to when you’re feeling blue, or even a guy who just happened to read an article about just this topic in the most recent issue of Men’s Health) no.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you need professional help, just that doing what works for other people will not necessarily help you. It sounds to me like the language barrier and culture shock that one might expect to cause some social anxiety may have masked or intensified some natural social anxiety. But my opinion means nothing!

Going to the library or to teh internets or even to friends and family can be counterproductive. The book can be a crock, the writer can be a crackpot or worse: they can be right on, but they are talking about someone else’s problems.

In the context of this thread, all this seems like a hijack, so I’ll drop it. Maybe you should reask yourself these questions though:

22

Got any alternate advice? I’m not demanding better advice, just some advice other than what most of us are suggesting?

Because if you’ve got some, I’d like to see it. It’s ok to point out flaws in the advice being given, even if you don’t have anything specific to suggest, but I’m not sure that there really is any way to get over shyness, especially shyness of the habitual type, but by pretending you aren’t shy.

I suppose somone who doesn’t feel like starting conversations could try getting other people to start conversation by wearing quirky clothing, or something . . . but at core, there’s a reason that the advice we’re giving keeps being repeated–because it does work for some people.

The cure for my mother’s shyness was working as a waitress for three summers (during college). Mine’s not cured, but my reasons are not germaine to this thread.

23

Some self help books are great, and some are pure crap. Obviously. David Burns has written some fantastic ones. I highly recommend them. They work.

I once took an adult ed class on how to meet strangers. It was pretty good but you only got out of it what you put into it. One week we had the assignment that we had to talk to one complete stranger that week. Most people reported back that they talked to one person. Some were too shy to. I, being extremely shy but highly motivated, reported that I had struck up 21 conversations that week.

For me it was usually about noticing something about the person. Interesting handbag, cool tattoo, whatever. The thing was that I didn’t hem and haw about whether I should try or not, I just commented on the first thing that caught my eye and jumped right in. No escaping that way. And the surprising thing is, most people are more than happy to talk, especially about themselves. And they’ll supply all the topics you need. You just have to be sharp enough to pick them up.

“Nice handbag.”

“Thanks!”

“Where did you get it?”

“I made it!”

“You’re joking. Wow, that’s impressive. What gave you the idea?”

“I don’t know, I’m a big Beatles fan.”

“Me too! What’s your favorite album?”

“Abbey Road. I first heard it when I lived in Florida.”

“What part of Florida?”

“Jacksonville.”

“No kidding? My parents live there.”

“What part?”

“The island.”

“Cool. Have you ever been to the Florida House restaurant?”

“That’s my favorite place.”

And so on. Out of noticing one handbag, we now had three topics to talk about. If we ran out of conversation about favorite restaurants, I could always go back to the Beatles.

I never did get that cute girl’s phone number, but it was a nice conversation. And it was a cool handbag.

And there’s another thing – carry around something interesting like that all the time. Someone who thinks you might be interesting to talk to will have an opening. “Hey, nice Captain Picard talking action figure. Wanna go bowling Thursday?”

24

Here’s a working theory that may or may not be true.

One first step to overcoming shyness may be to improve your (general your, not specific) self-esteem. For one thing, it may be that you think of yourself as not terribly interesting, or that there’s some terrible flaw in your personality that will come out if you open up. If you have a good relationship with yourself, you’ll feel safer exposing who you are. For another, if you have good self-esteem, you won’t care if you come off as a fool by talking to someone. You try, you fail, no big deal. This will give you more self-confidence to take the first step. And the good thing about that is that when your advances are welcome, you’ll feel even better about yourself because you tried and succeeded. And that makes your next attempt even easier, and so on.

25

A guy I used to know, Chinese but studying engineering at the college/graduate level at an (American)Big 10 University, cultivated an interest in sports for this purpose.

It even worked with me, who had no such interest in sports.

We met, and had our conversation about why he followed sports during March (Madness). I was pretty darn oblivious to the whole phenomenon–which surprised him. Everyone, especially everyone male, which was the majority of his social contacts, had an opinion on March Madness. In retrospect, I was oblivious because I’m female, I don’t much care about sports, and I was attending a school which had not participated in the NCAA tournament in decades. Funnily enough, they did the next two years.(IIRC) I’ve never been as oblivious to March Madness since–although given that I’ve lived near assorted basketball powerhouses ever since, this may not be attributable to my friend the basketball guy.

26

Maybe…I have to fake interest in what another person is saying. I really don’t care about the normal ‘semi-personal’ topics, there’s no such thing as “neat handbag”. It’s a handbag. Used to carry some set of items. The design, or why someone bought it is simply not intersting to me.

