Kicia Sears knows all about the angst associated with romantic rejection. A long, painful road of high school introversion began with one crushing blow to her inner spirit only six years ago.

After finally working up the nerve to ask out a crush of four long years and fellow classmate, she was spurned by his pretentious attitude.

‘The next day he pretended he didn’t know me. Others asked him if he knew me but he said no … I was so shut down,’ said the sophomore English and textual studies major. ‘I finally took the courage to ask him, but it didn’t work out so well.’

Sears added that the rest of her high school career was spent trying to forget the upsetting situation, being ‘a total klutz’ and falling down in front of people all of the time.

This type of nose-dive situation is familiar to just about anyone, but especially painful for those more commonly victimized by social anxiety: the shy guys. Timid characters are by definition not just the evasive wallflowers or loners, but anyone easily intimidated by others. Much to the dismay of many Syracuse University students, shyness may persist despite aging and maturity, disrupting one’s social life with the constant fear of rejection.

Rather than shed their hermit crab shell of solitude, many shy people tend to isolate themselves in order to avoid potentially exposing situations. Others make a valiant effort to turn a new leaf, only to revisit their previous nervous tendencies.

‘When I used to be shy I would tend to dance around the subject instead of dancing with the person I was interested in,’ said Jeanine Kowalski, a freshman television, radio and film major. ‘I would always play with my hair, fidget and put my hands in my pockets.’

Despite the frequency of shy personalities in society, the origin and remedies for bashful characteristics are usually left unexplained, leaving many individuals in a rut of social impotence.

The Science of Shyness

For many introverted people, personality traits are an expression of genetic programming or biological makeup. According to pampers.com, one in five children is born with a predisposition toward timidity, an inclination that often lasts their entire life.

The bashful personality is commonly attributed to people with a highly sensitive amygdala, a brain region associated with the long-term memory of emotionally arousing events.

A more serious form of shyness, social anxiety disorder, is the third most common psychiatric disorder after depression and alcoholism, according to the Medical Research Council on Social Anxiety Disorders. The American Psychiatric Association defines the disorder as ‘a persistent fear of one or more social or performance situations,’ and is said to be frequent among members of the same family.

Social anxiety has even been observed in animals. In his book ‘Fears, Phobias and Rituals,’ Isaac Marks points out that birds avoid prey with markings similar to the ‘vertebrate eye’ because birds seek to avoid the scrutinizing looks of other birds.

Practice Makes Perfect

Like obesity and some forms of diabetes, genetic predispositions can be avoided through awareness and conscious effort. In order to override the laws of genetics, though, it takes a certain amount of practice and patience before assertiveness is a sure thing.

In the college dating zone, confidence is everything. Thus, in order to defy the rules of ‘the game,’ one has to learn the rules of the system first – through practice. For experience breeds preparation, and preparation invokes confidence.

One technique that students may use is role-playing, which involves personifying the confident personality traits of movie stars or outgoing friends. For example, freshman undecided Arts and Sciences major Tim Toyter was able to break out of his introverted mold at the age of 13 by surrounding himself with extroverted friends.

‘I began to act like a rational human being and speak things that were on my mind,’ Toyter said.

Another method that shy students may employ is practicing flirtation methods on less intimidating people, then gradually working up to more attractive pursuits. Initiating conversations with random strangers and then flirting with them through compliments and jokes is one way to sample this technique. Sophomore advertising design major Melissa Pincus admitted to flirting with guys she doesn’t find attractive for the pure intention of confidence boosting.

‘When a guy likes you, and you’re not interested, I just keep talking because it gives you and the other person practice,’ Pincus said. ‘It’s really flattering knowing that someone’s interested in going somewhere even though it’s not.’

Not the Loneliest Number

Another way to combat shyness is to understand personal strengths and weaknesses. If a person writes off quiet tendencies as pure shyness, there is a self-imposed limitation on any assertiveness the person may yet embody. If one truly is shy, it is important to be comfortable with it so nervousness isn’t fought with nervousness, making the person’s life more miserable.

Sears said that she was able to discard her high school timidity by not worrying about how others were analyzing her personality. She also became more outgoing when she joined the Frisbee club and met people who shared some of her interests.

‘I just stopped caring,’ Sears said. ‘Not everybody is going to like you, and you can’t prevent that … there’s so many people out there so it shouldn’t be a major issue.’

Becoming comfortable with a shy personality was the major stepping block for Kowalski, who was able to circumvent uncomfortable situations by accepting her personal and religious identity.

‘As soon as I started becoming comfortable with who I was, I concentrated on strengths I had rather than weaknesses,’ Kowalski said. ‘My faith has played a large part in that security. Over the years I have developed a relationship with God, and he has revealed to me my identity in Christ.’

The most important step in learning how to embrace one’s personality is learning that shyness is a state of mind rather than a character flaw; it can be overcome if one knows how to discard the fear of public perception.

The Next Move

In order to cast aside the cloak of self-reservation, it is helpful to focus on the future rather than dwell on past mistakes. In line with the saying ‘If at first you don’t succeed … ‘ flirtation practice and the art of plotting flirtation practice is the best way to keep one’s head in the game. Truly committed shy converters understand the importance of learning from past misadventures rather than waste time reliving the past.

A grieving period entitled ‘depression and reflection’ was often a mode of personal criticism for Kowalski before she became more confident about herself. Realizing that her tendency to ruminate was becoming detrimental, she decided to use a journal in which she could vent her thoughts on paper.

‘I would be so frustrated … I would run through ideas and the sequence of events,’ Kowalski said. ‘I think it (the journal) helps me clear my mind and make sense of my thoughts.’

According to sophomore political science major Chris Monteverde-Talarico, the best way to combat shyness is to avoid plotting and over thinking altogether.

‘The biggest part of it (shyness) was just thinking too much in high school. People who are too shy think about the what-ifs, and plan every move,’ Talarico said. ‘Sometimes you just gotta go for it.’

Published on March 29, 2005 at 12:00 pm