PAINFUL SHYNESS IN ADULTS & CHILDREN: How Loved Ones, Friends and Mentors Can Help Maintain Appropriate Expectations - Maintain appropriate expectations while communicating empathy for the shy person's painful emotions.
- Encourage them to tell you about their daily experiences and how they feel about them.
- Acknowledge the conflict between needs to belong and fears of rejection.
- Role play challenging situations with the shy person.
- Help the shy individual set specific, manageable behavioral goals, and agreed upon reasonable means to attain them.
- Help challenge the frequent negative thoughts about the self and others, and help them develop constructive alternatives.
- Avoid negative labels and intense pressures for social performance.
- Remember that shyness and social anxiety are common and universal experiences at all ages for most people.
A Psychologist Can Help - Group therapy provides a place to explore, experiment, test pessimistic hypotheses about the self and social interaction, and develop adaptive interaction styles.
- Successful therapy lowers barriers to action and increases appropriate risk taking and self-acceptance. Deliberate social "niche picking", or choosing situations that suit one's temperament, also increases.
- Individual therapy provides a place to explore one's needs, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors without pressure from others.
- Group and Individual therapy help clients develop more empathy for others and themselves by reducing negative selfthoughts, self-blame and shame while building positive perspectives and effective behavioral patterns.
- Medication may help clients enter feared situations.
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