Anxious About Being Shy? Let Hypnotherapy Conquer Your Shyness (By Bryan Knight)

Many years ago I was so shy I couldn't enter a restaurant, let alone speak to a pretty girl.

My stomach churned, my face became hot, my hands damp, my voice squeaky. Similar symptoms to decades later when I worked as a community organizer and had to face the media.

I wish I could tell you that hypnosis (more accurately, hypnotherapy) cured my shyness back then but unfortunately it was decades before I learned about hypnosis and its value in helping to conquer shyness.

Symptoms of Shyness

A shy person's symptoms may range from being unable to speak to an attractive member of the opposite gender to a full-blown phobia that completely isolates the sufferer psychologically or even physically (as in the case of an agoraphobic).

Everyday shyness contains three, intertwining elements:

- physiological signs such as blushing 

- negative thoughts such as "everyone is looking at me" 

- bad feelings such as shame, anxiety and loneliness.

These interwoven elements often result in avoidance behavior (such as my keeping out of restaurants or not speaking to attractive girls).

This behavior frequently causes non-shy people to label the shy person as "stuck up" or "aloof" thus completing the self-defeating circle and reinforcing the shyness.

Causes of Shyness

A person may be shy because of traumatic experiences, family background, culture, even genetics. Extreme shyness may be diagnosed as "avoidant personality disorder" which often has no obvious origin.

Lack of experience in social situations, isolation as a child in a home or community can contribute to shyness. Low self-esteem arising from the poor parenting skills of your caregivers can leave you vulnerable to shyness as an adult.

As can over-involvement with inanimate objects such as television and computers and video games.

If you have little occasion to acquire social skills no wonder you're frightened by the possibility of interacting with humans.

Coping with Shyness

Unfortunately, the most common way of coping is avoidance. Avoidance of places and people who arouse the anxiety within a person that causes them to feel shy.

Anxiety of a shy person is most evident when he or she is asked to speak in public.

Coping with that (very common) form of shyness requires changing your thoughts and to let go of the terrifying fear of rejection.

Shyness Treatments; Hypnotic Cures

Behavioural treatments for shyness involve exposure to the fear-inducing person or place. Thus I eventually became immune to shyness on entering a restaurant by making myself go into them.

Drugs are prescribed for some forms of shyness, especially those which include high levels of anxiety. However, reducing the anxiety with chemicals is only a stop-gap. While it is great to reduce the anxiety the so-called side effects may be worse than the apparent cure.

On the other hand, if taking prescribed drugs temporarily enables you to engage in psychotherapy or hypnotherapy, then that could be highly beneficial.

The safest route to cure shyness is the hypnotic route.

How To Stop Shyness with Hypnosis

There are two main ways hypnosis is used to overcome shyness: suggestive and analytical.

1. Positive Suggestion Hypnosis to Conquer Shyness

As the title sounds, this involves you, while in hypnosis, imagining yourself calm, confident and at ease in situations that previously had you feeling shy.

Coupled with powerful post-hypnotic suggestions this approach can result in a swift disappearance of the discomfort of shyness.

Positive Suggestion Hypnosis often incorporates techniques from behavioural psychology.

2. Hypnoanalysis to Get to the Root(s) of Shyness

The second way of using hypnosis is to get to the root cause(s) of your shyness. And then, of course, dealing with them. While the fact of you having no siblings, or coming from another culture or being ignored as a child for instance, cannot be changed, your perceptions and therefore your thoughts, behaviour and feelings can.

Hypnoanalysis requires a trained professional to guide you.

But you can use hypnosis on your own to tackle shyness. The Web is replete with downloads you can use for self-hypnosis to conquer your shyness.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Anxious-About-Being-Shy?-Let-Hypnotherapy-Conquer-Your-Shyness&id=9773682

How to Deal with Social Pressure and Follow Your Own Path

Do you want to overcome shyness or anxiety and be confident and charismatic? Do you want to make effortless conversation with anyone, make friends and get dates easily?

