Most statistics state than shyness is somewhat more common for girls than for guys. Nevertheless, make no mistake about it, there are heaps of shy guys out there, and many of them are in fact extremely inhibited.
These guys feel anxious in social situations and they feel particularly anxious around girls, especially the ones they find attractive. They have trouble engaging in conversations and keeping them going, they hide their sexual side, they are often invisible to the girls they like, and if they’re not they often get friend-zoned by these girls.
Unsurprisingly, their social life in general and their dating life in particular look pretty gloomy. And taking care of this issue is one of the most valuable actions they can accomplish.
As a social confidence coach, I work with shy guys on daily basis. Over time, this allowed me to see certain recurring patterns regarding why they are shy and how they can fix this. So, in this article, I’d like to share with you my most important findings.
The Making of Shy Guys
Generally speaking, shyness is the result of an overestimation of the risks social situations pose for you. But what these perceived risks are exactly, why they are perceived and what they signify varies from one person to another, and it varies based on gender as well.
I discovered that shy guys have two limiting beliefs in particular, which feed their timidity.
Firstly, shy guys perceive themselves as losers.
Success and status are very important for men. On average, they are significantly more important for them than they are for women. Men are especially competitive, achievement-seeking and results-oriented.
If a guy doesn’t see himself as successful and as having a good status, if he thinks other guys are better than him, he will tend to feel inferior and insecure.
Of course, success and status are very relative and the problem is that shy guys distort the reality in their heads and make themselves seem much, much worse than they are. And this generates unreasonable coyness.
Secondly, shy guys perceive themselves as sexually unattractive.
Even if they may seem themselves as successful, they still don’t see themselves as sexy. Deep down, they believe that a woman could never be sexually interested in them.
This is why they regularly try to compensate for their alleged lack of sexual attractiveness by being extremely nice with girls they like, paying a lot of attention to them or buying them expensive gifts.
Yet again, this lack of sexual attractiveness is merely a figment of their imagination, a result of some very faulty stereotypes used to understand human sexuality. It has little to do with the objective reality.
Now that you have a better understanding of the problem shy guys have, let’s talk about the solution.
From Shy Guy to Social Guy
A lot of shy guys appear to deem that their lack of social confidence is the result of their shortages in terms of success, status, looks, charisma or sexual experience.
Although these shortages may be to some degree real and they can be contributing factors to shyness, their role is only secondary. As I already alluded to, as a shy guy, the primary source of your shyness is your faulty thinking, not the way you are as a person.
Whatever your condition may be, trust me, I know several guys in the exact same condition who are very confident socially and have no problems making friends or enticing members of the opposite sex.
But your thinking amplifies your flaws, even invents false ones, and embellishes their meaning. This takes places automatically when you’re in social situations, and generates your feelings of anxiety and hesitancy to just be social.
Obviously, the solution is weeding out these automatic thinking patterns and replacing them with more accurate ones. It’s a step by step process which entails:
- Indentifying unrealistic thoughts you have in social settings;
- Challenging and correcting these thoughts;
- Gradually developing a more social behavior;
- And being persistent with this process.
This is a just a gross outline of the process. I’d like to show you in more detail how to implement it effectively. For this purpose I have created a special video presentation for you.
Go here now to check out the presentation and learn how the psychological process of changing your thinking and eliminating limiting beliefs works. You’ll get a lot of value out of it.
Unfortunately, shy guys miss out on a lot on life. I should know: I used to be one. You notice other guys making friends, having girlfriends and enjoying social interactions, while you’re just being an observer, waiting for something to simply fall in your lap. But it almost never does, and if it does, you’re not able to leverage it.
The good news is that you can change all of this. You can take charge your thinking, eradicate your limiting beliefs and gain the social confidence you want. All you need is the right guidance and the wiliness to apply it consistently. The improvements will follow naturally.
Image courtesy of Ed Yourdon
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To the step by step process to becoming more social I’d ad an optional step of discovering the root of those unrealistic thoughts so they don’t come back once you correct them and to prevent the root cause from flaring up in other more serious ways like drug abuse, NPD, etc.
But that’s a rather long, painful and expensive process. I’m talking about a psychodynamic approach to the issue.
