Shyness – How to overcome the feeling of not having anything to say

Hello friends!

A very common question for those who are shy or a more reserved person is how to overcome the feeling of not having anything to say. Someone who doesn’t talk as much as others around her may be asked several times in her life:

“Why are you so quiet?” or “Why don’t you say anything?” or similar questions.

After hearing this, the desire to want to talk more may arise. It is understood that, in social life, verbal behavior is practically a requirement and is included in what people consider as social skills.

Before we start, it’s important to note that there are cultural and even regional differences in how to approach others or what will be said. We, who are in Minas, feel the great difference that exists in relation to the cariocas who are more talkative. Anyway, I say this to make it clear that it is important to keep in mind the environment in which we operate.

How to overcome the feeling of not having anything to say

One of the greatest truths of psychology is that people are very different from each other. For example, here on the site I already wrote a text – which was widely accessed – about how to talk less. And here we are in a text that explains how talk more🇧🇷

In a way, as they are opposites (talk less or talk more), we can use everything we described about how to talk less, but in reverse.

The main tip for talking less is to pay attention to the present tense. In the text in the link above I put it in the following terms: “If you could not say anything about the past and if you could not say anything about what will happen, what would you talk about?”

It is a fundamental question because if we observe our own and other people’s verbal behavior, we will also observe that conversations are temporal, that is, they deal with what happened in the past and what will happen in the future.

Characteristics of people who talk less

Whether you are a shy person, with social phobia or just a person who speaks less or is more introverted than his fellow countrymen, there are some characteristics that we can raise that are common.

First, in certain situations, the person who is silent is completely immersed in the present. She looks around at the people. She feels her body (maybe some discomfort). She listens to what others are saying, word for word. She thinks what she could say now… thinks again… and doesn’t say it.

Therefore, it is the exact opposite of a person who talks too much, whose mind is never in the present. It is always in the past or the future. If we could see what she sees in her thinking, we would see details of scenes that happened in all details (that’s why they manage to describe what happened so well) or her imagination about what is to come (future possibilities).

Read Also: Offenses, curses and criticism: how to deal?

Secondly, a characteristic that is also quite present in people who speak less is self-observation. They have what in cognitive psychology we call a self-centered focus. If a person who talks less is in a group of 4 people (in addition to her), she is not just watching the 4 people. For her, there are 5. She and 4 more, and the most observed is precisely herself.

In NLP, we call this state of dissociated attention. Another way of understanding it is as if the scene that is passing in front of us was not observed by our eyes, but by an external and superior camera (like those cameras in stores that observe us). That is, if we place ourselves in a dissociated position, we will see what is happening in front of us, but we will also see ourselves in the scene.

As each case is different, we cannot generalize about the reasons for the self-centered focus or the dissociated position. It may be that due to previous negative experiences, the person protects himself in this way, so as not to be criticized or rejected. It could be a preferential subjective position (the person prefers to see the world this way) or maybe he doesn’t even realize that he sees the world this way.

Third, self-criticism is very common. Before speaking, the subject who speaks less thinks about what he is going to say. “Does what I’m about to say make sense? Will it be accepted? Will it be criticized? Nonsense, shouldn’t be something to say. Better not say…”

So self-criticism has an implicit assumption. The idea that everything we talk about has to be important, useful or true. Another implicit reason would be not to hurt anyone, thus avoiding talking about other people, either to not get involved, criticize or not to gossip (which, let’s face it, is positive).

Read Also: Do you suffer from mimphobia?

Fourthly, those who talk less may really have the impression that they have nothing to say in their head. It would be as if his mind were completely clear, crystal clear, silent. While this can happen (and is actually quite a difficult state to reach by will), it is likely to be an internal block from an external social situation.

That is, if the external situation changes and the person is alone in his room, he will not be able to remain in the previous silent state. This demonstrates that this is a form of blocking. As if thoughts were silenced so as not to be emitted.

To overcome this feeling of having nothing to say – although having nothing to say and having your thoughts silenced can be a desired state in certain contexts – we can go back to the past or the future:

– “Last week I went to see a very interesting movie at the cinema…”

– “Did you see the episode of yesterday’s soap opera?”

– “Did you see that they are about to launch a cell phone that charges the battery through the air?”

– “Next year will be great! I’m going to start studying…”

Of course, these are just any examples. The aim is to show that whether we turn our attention to the past or the future, we will always have content to talk about. It can be anything, not having an ultimate meaning, wonderful, fantastic, but it will be something to be said.

For more tips, see our How to Overcome Shyness and Social Phobia Course