Being shy is a serious struggle sometimes, or most of the time. Some people don’t understand what a struggle it is to live day to day when you’re shy to the point of social awkwardness. Maybe your shyness is an element of your personality, maybe it’s something that you grew out of recently, maybe you’re shy because you have anxiety. Whatever the reason, life can be hard sometimes when you’re shy. Being a shy person by nature myself, I know the daily struggle. While I have moved past my awkward phase of shyness so that I’m not totally awkward, there are five struggles that shy people face almost every day of our lives.
1. People think you're strange or stuck-up
Yes, we're quiet, but that does not mean that we're being rude; a lot of the time it's just that we don't know you well enough to strike up a conversation when we first meet. For many people who are naturally shy we need to feel comfortable with you in order to really talk with someone, beyond mere small talk, and sometimes even small talk is difficult because we don't know how to keep it going.
2. "Okay, class, we're doing group work today!"
You're especially shy when you don’t have any friends in that class and your professor announces that they want you to work in groups. If you’re lucky, they say to work with the person sitting next to you, in which case you kind of make a friend by the end of the semester. The worst kind of group work though is when they make you “count off” and then group together based on numbers, and you have to figure out how to get across the room to where the rest of the people in your group have already gathered. Also, you're “too quiet” during the group work, and every time you get up the nerve to suggest something, someone else starts talking.
3. Presentations
Do I need to even explain this one? In my 21 years of life, I’ve only met a handful of people who actually like doing presentations, and that I just cannot understand, at all. You have to get up in front of a whole bunch of people and talk. Sometimes you can focus on the back wall and pretend that you’re just practicing, but sometimes you accidentally make eye contact with one person, and you can’t help but keep looking at them afterwards, and you feel super awkward about it because you totally are not staring at them, and you totally didn’t mean to make eye contact like that.
4. Getting called on in class
You do your best to avoid eye contact with the professor, only for them to call on you to answer their question or make some sort of comment. Sometimes you have the answer, and sometimes you stumble over yourself because you know you have the answer but you cannot find the words.
5. "You're actually not that quiet."
Once your friends have gotten used to spending time with you, and you’ve gotten comfortable enough around them, they have come to the realization that you’re not as quiet as they first believed you to be. In fact they now realize how outspoken you can be and how much you do talk, so of course you get the "You're not as quiet as I thought you were when we first met!" Well duh, I'm shy, not mute.
Whether you've outgrown your awkward shy phase, or you're stuck in an eternal loop of awkward shy encounters with strangers, you at least have your friends who you know will never leave your side because they like you for the shy weirdo you are in private, not who you are in public. (Mainly because you try not to talk in public).
