mommagreenfish

Ask most of my friends – especially the ones from my youth – and they’ll tell you that I’m not exactly an outgoing person.

And while I’ve come a long way, from a shy little girl who spoke only to her mother to someone who has performed in dozens of plays (including one role in which my entire costume was a slip), there are countless times in a day when I find myself being “shy”.

My husband – who is not a shy person – brought home a book with me in mind the other day, all about how to stop being shy. I’ve only gotten a few pages in, but already it’s been making me think about a lot of things.

First of all is the idea of what a shy person is. To me, a shy person is someone who shrinks from social interaction and group settings, who feels uncomfortable in front of a crowd, and so on.

But for the author, a shy person can also be someone who is able to be very sociable, yet feels the pain of those interactions internally.

Also interesting to me is the idea that shyness can either be something you’re born with, or a result of your environment.

This is something that has always fascinated me – both of my parents are extremely outgoing, friendly people. I always marveled at the way they could navigate a mall full of people they knew with a smile on their faces.

One of my major social problems has been my inability to recognize people I’ve met before. Important people, too, not just random friends-of-friends I met at a party.

I often tell people the story of an instance like this from one summer between my third and fourth year of university.

I was working for a local theatre company as a production assistant, and one morning I was called upon to come to the theatre early (10 a.m.!) to work on props.

When I got there, I found an unfamiliar man standing on the stage, telling the carpenters about the major changes that would have to be made to the set.

I went to the office and called the Artistic Director of the theatre to tell him about it. The man had already started taking things apart, and I was getting concerned.

The AD asked me if I’d seen the man before, and I told him I didn’t think so. So he asked me to put him on the phone. They talked for a few minutes, and then passed the phone to me.

“Okay,” the AD said. “That was the set designer. You’ve met him twice before.”

Awkward situations like that are essentially the biggest part of the reason I still have some “shy” behaviours.

In general, I’m a pretty confident person, but now and then, usually when I’m feeling most confident, I manage to fall (spectacularly) on my face.

So lately, I’ve been looking for ways to change that. I’ve manage to find two really supportive girlfriends and I’ve been practicing talking to people I don’t know. I’ve been pushing (sometimes dragging) myself to social situations I feel intimidated by, and it hasn’t been all bad.

And lately I’ve been trying this: when I’m walking, I’m trying to not look at my feet, especially when passing another person.

The theory behind this last one is the same as plastering a smile on your face when you really don’t feel happy. I figure if I look confident in my social skills, I might actually start to feel it, too.

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