How shy are you?

[Jockice]

I'm very shy. Yet people don't tend to think so because I'm very noticeable and I do go out and things like that.  But sometimes I have great difficulty leaving the house and I don't mean physically. Anyway (long story) I've agreed to give a presentation on Zoom in a couple of weeks and am absolutely crapping myself already. It's at times like this I really do wish I could disappear but I'm going to go through with it even if I make a total dick of myself. Which I have a feeling I will.

[Fambo Number Mive]

Could you do a practice beforehand with somebody over Zoom? Apologies if you already thought about this.

[Sebastian Cobb]

If you're using Powerpoint (or Google Slides, by the looks of it), modern versions let you pre-record narration and timings, so you could get the worst of it out of the way beforehand, leaving you just an introduction to do live before pressing play.

Although you might still want to follow fambo's suggestion about trying it first regardless just to make sure the narration plays ok or whatever.

I loathe giving presentations and usually find ways to weasel out of them if I can. I'm mostly shy with that sort of thing, when meetings seem forced and I don't really want to be somewhere. If things are on my own terms I usually fare a bit better.

[Butchers Blind]

Get on the amphetamines ASAP.

[thehungerartist]

I'm quite outgoing, got a first at uni and can lecture on stuff, and so on. I can generally hold my own in group conversations about 'difficult' topics.

But I also prefer to text than speak on the phone, every day. And I frequently fall for obvious parodies. And I have very few social skills, such as listening, or caring.

I'd say I'm 40% shy.

[Jockice]

The thing about this is when I was doing my degree (from 1998-2004) I had to do several presentations and always got marks in the 70s. I wasn't even particularly nervous about them. Unlike one woman who did almost four years of the same course and then left because she would have had to do one presentation on a particular module. And then you'd get those who would stand there stiffly holding what they had written and read it out word for word. I'd loosely work out what I was going to say then improvise, I even did a couple of presentations during my MA and when I started my PhD. But since then I've lost all confidence and convinced myself I can't do it. My speech has really gone downhill since those days too and it's about a decade since I last spoke in public. I only agreed to do this one because I mentioned the subject to a (successful) academic and she pressurised me to do a talk on it. In a nice sort of way but she was pretty insistent that I did do it and I thought if I don't do it now I never will. It's not as if I'm going to get booed off or anything. Research groups don't tend to do that and I'll be well out of range of flying tomatoes.

So ta for your tips. I'm not sure exactly what it'll be like but I definitely can't have it all written out like an essay. It wouldn't work that way. The drugs idea sounds good. I may go for that.

I am generally very shy though, honestly. Always have been,

[WhoMe]

I get a sort of delayed shy reaction, or post-interaction anxiety where I'll physically recoil about something said or gestured that everyone else probably barely registered. Ridiculous really.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

All those 'extroverts are the real shy insecure people' articles... Fuck off, you aren't having our thing. Go and 'pull' a 'bird'.

[mothman]

Just picture all of your audience sitting on the toilet with they're trousers around their ankles. Works every time.[nb]Provided you don't dwell on the fact they're all doing the same thing to you.[/nb]

[Jockice]

All those 'extroverts are the real shy insecure people' articles... Fuck off, you aren't having our thing. Go and 'pull' a 'bird'.

I am a classic introvert. INFP apparently. I even have a t-shirt with 'introvert' across it in big letters, so how can I not be? But I also have a show-offy side. It doesn't come out very often but when it does it takes people by surprise. Like the press trip I was on a few years ago when I barely said a word for the first three days (to the point that I heard one of the other journos asked the tour guide if I could actually speak) then suddenly turned into a music hall act. It takes me by surprise too but I can't turn it on and off so for most of the time I'm sullen and silent.

[bakabaka]

I know exactly what you mean, Jockice. I'm also very shy but mask it reasonably well (though not at the moment, but that's a different story).

About 5 years ago, despite having no academic qualifications at all, I was asked to be part of a lecture at the local university, the first (and only) time I have spoken in public. The idea was terrifying but it felt like a good thing to have done/know I was capable of doing. Or not, if it failed. But worth knowing either way, so I said yes. It's what the concept of the Sodit Clause was created for - to help do things outside your comfort zone by lowering its importance.

I was the third of three speakers and it was suggested that we get together and go through our talks to check nothing was repeated or left out. I also thought it would be good to have a practice run to see if I could do it. It went swimmingly and everyone was happy and I felt slightly less nervous, almost ready for the lecture the next week. In the lecture I had to explain the workings of a machine, and I was hoping that it wouldn't be so bad if I could focus on the model I'd made rather than the audience.

