Overcoming Shyness

Since I was 10 I've wished for one video game item to be real more than any other. It's from an RPG, of course, but it's not a secret weapon, magical amulet, or brilliantly designed piece of armor. It is an essential item in the game, not because of how the protagonists use it but because of how it helps change a few minor characters. Perhaps as you'd expect from a kid who read Lord of the Rings before having a double-digit age, it was a book. But not a magic book; just a regular old book, sitting in a local library, called Overcoming Shyness.

The book is the target of a fetch quest in Earthbound, one of the most unique JRPGs ever and one of my favorite video games. The book helps a group of small green, bloblike creatures called the Tendas. The tribe Ness first encounters in the game is chronically shy, and avoids talking to Ness until he brings Overcoming Shyness to the tribe's elder, who helps the rest of the tribe gain the confidence they need to talk to Ness.

As a kid, I fantasized a lot about that moment when one of the Tendas heard those words and had a universe of anxiety melt away. I felt, perhaps too much, like a small green blob, unable to relate to people around me or talk much at all. I hoped that sometime I would read a book and afterwards feel ready, finally, to talk with people.

It's a fantasy that I still indulge in sometimes. One of the dark attractions of every treatment I've started for anxiety is the hope that here, finally, I might have found the thing that helps me overcome shyness. For me, at least, it's never turned out to be that simple. Growing up some gave me a bit of perspective about how many other people felt as awkward and unsightly as I did. Being out to all my friends in college helped me feel okay about who and how I was attracted to people. Therapy gave me tools for curbing some of the worst excesses. Medication established a neurochemical floor for my moods, making me feel like I could finally do things again. Coming out to my family made me feel like maybe, someday, I wouldn't have to hide from most people.

But even with that progress, I haven't overcome anxiety or
shyness. When I'm out for dinner with people, at a party, or at a meetup, I do my best now. Most of the time, I think I do okay. Other times, I have to leave early from a creeping sense of doom and panic, from an overwhelming sense that I have embarrassed myself forever, or from the conviction that I do not belong there, with those people, more than any other entity in the universe.

Maybe there is, somewhere out there, a book for those
feelings. Or a blog. Or a twitter feed. I still feel like a green bloblike creature, and I still wish Ness would help me learn to speak. But I think one of the best signs that I've learned to really handle this aspect of who I am is that I'm not desperate for that book today. I know it would help, but I know that the work that I've done so far would be every bit as essential as the book.

When I worked myself up to coming out, I read a lot of things that talked about coming out being a process, something that you keep doing all the time as part of your life. As much as I want to read Overcoming Shyness and find myself free of every kind of social anxiety, actually overcoming shyness is probably more of a process than a lesson to learn. No one thing will obliterate my anxiety, but an endless effort to improve might help me work around it.