i'm shy. not cute shy. not "oh, she's just quiet" shy. can't-order-a-pizza-on-the-phone shy.

my name is cynthia. i'm 21, a senior, an english major at a state school in western pennsylvania. for three years you could have sat next to me in a lecture hall and never heard my voice. that was the plan.

this page is about social anxiety disorder, which is what i have, and about getting help for it, which i finally did, and about my ladder, which i'll explain.

i should say up front: i can do this. typing. i can type to you all night. nobody can see my face go red through a modem. on the internet i'm almost a regular person, and i've decided to use that for something.

· ask a question in class. not once, in three years. i'd write the question in the margin of my notebook and wait for somebody else to ask it. sometimes they did. i'd feel relieved and also like i'd lost something.

· order a pizza on the phone. i walked to the pizza place instead. in february. in western pennsylvania.

· eat in the dining hall alone. i ate granola bars in a carrel on the fourth floor of the library. i know every carrel up there.

· say "here" at roll call without practicing it in my head while the professor worked through the a's and b's.

· call anybody i didn't know. make an appointment. return a sweater.

i wasn't unhappy about being quiet. i was unhappy about how small my life was getting to make room for it.

lots of people are shy. shy is a temperament. shy people warm up slowly and get nervous at parties and do fine.

social anxiety disorder is when the fear of being watched, judged or embarrassed is so strong, and goes on for so long, that it gets in the way of your life. you skip the class instead of giving the talk. you skip the party, the job, the phone call. and it's in your body, too: blushing, shaking hands, a pounding heart, your mind going completely blank right when it's your turn.

in the big manual that doctors and counselors use, the official name is "social phobia." more and more people call it social anxiety disorder, which i like better, because "phobia" makes it sound like i'm scared of something silly, like buttons.

here's what i want you to take away, if you skip everything else: it's common. it's treatable. and it is not a flaw in your character. it isn't that you're stuck-up, or rude, or don't care. you care so much it freezes you.

last september i finally decided to go to the counseling center on campus. i wrote down what i'd say on the phone. i couldn't call. so i walked over. i stood outside the door three different days and walked away three times. the fourth time, thursday, september 17, 1998, a woman coming out held the door open for me, and it seemed ruder to leave than to go in. that's honestly how it happened.

my counselor is gayle kinnison. we met for a few weeks. she asked a lot of questions and had me fill out some questionnaires, and then she told me she thought i had social anxiety disorder. i cried, but mostly from relief that it had a name and other people had it.

she started me on cognitive-behavioral therapy, and in october i joined the tuesday group: six of us around a table in the counseling center at four o'clock, all very good at looking at the table. the first week, all i said was my name. by december i was the one who made the others laugh. (once. but still.)

"cognitive-behavioral therapy" sounds like a machine. it isn't. as gayle explained it to me, it's three things:

1. noticing the thoughts. before you raise your hand, your brain says something very fast, like "everyone will think that's a stupid question." you learn to catch that sentence and write it down. at first it seemed silly. then i realized i had been saying the same six sentences to myself since about seventh grade.

2. testing them. you treat the thought like a theory instead of a fact. what's the evidence? when somebody else asked a "stupid" question, did i think they were stupid? (no. i thought they were brave.) what's the worst that could happen, and what's most likely to happen?

3. facing the feared things in small steps. this is the ladder. you list the things you avoid, from easiest to hardest, and you climb, one rung at a time, staying in the scary situation long enough for the fear to come down on its own. it does come down. that was the most surprising thing anyone has ever told me, and it's true.

my ladder, with dates: the ladder »

about medicine: some people take medication for social anxiety, and it helps them. i haven't, but two people in my group do. that's a conversation for you and a doctor, not you and a web page.

didn't:
· "just relax." (if i could just relax, i would just relax.)
· "you just have to put yourself out there."
· "you're so QUIET!" said loudly, in front of everyone, as if i hadn't noticed.
· being called on by surprise "to help me come out of my shell." it doesn't help. it sets the shell on fire.
· avoiding things. this is the sneaky one. skipping the thing always helps that day. it makes every day after it worse.

did:
· finding out it had a name.
· the tuesday group, where everyone also rehearses "here."
· writing the thoughts down, so i could look at them instead of from inside them.
· small steps, and gayle never once saying "just."
· my roommate lindsay, who answers the phone when i can't and never makes a thing of it, and who sat in the back row of my presentation in april giving me a thumbs-up the entire five minutes.
· a book. see below.

the first thing that made me feel less alone wasn't a person. it was Shyness, by philip zimbardo, a psychologist at stanford. it came out in 1977, and i found it on a shelf in the library sophomore year, which is to say, where i was hiding anyway.

he'd asked a great many people whether they were shy, and a lot more of them said yes than i ever would have guessed. people you'd never suspect. it has exercises in it, and stories, and it's kind. i read it in two nights and then read it again. it's from 1977, so in my head everyone in it wears brown corduroy, but it doesn't matter. if you're like me, start there, and then go talk to someone. i know. i know. but start there.

you are not alone. people have written to me to say so, and i've collected some of their notes: you're not the only one »

another shy person's page, which i read about ten times before i got up the nerve to make my own: nice to meet you, by lena, a graphic designer in brooklyn who is better at fonts than at introductions. i understood every word.

(that's semicolon. she lives at my parents' house. she is also shy. she hides under the porch when the doorbell rings, and nobody tells her to put herself out there.)

write to me, if you want: [email protected]. i answer everything. i'm much better in writing.


people who've read this far since january. hi.

last updated wednesday, september 22, 1999.