What I hadn't planned for was the other two speakers stealing all my information and putting into their talks so not only was almost all of my material out there before I came on, much of it had been repeated by both the proper lecturers. So all I could do was improvise, driven by panic and adrenaline, building on speculation and concluding that the machine and its origins were an elaborate scam and that everything we'd heard was bullshit, designed by the 'inventor' to extract money from anyone and everyone he could.

It turns out that people love a twist ending to an engineering lecture. So everyone made a beeline for me afterwards to ask questions - not what I'd wanted at all! But I survived.

Of course, when they put the lecture up on Youtube, my name is strangely missing from the description and credits, even though I'm there for all to see.


tl;dr - never trust an academic. And if I can survive that, you'll be fine.

[Echo Valley 2-6809]

Like the press trip I was on a few years ago when I barely said a word for the first three days (to the point that I heard one of the other journos asked the tour guide if I could actually speak) then suddenly turned into a music hall act.

Ventriloquist act?

'Everyone thinks you're a right unsociagle gastard, but that's gollocks, you're just gashful.'
''Thank you, little Jock. Shall we sing a song?'

♫  I'm shy, Mary Ellen, I'm shy...

[jamiefairlie]

Beta blockers.

[greenman]

I am a classic introvert. INFP apparently. I even have a t-shirt with 'introvert' across it in big letters, so how can I not be? But I also have a show-offy side. It doesn't come out very often but when it does it takes people by surprise. Like the press trip I was on a few years ago when I barely said a word for the first three days (to the point that I heard one of the other journos asked the tour guide if I could actually speak) then suddenly turned into a music hall act. It takes me by surprise too but I can't turn it on and off so for most of the time I'm sullen and silent.

I get the feeling this sums up a pretty large percentage of CaB.

I spose I'v had some shyness countered by selling my photography, basically having to strike up conservation with random people many times a day for years on end has cut out some degree of shyness, at least in those kinds of not very deep interactions were a negative reaction is very unlikely.

[flotemysost]

I am a classic introvert. INFP apparently. I even have a t-shirt with 'introvert' across it in big letters, so how can I not be? But I also have a show-offy side. It doesn't come out very often but when it does it takes people by surprise. Like the press trip I was on a few years ago when I barely said a word for the first three days (to the point that I heard one of the other journos asked the tour guide if I could actually speak) then suddenly turned into a music hall act. It takes me by surprise too but I can't turn it on and off so for most of the time I'm sullen and silent.

Yeah, I don't think extroversion/introversion, shyness, and confidence/self-esteem are the same thing, although they often get conflated. Extroversion doesn't mean being confident or loud, it means you find it energising to be around company (though you can also be very independent, in the same way that there must be needy introverts too).

According to the test in the Myers-Briggs thread I'm an extrovert - I think the past year and lockdown bear this out, as having limited company and working from home has been incredibly draining and miserable for me. However I also have fuckawful self esteem and struggle with impostor syndrome/waking up every day thinking everyone hates my guts, which can absolutely lead to shyness in some situations.

[Blue Jam]

All this "Extrovert/Introvert" stuff can fuck this fuck off because it's pseudoscientific bullshit.

"Ooooooh, I hate office Christmas parties and open plan offices and I don't find smalltalk stimulating and I feel tired after parties and need alone time watching Netflix, ooooh I'm so quirky and mysterious and so much more intellectual than all these normies..." Nope, sorry to disappoint you, but you're perfectly normal. Nowt wrong with that though.

[Zetetic]

Not all of it, even if a lot of the history (For example...), industry and folk-interpretations around it are.

[olliebean]

I feel like I've got more shy, or at any rate more introverted, as I've got older. In my 20s and 30s I used to be able to hold my own in a group conversation at a pub get-together; now I avoid such occasions, as I know if I go I will probably end up sitting in silence, just withdrawing into myself whilst conversations I am not a part of go on around me. But I feel like it's not that I became less able to communicate, but rather that other people just stopped talking about things that I care enough about to make the effort to join in. Or maybe I just don't care as much about things as I used to.

On the plus side, I'm far more tolerant than I used to be of spending extended periods of time on my own, which means when Coronavirus lockdowns came around I was psychologically already pretty much perfectly adapted for them. Now I feel like I'd be perfectly happy living somewhere quiet and out of the way, where I could go for a walk without seeing anyone, and having no face to face contact with anyone at all apart from delivery drivers. Just as long as I have a decent internet connection.

