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

8 Reasons It's So Hard to Overcome a Tough Childhood

Understanding what prevents healing can be the first step toward recovery.

Trauma experienced in childhood has a special ability to wound, especially when it includes emotional, physical or sexual abuse or neglect. The fallout echoes through the years and causes negative consequences, such as higher risks of depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, PTSD, obesity, behavioral problems, and health problems such as heart disease. One study that followed hundreds of adolescents over time found that 80% of individuals who had been abused as children met the criteria for at least one psychiatric disorder at age 21.

A troubled childhood can also lead a person to alcohol and drug use as a way to numb the pain or, conversely, to feel something. Studies estimate that up to two-thirds of patients in substance use treatment have childhood histories of sexual, emotional, or physical abuse. There is much to overcome with a troubled childhood, but help is available, and a thorough understanding of what hinders healing can aid the recovery process. 

Here are 8 primary reasons why freedom from childhood trauma is difficult:

1. The traumatized person may be slow to realize the source of their pain.
   Children have no frame of reference when traumatic experiences occur, so they come to see their reality as normal, especially if their caregivers are the source of their distress. Often, it is only much later—when exposed to healthier families or when raising children of their own—that they see how damaging their childhood was. Unfortunately, the longer a person waits to get help, the tougher it becomes to heal. (If you’ve experienced childhood trauma and wonder where you fall on the spectrum, a test provided as part of the Adverse Childhood Experiences study can provide insight as well as gauge your risk of developing related health problems.)

   
   
2. Co-occurring issues can mask the true problem.
   Those who use drugs or alcohol to deal with the pain of childhood trauma may become so focused on dealing with their addiction—what is essentially a symptom of the trauma—that they never discover its source. Unless that’s done, however, they are likely to keep cycling in and out of recovery. There’s another complication to trauma-based addiction: Fellow addicts sometimes provide the sense of family missing from a person’s life.

   
   
3. The damage may also be biological.
   Scientists now know that childhood trauma can alter brain structure and change how certain genes are expressed. In a 2012 Brown University study, childhood trauma such as abuse or the loss of a parent was found to alter the programming of genes that regulate stress, boosting the risk of developing issues such as anxiety and depression. Trauma-induced brain changes, according to a 2013 study, have been linked to a diminished ability to moderate negative impulses. Childhood trauma can also affect the brain’s neurotransmitters, boosting the reward felt when drugs or alcohol are used—and making dependence more likely. These new understandings highlight the difficulties of overcoming childhood trauma, but they are also leading the way to targeted therapies and medications.

   
   
4. Overcoming the past may mean remembering it.
   Some find the concept of revisiting the past too painful. Others may be willing but find it impossible to sort out the jumble of childhood impressions. Often all that remains is a floating sense of anxiety. Pain becomes tough to eliminate when its source cannot be pinpointed.

   
   
5. Closure can be elusive.
   Oftentimes, getting those responsible for trauma to accept responsibility for their role in a painful past is impossible. They may no longer be alive by the time the traumatized person comes to understand the source of their distress or feel ready to address it. It can be tough to accept that an abuser will never be held accountable for his or her actions, or that there is no hope of ever developing a healthier relationship.

   
   
6. Answers may be sought in others rather than themselves.
   Often a person attempts to find in others what was missing from their life in an attempt to fix the past. Or they may become an approval-seeker who will go to any lengths to keep the peace or earn the love of others. Rather than valuing their own needs, they spend their energy trying to become worthy of others’ affection, often enduring further abuse in the process.

   
   
7. Emotions may be closed off.
   In some cases, caring becomes too dangerous for the child, so they numb themselves to feeling. This not only damages their ability to build healthy relationships, but it also complicates later attempts to access the emotions needed for healing.

   
   
8. It can be hard to silence the inner voices.
   Children buy into all the things they are told about themselves. If those things are negative—that they are worthless, lazy, stupid, ugly, a failure, or will never measure up to a sibling—it can leave them feeling both unworthy of a better life and powerless to change.

Source: Stefano Cavoretto/Shutterstock

While each of these scdenarios  challenges healing, none precludes it. For many, treatment and therapy can dramatically improve quality of life—among them, techniques such as cognitive behavioral therapy, which can change negative thought patterns, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), a form of psychotherapy that can help a person retrieve, process and resolve past traumas.

Additional techniques and medications are on the horizon as research increases our understanding of trauma’s effects on the mind and body. We may one day, for example, be able to simply block bad memories associated with trauma, research suggests.

Also encouraging is that researchers and therapists are coming to understand that there is a small silver lining to negative experiences: They can sometimes boost resilience. Carrying an ugly burden from the past can weigh a person down, but it can also make them stronger.

www.psychologytoday.com/blog/where-science-meets-the-steps/201505/8-reasons-its-so-hard-overcome-tough-childhood