Overcoming shyness – Richard Bandler

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Sometimes, though a long-term goal will provide pleasure, if there is enough pain in the short-term, your brain will “sabotage” you. • Your brain is always motivating you to do what it believes best for you based on your current beliefs and anchors, even though it might contradict your conscious goals. This sabotage is called “secondary gain”. For example, a happily married woman went to a hypnotist for help with being overweight. As it turns out, she was afraid of losing the weight because she would then be attractive to other men, and she was afraid that if she were propositioned she would have an affair, which would ruin her marriage. Once she became comfortable with her sexuality and confident enough to handle men, the weight went away almost without effort. • Facts and information are the realm of your conscious mind. Your subconscious works on imagery, symbols, and metaphor, and knows no objective reality. Now, going by that model, it’s easy to see what causes our shyness. We have dangerous generalizations about ourselves and about other people, like “I’m not attractive”, “Women/Men don’t like me”, “I’m not interesting”, “I never know what to say” etc., which taint our perceptions and our behaviour. These generalizations are subconscious and firmly entrenched. On top of that, we have such painful anchors to being evaluated, being embarrassed and being rejected that we avoid the short-term problem of meeting people and asking for dates, even though the long-term goal of intimate relationships is very enticing. The problem is wired right into our nervous systems, which is the culmination of everything we’ve ever done. Our conscious motives are peanuts compared to that. If I’ve painted a morbid picture here, I apologize. It’s easier to change than it sounds, but simply working with your consciousness WON’T work. You’ve got to work with your subconscious, and your nervous system. You’ve got to change your generalizations and your anchors, and the rest will come naturally. I’ve omitted one vital piece of information till now. Remember how your brain is always taking in information and processing it? ***YOUR OWN THOUGHTS ARE PART OF THIS INPUT***. This might sound silly at first, but it’s true. When you go over an experience in your mind, you get the same emotional response as when it actually happened. It’s a reinforcement. Consciously you can tell the difference, but your subconscious just processes and stores it along with everything else. Even if you don’t believe this, at least admit to yourself that it might be possible, because it’s central to many of the strategies I’m going to talk about. Remember, what we’re after is results, not understanding. Your thoughts are powerful tools for change. It’s just that you’ve been using them poorly until now. Your Own Worst Enemy Now think of the implications of this. Every time you’ve relived your failures and rejections, every time you’ve beat yourself up with your self-talk, every time you’ve felt sorry for yourself, you’ve been reinforcing the problem, and possibly made it worse. Now, I’m not saying you should never feel bad. It’s a natural thing and it’s bound to happen no matter what you do. But being excessively negative is unhealthy for you. Starting now, don’t allow yourself to dwell on painful events from your past. If you find yourself feeling down for more than five minutes, do something – anything – to snap yourself out of it and move on. Also, if there are any situations or people that are consistently making you feel bad about yourself, either do something to improve them or remove yourself from them. For example, half a year ago I was hanging around with a certain group of people. One or two of them were my friends, but several of the rest quite obviously didn’t like me, had no objections to showing me so, and nothing I could have done would have changed that. For a while I felt sorry for myself; I kept thinking “no one cares about me, no one likes me”, etc. Finally, I realized what I was doing. I said to myself, “Fuck ‘em all, what do I need them for anyway” and went and found a very accepting, caring and supportive group to hang around with instead. That one decision made a great difference in my life. But, I digress. By now you must be nearly mad with anticipation – “What do I DO? Tell me what to DO!!!” 

Part 2: Small Changes for your Everyday Life Here are some helpful things that are fairly simple that you can incorporate into your everyday life immediately. Empowering Questions When you ask yourself a difficult question, your subconscious goes to work looking for an answer, and it will always come up with something – even if the question is a self-defeating one. For example, if you ask yourself, “Why aren’t I dating?” you’ll get something like, “I’m too shy.” or “I’m a loser”. If you ask yourself, “Why don’t people like me?” you’ll get “I must be too ugly or unattractive” or “I mustn’t be interesting enough”. Even worse.