In my personal experience, I have found that the root cause of my shyness is in my childhood. These unrealistic thoughts are based on irrational beliefs that I had to accept in order to believe my parents loved me unconditionally, thus I denied the truth to avoid pain (defence mechanism). Being nice is not only an overcompensation to perceived lack of sexyness, but also an inability to say “no” that in many cases comes from parents who did not respect the child as an individual who has the right to choose (did not respect his boundaries) and then got angry or passive aggresive when the child gave a “no” as an answer to their request.
For example: If I were to just correct the unrealistic thought of perceived sexuality I would solve the problem of being too nice to girls, but would be left with the irrational belief that denying a request will get me into trouble and that I am thus a bad person, another unrealistic thought based on a feeling of guilt that if corrected throught CBT it would merely get denied presence in my concious mind. However, the root cause is still there and the unconcious knows that my mother did not give me unconditional love and that the irrational beliefs that I had to accept into my concious mind to survive then are hurting me now. Being nice was a way to avoid the feelings of guilt that unconciously remind me of my mother’s lack of unconditional love and thus make me feel bad. Once I correct my niceness and stop being too nice I can no longer avoid the negative emotions and the more at risk I am to turning into drugs, alcohol, overeating, etc.
Every single person with social phobia had a mother that failed them. Or in Winnicot’s terms, was not “good enough”.
To the unconcious, the girl you are trying to date fits quite snugly into the “mom” category. You aren’t anxious because she is hot but rather because her hotness made you project onto her your idea of mother (thus putting her into the “mom” category) and the same patterns repeat (Repetition compulsion). You fear her rejection so much because unconciously it feels like loosing your mother (thus complete vulnerability) and you fight against rejection like you did as a kid: by doing what your mom would want you to do and never denying her requests. I bet your mother never told you you where being too nice to her.
Once you realise this unconcious process you’ll be able to understand where the fear of rejection comes from and you won’t try to fight against it by being overly nice.
Thanks. Sage point. In my experience there are layers of limiting beliefs and irrational thoughts that generate anxiety, and they deeper layers support the shallower ones. The deeper you can go with discovering and addressing them, the better results you will see.
Even if they may seem themselves as successful, they still don’t see themselves as sexy. Deep down, they believe that a woman could never be sexually interested in them.
—-ouch , yeah.
But also connecting to what you said, i find myself attracted to high energy, dominant women who somehow fit the mold of my dad. (In my case, its the loss that i dont fit the mold of my alphamale dad, more laid-back, less driven). But at the same time i also have an opposite feeling about the dominant types. Not overly negative but partly strained and mixed with fondness.
I’m a shy sexually amatuerish male I have only had 4 seriuos relationships in my 37 years of life, my sex life didn’t start until I was 20, that being said every girl I was with had to make the first move and all 4 of them eventually ended up cheating on me with some other guy. I know some how it was my fault, so now my shyness stems from a fear of being hurt again I haven’t had a real relationship in almost 10 years now and I haven’t had sex in 13 years because the fear is so strong that I will get hurt again, so I avoid women because why try I’m just some looser space filler till the guy you actually want comes along I know I should probably see a therapist but will it really help idk anymore.
If you face your fears- Greatness can be right at your doorstep!
I have just had a relationship with an extremely shy guy. As you said, he was also a very nice guy, infact I regard him as the love of my life. He did not have any friends and wanted to buy me gifts, mainly jewellery all the time. Interestingly, he has had six relationships in his life and all of us have approached him. He is so shy he could never approach women, but he did tell me he would dream about them. Even though I found him extremely sexy and had a great sex life that was mostly instigated by myself, he had a hidden side to him, one that he could never discuss when I brought up the subject. That was the downfall of our relationship. I felt he had a chip on his shoulder as he had missed out on a lot in life due to his shyness. He was a very handsome man and got a lot of looks from women when we went out. He followed beautiful blondes on social media and had gone overseas to buy a wife on several occassions however his financial situation didn’t allow for that at those times. I felt he had a fantasy of the perfect women he should be with. He told me he undresses women with his eyes and imagines what their breasts look like. I think this came about because he could not talk to women, so fantasies became normal for him. I became insecure when we were out because he would sit and stare at a woman all night. When i would ask him not to do this, he would get totally enraged and deny he was doing anything. He also like thai massages and happy endings and had been for some in our time together and lied about it. Lies and deceit are what ended the relationship.
I guess I’m asking can a man like that ever beat his shyness if he can’t look at himself and be honest with himself and his partner?