Many years ago I was so fearful of speaking in public, I would freeze up in an instant.
My stomach churned, my face became hot, my hands clammy, my voice choking. Similar symptoms occurred when I became a teaching fellow. Imagine 80 sets of eyes staring right on you!
I wish I could tell you that hypnosis (more accurately, hypnotherapy) cured my condition back then, but fortunately it was decades later I learned about the value of this technique and its value in helping others.
Let's look at some of the symptoms of the condition. A person’s symptoms may range from being unable to speak to strangers to a full-blown phobia that completely isolates the sufferer psychologically or even physically (as in the case of an agoraphobic).
Everyday fear of public speaking and being shy contains three related elements:
- physiological signs such as blushing
- negative thoughts such as “everyone is looking at me”
- bad feelings such as shame, anxiety and loneliness.
- negative thoughts such as “everyone is looking at me”
- bad feelings such as shame, anxiety and loneliness.
These elements often result in avoidance behavior.
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.
What are some of the causes of this type of behavior. A person may be shy because of a traumatic experience, family background or culture. Extreme shyness may be environmentally driven.
Lack of experience in social situations, perceived isolation experiences as a child in a home or community can contribute to shyness. Low self-esteem can arise from these life experiences can leave you vulnerable to shyness as an adult.
How can we cope with this 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 can be most evident when we are asked to speak in public. Yikes!
Coping with that (very common) form of shyness requires changing your thoughts and to let go of the terrifying fear of rejection.
How can Hypnosis help me through this issue? Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for shyness involves exposure to the fear-inducing person or place. Thus you eventually became immune to shyness when speaking in front of people.
Sometimes, drugs are prescribed for some forms of shyness, especially those which include high levels of anxiety. However, reducing the anxiety with drugs only acts as for the moment, with no long term help.
Clearly, the safest route to cure shyness is the hypnotic route. There are two main ways hypnosis is used to overcome shyness: suggestive and analytical. Let's see how these work.
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 and fear.
Positive Suggestion Hypnosis often also incorporates techniques from different aspects of psychology.
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, behavior and feelings can.
This approach takes an investment of time and funds. Hypnotherapy as the primary approach can be an efficient way to manage these feelings. Isn't it better to feel good? I would say it's so.
