What can I do?

stillwater2023 · Newbie User Joined: Jul 17, 2006 Posts: 2 Location: Mass

I've read many different books about overcoming shyness, but none of them seem to help. The most common message that the authors try to get across is for you to stay positive. Well i'll stay as positive as i can be, but when i want to go and try to speak with someone new especially women i freeze up and just go back to putting myself down. it has really ruined my life and i'm fed up with being this way Mad

. anyone have any suggestions that could help me out?

SingaporeGuy · Posted: Tue Jul 18, 2006 3:27 pm Post subject:

yeah, like you have said, after talking, and things turned out bad, you put yourself down.

in a positive approach, you could be more forgiving to yourself, and strive to do better next time.

yeah gotta admit doing such acts might be super duper tough, but you gotta persist, only determination and the undying passion to kill SA will eliminate this..

Scottish_Player · Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 9:55 pm Post subject: Re: What can I do?

jerseyguy · Newbie User Joined: Aug 14, 2006 Posts: 2

A phobia is just like the regular everyday fears we all have, but on a much higher magnitude and strength. Also, it's an unreasoning fear. In other words, it's not one that's driven by logic. If you are about to be eaten by a bear and are afraid, that's logical; if you are afraid of a spider that's 15 feet away from you and not poisonous, that's not logical. A phobia is a fear that's out of proportion and interferes with your life. If you have a fear that never really keeps you from doing anything, it's not a phobia.

Phobias tend to get develop very quickly as a natural conditioned response just like the dogs who salivated in Pavlov's bell ringing experiment. Somebody gets scared of something and from then on, because of conditioning, they get that same physical and emotional fear response. People don't always remember where fears came from. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they don't. Often they will think they need to remember where fear came from in order to get over it, but that's not really the case.

Common phobias are the fear of public speaking, fear of spiders, fear of snakes, fear of flying, and social anxiety or agoraphobia. I deal with these all the time. There are certainly some factors that trigger them. Let's suppose that on two separate days, you watch two different movies. One day it's a comedy and one day it's a scary movie. If on both days somebody comes up behind you and says, "boo!" which one you are going to jump the highest on? Having a lot of stress or anxiety in your life can set the stage for creating a phobia. It's not the cause of the phobia, but it is a factor. Another factor could be the number of similar incidents that have happened to you in the past. Sometimes it takes two or three incidents to create a phobia.

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http://beauty.expertvillage.com/interviews/phobias.htm