Are we born shy?

  

I was watching a YouTube video, by Melanie Murphy, about what makes people ‘shy’. She said that people aren’t born shy. When I told my Mum this, she said, ‘so, were you born shy Lauren?’ I didn’t really know how to answer this. Was I born shy? I really didn’t know.

When I went to nursery, I had a best friend (who I still see now) and we were inseparable. She was obviously a lot louder than me, but she brought the best out of me. With her, I always had someone to back me up and to always be there for me – as did she have me. We were polar opposites. She had blonde hair and blue-green eyes while I had brown hair and brown eyes. She was chatty with everyone, while I was more reserved. We went to infant school together and then to junior school. I didn’t think I was shy, and I had a lot more friends than I ever did have at Secondary school. Every time we left the school buildings, we’d ask to go round each other’s houses and always have sleepovers (well, she used to come round my house as I was always scared sleeping over other peoples and would call my Mum in the middle of the night asking her to pick me up).

When I went to secondary school, my friend went to grammar school and she made new friends, I made new friends. The thought of going to secondary school was daunting. My first week of school was an embarrassing one and everyone made their own little cliques. I didn’t really think I fitted in anywhere, even with the ‘clique’ I was left in. When you are around friends, you are supposed to feel 100% comfortable and be yourself. I don’t think I ever truly was myself with them.

I was shy at school. I never put my hand up, feared being asked a question in front of everyone, hated presentations and didn’t like being the team captain of group work (which everyone nominated me for because I had the neatest handwriting). I had a very good friend at school, who was very similar to me. She was quiet and went red when she was embarrassed. I could read her like a book. The thing about being friends with someone very similar to you, is that they don’t bring the best out in you. Well, what I mean is, that we didn’t push each other to do different things. We both were obsessed with books and liked making up stories. But more importantly, we were both just as shy as one another. Now, most people would think that being similar and having common interest’s means that you are destined to be friends. But I don’t think that’s true.  I sometimes find that I like being around someone who is the complete opposite of me.

I am still friends with both these people and love them dearly, but one just brings out my confidence more than the other.

Oh. I seem to have gone off on a tangent.

Am I shy?

Why am I shy?

1. Yes, I am shy. I know that if I apply this label to myself, then I am giving myself reason to believe that this is all I ever will be. Shy. This is the expectation I have of myself. That I am shy and won’t be able to do all of the other things other more confident people will do. This is a label I have given myself and other people have given me. I don’t know how to overcome this. It is hard to change the way you look and the one thing I have always told myself I will never be, is a copy of someone else. I am my own person and if I have spots and get anxious a lot, then I have spots and get anxious a lot. At least I am being myself. Shyness therefore, may be something that once we have applied to our self, can be hard to change. Or, I don’t know how to change.

2. If there was a gene to determine whether I would be shy or not, I would definitely have the former. I think growing up, my shyness was brought about by a lack of confidence and fear of embarrassing myself. I am not confident in the way I look. It doesn’t help having a sister who looks like a beautiful little cherub and who constantly makes fun of me (tell me why I love her?). At the end of year 6, I must have just started puberty or something, and started developing spots. I thought at the time, ‘Oh these will go. No one else has them, but they’ll go.’ They didn’t go. They just got worse and worse. They really got to me (they still do now). I never used to wear any makeup for fear the makeup would make them worse. Whenever I spoke to someone at school, I was always conscious of the fact I had them and used to think that when they were looking at me, they were just looking at my spots and not at me, what I was like on the inside. I do tend to blame my acne for not going out much and being anti-social. It knocks my confidence.

The fear of messing up also usually embarrasses me. I am good with words. But whenever I was speaking to someone at school or wherever, I used to stubble on them. I either used to think too much about what I was going to say or too little about it. This would make me really angry because words are supposed to be my ‘thing’. I love writing them, so why can’t I say them?  

I never wanted to be ‘popular’ at school. I hated being the centre of attention and most of the ‘popular’ people thrived on this. I sometimes think, if they looked like me, would they still be loud and confident? For me being popular wasn’t an option, I liked just blending in and getting on with my work and then going home to write and create a world where I could be whoever I wanted to be. I was happy with that. I guess that’s why some people take up acting, they can be someone different during the day and then, in the evening, they are their own boring selves.

I still haven’t worked out if we are born shy. All I know is that I am, and to some extent, I am happy with that. Yeah, sure, I’d like to be more confident and have more friends, but I’m content with my life. I’m still not completely happy in myself, which I think may be the cause of my shyness, but I have a good life, with a great family who are very supportive of me. And if I ever want to be someone else, I can always use the power of words to create whoever I want to be. (Is that sad?)

Thank you for reading this.

What do you think? Are we born shy? Is it nature or nurture?