[Blue Jam]

I definitely have moments where I want to be as far away from other humans as humanly possible. That's not me being "introverted" though, that's just me being a curmudgeonly bastard.

[beanheadmcginty]

I have no problems with shyness unless I am at work in an office. Then I become a right fucking weirdo. Any interactions outside the office and I'm charm personified. No idea why this happens. Possibly the lighting? Or maybe that the sort of people who work in offices are simply not for me? Needless to say I am delighted that I no longer have to work in an office.

[Blue Jam]

I have no problems with shyness unless I am at work in an office. Then I become a right fucking weirdo. Any interactions outside the office and I'm charm personified. No idea why this happens. Possibly the lighting? Or maybe that the sort of people who work in offices are simply not for me? Needless to say I am delighted that I no longer have to work in an office.

I used to be a right mardy git at my last workplace and would hide away from others as much as humanly possible. In my current workplace however I'm happy to chat with pretty much anyone.

Answer: Get a new job.

[flotemysost]

I thought this article about shyness was sort of interesting, especially as the author mentions being a shy extrovert at the end - although it's a bit oversimplified and it's just her experiences, hardly a comprehensive account of shyness overall. I can somewhat to relate to some of the stuff in there, especially how being forced out of your comfort zone by other people can just make you withdraw further.

Nothing more infuriating than being cheerily told to "Just be confident in yourself!" - OK cheers, I'll just undo all those years of terrible self esteem and thinking no one on Earth will ever want anything to do with me, never thought of that!

On the other hand it is complicated and everyone's a product of their own (unique) circumstances and upbringing, so I'm not sure how much use it is to apply these labels really. Even when I was having CBT the therapist was reluctant to classify me as having low self-esteem because I sometimes think I'm an OK person, even if at the same time I'm convinced everyone else thinks I'm scum.

Anyway, some of the most confident-in-themselves people I know are definitely on the quieter side. Though quiet doesn't always equal shy, I know.

[beanheadmcginty]

Answer: Get a new job.

This has been the case with all my office based jobs and university (not school though). So I'm pretty sure it's something to do with modern fluorescent lighting. Besides, I fucking love my cushy job where I can now sit at home doing fuck all. The problem has solved itself. A bit like how everyone stopped phoning each other about 10 years ago and I no longer have to spend days building up the confidence to phone people.

[Midas]

I'm shy to the point of significant dysfunctionality but fortunately I'm psychologically infested with asocial tendencies anyway. Teeming with them.

[non capisco]

I've agreed to give a presentation on Zoom in a couple of weeks and am absolutely crapping myself already.

I think I've gained a reputation during remote working times as someone who leads Teams meetings with refreshing no-nonsense efficiency. Don't tell my work, CaB, but it's because I hate the sound of my own voice and just want to get the fucking things over with as quickly as possible!

[Zetetic]

What I find you have to hold onto, is the possibility that you might just not wake up tomorrow: there's a hundred and one medical issues to die from in your sleep, maybe there'll be a global thermonuclear exchange and you'll be vaporised before the sun comes up, maybe everything will go a bit Blood Music and the fundamental premise that the future will resemble the past will unravel and the concept of existing as a human will simply cease to apply.

The more you think about it it's pretty impossible that anyone will have to deal with any of the aftermath of anything. Calms me down.

[Zetetic]

Could you do a practice beforehand with somebody over Zoom?

Was going to echo this. If you wanted to do this with a bunch of near-strangers who opinions are of no significance to you whatsoever, I'm sure I and some other Cabbers would be up for this.

[Sebastian Cobb]

What I find you have to hold onto, is the possibility that you might just not wake up tomorrow: there's a hundred and one medical issues to die from in your sleep, maybe there'll be a global thermonuclear exchange and you'll be vaporised before the sun comes up, maybe everything will go a bit Blood Music and the fundamental premise that the future will resemble the past will unravel and the concept of existing as a human will simply cease to apply.

The more you think about it it's pretty impossible that anyone will have to deal with any of the aftermath of anything. Calms me down.

But the tragedy is I do keep waking up, day after day.

[Zetetic]

Yeah, it's hard to get away from that. But I can't - won't - imagine it'll keep on like that, given the alternatives.

[Kankurette]

I don't know whether it's shyness or autism but I'm not very good at talking to people.