And to debate your theory…

In my case I know there’s some terrible flaw in my personality that will come out if I open up. I’ve seen it happen before, and I’ve decided that I don’t want to see it happen again. I think, however, that interest is my main hindrance with random strangers, since I can hide my flaws well enough that someone wouldn’t know about it from a casual conversation (aside from being slightly slow at thinking of something to say).
So one vote against self esteem.

27

I have been enormously helped by self-help books.

I willl list some of them, but I want to start with the books of Deborah Tannen who is a scholar (linguistics) not a clinician, but writes about conversational styles cross-culturally. It can really help to realize “OH! some people’s normal conversational pause is longer than mine, so what feels like a regular pause to me to them feels like I"m interrupting them” and stuff like that

Probably her most relevant book to your issues is “That’s Not What I Meant”. If you like that one look into some of the others (“You Just Don’t Understand” is about men and women, “I Only Say This Because I Love You” is about families, you can probably skip “You’re Wearing That?!” about mothers and daughters)

Some other books that have helped me a lot

“Feeling Good” by David Burns (cognitive therapy)
“Contact:the First Four Minutes” by Leonard Zunin
“Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway” by Susan Jeffers

I will post back if I think of others.

The beauty of self-help books is that they’re risk-free. If you don’t like it just put it down. You can get thousands at the library.

Good luck! Lots of people have been where you are and have taught themselves to go outside their comfort zone and be friendly.

The amazing thing about books is that there’s so many… a quick surf around Amazon with a few key words can turn up just what you’re looking for.

28

I wanted the OP to answer my questions before I offered advice. I was wondering how bad his shyness is, because if he was too shy to talk to someone he knew online for over a year, he might have a serious problem.

If his problem isn’t something that a therapist has to deal with, I would have told him to do something similar to what your mom did. Get yourself in a position where you have to be social and can’t get away with being shy.

I gradually lost my shyness by working as a cashier and by taking lots of speech classes in college. Now I can actually ask someone for help in a store if I need help. I still can’t start up conversations with random strangers and I hate small talk, but now I can tolerate it more. At least now I don’t freak out when people start talking to me.

Self help books can be problematic because there is so much crap on the shelves that its hard to find something that works. I’m confident that someone out there who knows the most effective way to fight shyness probably wrote a book about it. Finding that book might be really hard though. If the OP does search, I would suggest trying to find an author who knows something about psychology.

29

Fair enough, especially with your concern that seeking the help of a therapist might be a better idea for the OP.

I’m not sure why your posts yesterday rubbed me so entirely the wrong way–maybe I was just feeling defensive.

30

Sorry for the long delay between replies, everyone - rather than dolt out random excuses I’ll just say that this thread is important to me, and I appreciate everyone’s input - even in my absence.

To answer Lakai’s question, I can usually do fine in a one on one conversation - if I have my friend’s full attention. My friends and I are all big gamers so that’s the topic that usually comes up. When it comes to larger groups, though, I tend to fall back to talking to my friends or not talking to anyone at all - and it’s easy to hide when the party is big enough. I usually feel extremely uncomfortable that I’m not talking and I’d be stuck with a thousand ideas in my head, but wouldn’t know where to start.

I find that in a larger group I have a much harder time interjecting something, even on topics that I’m firmly familiar about, or I’d jump in at the wrong time and kill a conversation completely. I also share Yag Rannavach’s problem where I’d take a substantial amount of time to formulate some sensible verbiage… I think the process of conjuring up an idea, translating it into a sentence, and then saying it flawlessly is pretty difficult for me right now (curiously, I’m not doing any better with my native language since I’m out of practice with it for so long).

I can usually get my idea through just fine at work, when I have the time to sit down and think through my ideas. I’m usually allowed a moment to gather my thoughts and come up with the right answer. In general, if I’m being asked about a topic that I have perfect knowledge of, I can go on and on (quite possibly boring every audience in the process), but I’m usually stumped whenever it is a conversation about something that I don’t know, or have no foreknowledge about.

My main concern (and the reason for bringing up this topic in the first place) is that I’m quite afraid of repeating a situation that I mentioned about, where I would be spending time with people I’m not familiar with in person and be forced into a corner, unable to do anything (and obviously, that person whom I met completely freaked out after I met her). It never happened again because I’ve been deliberately avoiding those kinds of situations, but continuing to hide like this… simply doesn’t work in the long run.

31

So you can’t deal with new people. Neither can I, but I’m making a little progress. Around four years ago I could not even bring myself to make a phone call to any type of customer service line. I would dread stupid things like ordering a pizza or going to family dinner parties. I almost never raised my hand to answer a question in High School. It was a sad existence up until I took my last speech class.

The professor basically gave me good advice and made me put it into practice. She told me that 90% of communication is visual. My words matter little compared to how I presented myself. Also, she told the class that everyone worries about what other people think of them, and that it’s pointless.

