Hypnosis consultations for Shyness and Assertiveness

Understanding Shyness

Shyness is not introversion

This is the most common confusion, and clearing it up brings relief to a lot of people.

• Introversion is a way of functioning, not a problem.
  An introverted person recharges in quiet and gets tired in a group, prefers deep exchanges to light conversation, and feels no need to be the centre of attention.
  It is neither a pathology nor a fault to correct, it is a temperament, often with fine qualities attached: listening, depth, reflection.
• Shyness is a fear. It is the apprehension of judgement, which stops you doing what you would like to do. The test is simple: the introvert does not go to the after-work get-together because they do not want to; the shy person does not go although they wanted to. One chooses, the other is prevented.

Our work will never try to turn an introvert into an extravert. That would be absurd and impossible.

It aims only at removing what prevents you: that you stay who you are, but without fear deciding in your place.

For the full mechanism, read our guide on solutionshypnose.com.

The mechanism of shyness

Three ingredients, almost always the same ones.

• Attention turned back on yourself. In a conversation, the shy person is not really listening to the other: they are watching themselves. "Am I blushing?", "What is he thinking?", "I am talking nonsense". That attention captured by self-monitoring is missing from the conversation, hence the pauses and the feeling of being "bad socially", which have nothing to do with actual ability.
• Disaster anticipation. Before the event, the mind projects the worst: looking ridiculous, the awkward silence, the judgement. And since the brain does not really tell the imagined from the lived, shy people arrive already shaken.
• Avoidance. The central mechanism, the one that makes the problem grow: you turn down the invitation, you do not speak up, you do not approach that person. Every avoidance brings relief in the moment but confirms to the brain that the situation really was dangerous. The fear grows every time you obey it.

What Hypnosis offers for developing Assertiveness

What hypnosis does, in practice

• Defusing the anticipation so that you no longer arrive already beaten.
• Turning attention back outwards. This is the most effective lever against shyness: learning again to put your attention on the other person rather than on yourself. You get better at conversation by forgetting yourself, not by monitoring yourself more closely.
• Rehearsing situations mentally: saying no to that particular person, approaching someone, asking for something.
• Stepping out of avoidance, gradually, in imagination first, then in reality.
• Working on the guilt that follows a refusal.
• Defusing the founding scenes: a humiliation at school, a family where you had no right to speak.
• And installing anchors you can use before a difficult conversation.

One important limit: assertiveness is not the answer to everything

If you are in a relationship where the other person controls, belittles, isolates or frightens you, at work as much as at home, the problem is not your lack of assertiveness, and "training you to communicate better" would be handing you a responsibility that is not yours.

These situations call for specialised resources: trained professionals, support organisations, the CNESST for workplace harassment, and services for people affected by domestic violence, available at any time.

Our support can stand by the person, never replace those channels.

Where our support stops

Being shy is a widespread characteristic, not an illness.

But see a doctor or a psychologist if fear of being looked at makes you avoid most social situations, if avoidance is seriously shrinking your life, or if the distress is significant and lasting. Info-Santé 811 can point you in the right direction at any hour.