Sometimes your goals and behaviors, even though they make rational sense, will come into conflict with the way others would like you to act and live. When this happens, such people may try to make you conform using emotional tools such as sarcasm, criticism, withdrawal of approval, threats or rejection.

The use of such tools by a number of people to exert influence over you is what’s known as social pressure. It’s a force meant to make you conform to the will of others around you and, more broadly, to the standards of society.

I’ve had many conversations with people who’ve made numerous sacrifices in life due to social pressure. Almost without exception, when they look back, they regret having given in to the desires of others instead of doing what they truly wanted to do.

This is why it’s key to know how to deal with social pressure. It frees you to follow your own path in life and do so without any shame. With this in mind, I’d like to give you a few practical ideas:

1. Remember That the Majority Is Often Wrong

Social pressure is often a powerful force because when several people show disapproval towards something we do, we automatically assume they are right and we are wrong, since we are alone and they are many. Our minds tend to operate on the principle that the majority is always correct.

However, in practice, that is frequently not true. In fact, let’s face it: most people don’t really know what they’re talking about most of the time. They believe various ideas simply because they’ve been exposed to them thousands of times from a young age (which is basic indoctrination) and they never bothered to question them; then they go through life following those ideas, living unimpressive lives, and expecting others to do the same.

So when you consider this, it makes no sense to give authority to an idea just because a lot of people believe it. If anything, it’s probably a sign it’s a flawed idea. This is something to always bear in mind when confronted with social pressure.

2. Don’t Blow Things Out Of Proportion

Sometimes social pressure can take pretty rough forms. Like if your whole family threatens to kick you out of the house and disown you unless you get married. It’s not a tragedy, but it’s not a pleasant situation either.

However, the vast majority of times, social pressure takes light and brief forms. Like if your friends tease you a couple of times when going out for not drinking alcohol, or a few people give you weird looks on the street because you’re dressed in an unusual way.

It’s common though for individuals dealing with such minor events to mentally make a really big deal out of them. They start thinking that everybody hates them, and that they are complete screw-ups. Their minds dramatize and exaggerate.

When dealing with social pressure, it’s important to notice how you think about it, and keep your thinking in check (here is more detailed advice on how to do this). Acknowledge what’s happening, but don’t blow it out of proportions. It will save you a lot of stress.

3. Develop a Strong Sense of Self

In my experience as a confidence and communication coach, there is strong correlation between how sensitive a person is to social pressure and how weak their sense of self is.

People with a weak sense of self let how others see them define them, and abundant approval from others is the one crucial factor that makes them feel good about themselves. Conversely, if others disagree with them or disapprove their conduct, they instantly feel invalidated and worthless.

Cultivating a strong sense of self implies getting to know yourself and your strengths, developing a positive self-image, and improving your social confidence.

4. Find People Who Accept You as You Are

The fact many people don’t approve of what you do or how you do it doesn’t mean that all of humanity is rejecting you. But it can often feel that way; unless there are also people in your life who accept you the way you are.

These people can be either A) like-minded people, who are similar to you in goals and behavior, or B) open-minded people, who have a lot of tolerance towards diversity.

Such people are great because they confirm that being true to yourself is not a death sentence for your social life. It’s reassuring to know that you can follow your path, and even though many will object, some people are fine with it and will keep being your friends.

If you lack such people in your social circle, I encourage you wholeheartedly to find them and keep them close. Get involved in social events, meet new people, get to know them better and spot the ones who accept you as you are. Make friends with such people and foster those friendships. For an unconventional person in particular, they are priceless.

Once you’ve learned to deal with it, social pressure is really no big deal. All that will truly matter to you is that you understand why you wanna do what you wanna do, and it feels right to you.

You’ll feel motivated to follow your own path and you won’t be distracted by herd-like opposition. You’ll live true to yourself and you’ll be proud of yourself for it.

http://www.peopleskillsdecoded.com/social-pressure/