Her advice, that 90% of communication is visual and that I should not worry about what people think of me, was what helped me learn to talk to strangers. I realized why the few conversations that I actually have do not go so well. I projected that I was shy through the way I presented myself physically. From the minute people met me I signaled “shy little nerd” and they would walk all over me.

The second part of her advice was a little harder for me to swallow. How could I ignore what other people think of me when I am trying to persuade them into thinking a certain way? Shouldn’t I be trying to get them to like me? Apparently, you can never know what other people are thinking of you. Worrying about them is a futile act. A quote that perfectly summarizes her lesson is: “There is no use worrying about things over which you have no control, and if you have control, you can do something about them instead of worrying.”

What can I do instead of worrying? I can actually craft a well thought out message and watch my body language as I deliver it. It worked so well during my first speech that I was genuinely surprised at the feedback I got. It turns out that people actually enjoyed what I said! I thought about it after that class and then realized how dumb it was to think that no one would like what I had to say. All my worrying was pointless.

I can now talk to strangers reasonable well, but I still suck at making new friends. It was really a little lucky that I had the professor I did. I kind of wish colleges offered a course on making friends so that some certified expert could teach it to me and make me practice the craft. The point is that there definitely is an answer. Most of the social world knows it and about 1% of the world knows how to explain it to those that don’t get it. The answer seems so simple now, but through some bad luck with genetics, it was so hard for me to figure out.

Start by reading the books Carlotta mentioned. If they do not work, read something else. Remember, you have plenty of time and there is an answer. Good luck.

32

First, congratulate yourself on learning, speaking and writing a second language!

Too me, that is so amazing and admirable!

Second,

This is gold. ** Accept yourself for who you are, not who you should be.** ( Look, we all cannot be some bon vivant flitting about town from one party to the next. Most of us are just sheep waiting for the Beautiful People to enter the room and brighten our dull, dull lives.
The transformation won’t happen overnight. It will take place in minute baby steps, of which the first will probably cause sweaty palms, stuttering, brain farts and other assorted (and not noticable to anyone else but you) moments. I promise you, one day in the future you will look back on this time and go, “Wow, those meet and greets use to bother me. How far I have come since then. I must treat myself to some new shoes!” or a purse, if you like.

Take it from someone who is just like you, except I am not chinese or male. I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.:

  1. **Get over your fear of making a mistake. ** Your best teacher is your last mistake.

  2. Everyone is self absorbed. Remember the joy of all that angst of your teenage years and thinking that every move you made, every word you said was being recorded for the ages and noticed by EVERYONE so that they could come back and taunt you at the 25th class reunion? Guess what, they thought you were noting what a colossal dork THEY were and having lots of angst going on in their heads, too. I wouldn’t go back to being a teen again even if it meant World Peace and Free Ice Cream for everyone.

  3. Relax and breathe.

4.** Realize that everyone just may be intimidated by you being chinese and all. Cause, all chinese are kung fu experts and members of the Triad,** don’tcha know.
It’s in all the movies, so it must be true!

33

Excellent, Smithers. I ordered the last two you mentioned. I never read the first one, but I read Burns’ second book, Intimate Connections. I think it’s probably a lot like the first, but focuses more on dating. What’s nice is that Burns is a psychologist, and backs up his advice with cites and studies. Hey, when science can help get you laid, then I say up with science.

34

Another working theory that may or may not be true.

When you meet someone, pick out something about them (it can be completely superficial - in fact it should be) that you LIKE about them. The color of their hair, the shirt they are wearing, their smile. Focus on LIKING them - its much easier to talk to someone you have convinced yourself you like.

Two, don’t assume the worst. Often when you get two shy people having a conversation, you get very short conversations “where are you from?” “here.” “Oh.” …Don’t assume that just because the person doesn’t spill their life story (which isn’t good either) that they don’t like you or are a snob. Assume they are just as shy as you are. I’ve seen a lot of people assume at the end of that exchange that the person doesn’t like them, when you just have two people who have no clue how to make small talk.

35

Lakai, that was an excellent post. jamus, if you take nothing else away from this thread, take the idea that all the self-help and counselling and advice in the world won’t make a bit of difference if you don’t go out and actually work on the things you worry about.

36

I will take this lesson to heart.

I have a natural tendency to pick out everything I don’t like about a person, something that I haven’t noticed about myself until you mentioned it. I’ll make a strong mental note of this one.

37

Please do. That’s a pretty nasty habit, but one I think is pretty easy to overcome.

Try this: Today, pick out one random stranger and make a mental note of one thing you like about him or her. Anything at all. Then just focus on that. Tomorrow, do it with two people. Thursday, do it with three people, and so on.