It is very frustrating for a person to want to start a conversation with another and to feel great fear about doing it. A shy person can feel quite limited by not being able to act as they wish due to the anxiety they experience when being in certain types of situations, which is very worrying since as a result their emotional well-being is quite affected.
So if one of the problems that shyness is generating is the fear of talking to boys and you constantly ask yourself how to overcome shyness with men, it is because, surely, you would like to establish some kind of relationship with them, either Friendship, partner and / or simply would like to relate better with your classmates, work, etc. In this article on Psychology-Online, we are going to give you a series of tips that will be very useful so that you can finally overcome shyness with men.
What is the origin of shyness?
Before answering your question about how to overcome shyness with men, let’s briefly explain where shyness comes from. If you are a shy person, you have surely asked yourself this question many times so it is interesting that you can know. Next we are going to look at some of the possible causes of shyness.
- Genetic heritage. Various scientific studies have found that much of the shy temperament is inherited by our parents. This does not mean that having shy parents or that many years of their life they have been shy people, we too will be like that, it simply increases the chances that we are too.
- Unpleasant experiences in childhood. If since we were little we have been the object of ridicule on many occasions for whatever reasons and we do not feel valued and accepted enough in our social circle and/or family, we are more likely to adopt this type of temperament.
- Overprotective parents. If we had overprotective parents, who were always there to solve everything for us, who on many occasions would not let us go out to play with the other children for fear that something would happen to us and would not let us live our own childhood experiences with peace of mind, that is we are very likely to develop shyness.
- Lack of self-esteem. If since children and/or adolescents our self-esteem has been deteriorated by different factors, when we are older, if we do not solve the problem, we will continue to gradually decrease our self-esteem. For example, if we have had parents who have demanded too much from us all our lives, who always asked us to do everything perfectly, who asked us to get the best grades in school, to behave in a certain way, they constantly compared us with other children, etc. All this over time generates the belief that we are worth by how well we do things. Therefore, our personal worth will always be based on the results we obtain and not on the sole fact of being people.
If you want to know if you are shy, here is a Shyness Test that will help you give yourself the answer you need.
6 tips to overcome shyness with men
After having analyzed the possible causes of shyness, we are going to give you 5 great tips so that you know how to overcome shyness with men and likewise you can increase your emotional well-being and achieve a relationship of any kind with them.
Learn to relax
This is the most important of all, so it is necessary to put special emphasis on it. Surely when you try to approach a boy that you like, for example, you begin to experience a lot of anxiety that is reflected in your tone of voice, your gestures, you can blush, you feel agitated breathing, etc. So it is important to manage all these anxious symptoms to reduce them more and more and allow us to feel comfortable at the moment of approach.
An excellent tool to achieve this is to practice relaxation exercises based on breathing. Breathing directly influences our mood, when we are relaxed our breathing is usually slower, regular and deep, the opposite of when we are anxious and / or stressed which is usually quite fast and irregular. So if we learn to breathe correctly, we will make our body feel more relaxed and therefore also our mind.
Don’t be afraid to be yourself
It is important that you lose the fear of being who you are, for this it is necessary that you know yourself well and do not pretend to be someone you are not just to like or like someone else. It is normal to a certain point, especially if it is a person you like, that you try to hide or exaggerate some aspects of your personality in the first contacts, however if you try to want to be someone you are not, you will feel more nervous when you want to get closer and it is likely that he will notice.
Don’t pretend everything turns out perfect
If you want to overcome shyness with men and you always try to plan everything to make it “perfect”, you pretend not to make a mistake in anything, that you feel zero nervous, and so on. you are going astray. Remember that no one is perfect and that if you push yourself too hard and try to control everything, you will continually feel frustrated and more insecure. So always keep in mind that you are going to make mistakes not only once but several times and not only you, but all people make mistakes, however with time and practice we develop new skills and we learn to give less importance to issues that Before they caused us a lot of fear.
Practice
After you have learned to relax and realize that not everything has to be perfect, you can start by practicing your first approach. To overcome shyness with men, you can start by talking to strangers, for example, under the pretext of asking someone the time, of distributing publicity, you can go to a store and approach a boy, say hello and ask him about a product in special, etc. This will help you to acquire some confidence before speaking with the men of your interest.
Focus on him and not what you are feeling
Focus your attention on the boy you are talking to and not on what you are feeling, that is, instead of thinking: “how nervous I feel”, “I have already started to blush”, “what can I say to see myself more interesting? ”, etc. Forget about yourself at that moment and be totally interested in the person in front of you. This changes everything because the more aware you are of the other person and listening to them with great attention and less of your thoughts about yourself and internal sensations, the more relaxed you will feel and the more likely you are to know what to say without having to be planning it.
Psychological therapy
In case you feel that your shyness is limiting you too much, you feel that you will never be able to overcome shyness with men and/or you feel limited in some other area of your life, it is recommended that you attend psychological therapy. The goal of therapy will be to help you improve your quality of life so that you can move towards your goals and objectives and in this case that you can also overcome your shyness with men and feel safe when starting a conversation with them.
To achieve this, relaxation techniques are used, which, as we saw previously, are useful to modify our emotional state and reduce anxiety. It also works through cognitive restructuring, where irrational and negative thoughts we have about ourselves and/or others are modified by other more positive and objective, exercises are performed to increase levels of self-esteem and confidence in oneself, to finally begin to gradually carry out exposures to the feared situations, in this case, to establish contact and start conversations little by little with the men until you achieve it feeling more and more secure.
This article is merely informative, in Psychology-Online we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.
