Unit 3: The Bold and the Bashful

The Bold and the Bashful

Shyness: It is the feeling of apprehension, lack of comfort, or awkwardness especially when a person is around other people. This commonly occurs in new situations or with unfamiliar people. Shyness can be a characteristic of people who have low self-esteem. Stronger forms of shyness are usually referred to as social anxiety or social phobia.

According to the unit, it says that 40% of the Americans label themselves as shy; but later on, that percentage changed to 48 %. When a person is shy, he or she is less popular than other people, has fewer friends, has lower self-esteem, makes less money than others, his or her life is more boring compared to other people lives, has less intimacy, has less sex, has fewer leadership skills, is more likely to be depressed, etc.

A shy person suffers a lot and does not enjoy his or her life as other people do. Once, I met a person who was extremely shy and when he went to places, he avoided interacting with other people due to his shyness condition. As a result of that, people made misattributions to him, they qualified him as an introverted person because he was always aloof from others, but later, they realized that he had a sort of phobia to converse with other people. Hence years later, he started to go to a psychologist, and now he is more extroverted and enjoys his life more than he did in the past according to him.  

In my opinion, I consider as a shy person that is trying or making an effort to be different because I am not really an outgoing person. Frequently, when I have to present in public, I feel a kind of phobia because Iam not used to being in public in front of a lot of people. On the other hand, Iam working on being more sociable, friendly and interactive in order to make friends easier and enjoy life more.

In conclusion, shyness is a phenomenon that affects the health, the social development and the success of a person, intellectually, emotionally, professionally and economically. In addition to this, people have to control the use of the Internet and video games by their children because they can trigger them serious problems as shyness due to the lack of interaction with others and also Internet addiction which is a really bad problem that affect people these days.