Chronic love shyness – How to overcome it?

Hello friends!

A reader asked us about how to overcome chronic love shyness. It is an excellent question, direct, clear and with a purpose. Throughout this text, we will talk about the topic, which therefore relates three elements: shyness, love, and what is chronic.

According to experts in etymology, the science that studies the origin of words, shyness comes from thymus. Thymus, in turn, can mean, in Greek, fear, as well as a reference to the thymus gland, located in the heart and which would be responsible – according to ancient sources – for childhood joy, which decays in adolescence, adulthood and old age. The truth is that medicine doesn’t know very well about the functioning of the thymus gland. For our purposes, we can stick with the first definition: shyness as fear.

Defining love already seems more problematic. Does anyone out there have a precise definition? I find it difficult. I like the phrase in English that says: “Love is a trick question”. Love is a complicated matter, fun, deceitful, mischievous, a joke. It brings together ambiguous, fun and deceitful love in a single definition… It is also easy to remember Camões, with his poem: “Love is the fire that burns without being seen”…

See an interesting Documentary about Camões

But returning to the theme of the text, I think it is not necessary to define love. For those who want, perhaps, a philosophical, abstract, conceptual definition, I recommend the book “The Banquet”, by Plato. Lacan, one of the greatest psychoanalysts after Freud, analyzes the Banquet in his Seminar on Transference.

For our purposes, defining love is also unnecessary, since love shyness is not the fear of love, but the fear of love failure, the fear of going wrong, of failing, of sounding and being ridiculous. But we will come back to this again.

Chronicus comes from Cronos, the Greek god of time, of the harvest, of death, of the scythe identified with the Roman god Saturn. In medieval astrology, Saturn was simply the devil. For mystics, the lord of karma. In short, the concept of something chronic – like a chronic illness – consists of periodicity, constant and frequent repetition.

Therefore, we have reached the point where we can say that our reader’s question seeks a way out of the fear of losing love – or not winning it – and that it is constantly repeated, in different situations, from time to time.

If shyness is fear and the opposite of fear is courage, we can imagine that the answer will follow in this direction. How to change from fearful behavior to courageous behavior? What might change this state of affairs?

Well, in the psychology office, each person is treated individually. Which means it’s always impossible to say a universally valid path. But some points can be cited to help those who are suffering from this problem all the time or in certain situations.

First, it is better to think about confidence than about courage. Confidence in oneself arises from the perception that we are unique. There are people alike in one characteristic or another, but in totality we are unique. Learning to recognize and admire this fact already helps a lot to have more confidence. In other words, we can begin to recognize our individuality for what is special, positive, interesting.

Second, getting over the idea of ​​perfection, of having to succeed every time. Since love is just this fun but tricky, mischievous question, we can get it wrong a million times. There’s no problem with that. Standing still, waiting for the ideal love, without fights, without misunderstandings, the prince or princess enchanted, in my opinion, is a pure waste of time. As couples often have opposite elements, it is totally natural for there to be conflicts.

See the texts – Do opposites attract?

Fear of making mistakes, nonsense move on!

Third, use technology to your advantage. When I was a teenager (not so long ago), we used to send letters, still. It was a fantastic thing. With the internet, the letter obviously gave way to email, msn, facebook messenger, whatsapp and so on. Usually, for those who are shy, writing is easier than talking. The reason is simple: in writing, we can correct, change, rewrite and work on a small text for a day (or weeks!), whereas in speech we have to think fast and maybe say before we think, depending on the moment.

Therefore, the tip of using technologies in your favor makes sense.

Fourth, once you meet the person you desire and are known by him/her, things fall into place. It is important to note that, if it doesn’t work out, it’s life that goes on…

Fifth, if you still feel very, very, very difficult to open up, I suggest that you look for a psychology professional to help you. Through therapy, you will get to know yourself better, and you will begin to understand why this feeling of being afraid of (losing) love (from someone) arises and how to overcome, in your own way, this difficulty.

Comments are always welcome, write below!

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