Friday 7 April 2017

My experience with... Shyness

Hey guys! So actually I am putting up two posts this week and hopefully next week since I am on my holidays! When I go back to uni I'll be in the middle of exam season and I do want to keep trying to upload once a week but bare with me incase I don't manage too or if my posts are quite short! Today I  am really excited to start a new series where I talk about my experiences with something. I am not sure how often I'll do these but when you're going through something I think it's nice to hear about other's experiences so that's what I aim to do with these! I have been wanting to do some more personal posts for a while. I started this blog in order to help people and I kind of want to go back to my roots a little and right some more personal posts. I will tag all of these posts under my "little thoughts" page which you can click on at the top of my blog!

So my first post is going to be all about my experiences with shyness. I wouldn't describe myself particularly as a "shy" person, in fact, when I was younger I was always known as being very chatty! But I ca be quite quiet before you get to know me and I don't always feel comfortable in social situations even when I seem to be. and I definitely have moments where I feel incredibly shy.



First of all, I thought I would tell you some of my most awkward shy moments! I think everyone has had some really awkward moments so I thought I'd tell you about some of mine so you can laugh and cringe with me and not feel so bad about your own! One of my most awkward moments was during a presentation last year. Now I hate presentations!! I am okay with them in front of small groups if I'm not being marked on them, but when I'm being assessed on them or there is a lot of people I really freeze up and I get the dreaded voice shake. My voice just absolutely will not stop shaking even if I'm not particularly that nervous it's ridiculous and I end up being worried that my voice will shake more than the presentation content! My first marked presentation at the university last year my voice shook so much I could just tell everyone was feeling awkward! Does anyone else get this? Let me know if its not just me!


I also get really shy around my boyfriend's friends, I guess because I want to make a good impression but I don't know there's just something that makes me freeze up around them! I always just seem to make some awkward comment and one of the worst was last summer when my boyfriend introduced me to someone new. Now I don't know if this is a me thing, but I find it so difficult to think of something to say when I'm being introduced and I was a bit distracted at the time replying to my friend on my phone when he did it. Instead of acting like a normal person I instead acted like an idiot and just briefly looked up from my phone and said very disinterestedly "oh" and looked at my phone again. I wasn't trying to be rude I just freaked out a bit! It was not my finest moment!



Given some of these events I had always thought other people thought a was shy but actually I was wrong! This year when we were thinking about who should do the massive debate with the other group as part of my seminar sequence, everyone said I should do it because I was the most confident. Me! That just shows how much further I have gotten and how much better at presentations. In fact someone actually described be as "confident" the other day too! I was amazed and I think that just goes to show that even though you feel like you look anxious, actually no one knows what you're feeling! Faking it till you make it really does work!

For my personal dealings with shyness, I have found a few tips! Firstly, for presentations, I have found that practising really helps! Saying it out loud really minimises my voice shaking! For music or dance or drama exams, I have found that really putting on a character really helps, the fake it till you make it trick I mentioned earlier really works for me in these situations! Truth be told in social situations when I come over really shy I still haven't found anything that works for me! But I think that overcoming shyness is a journey and I'm definitely still on it!

I hope you enjoyed this chatty post! I have some more of these "my experiences with..." posts planned so I hope you like this little series.
What tips do you have for shyness?
Lots of love,
Eleanor x

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